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Dream and Frustration in Eugene O'Neill's Early One - Act Plays

Some critics characterize all of O'Neill's plays as a journey, a quest, and poet's pilgrimage. The majority of O'Neill's characters are trying to escape from agonizing realities and make a quest. Especially characters of O'Neill's early one-act plays tend to have their dreams and fail to accomplish them. This thesis intends to survey their dreams and frustrations found in his early one-act plays. For O'Neill, life is an illusion which can't be reconciled with reality. Even though O'Neill's characters are defeated and frustrated in life, he stresses the hope of life continuously. O'Neill once said, "Without hope, there is no life, and so we go on pursuing our dream to the last gasp, convinced in spite of our reason that there must be some spiritual meaning behind our hope, which in some greener land will prove it was all justified."Therefore, O'Neill's characters are pursuing their dreams, 'the green world' beyond the present reality. In the early one-act plays, O'Neill depicts the lives of seafarers, which are gloomy and pessimistic. Their dreams are frustrated by ruthless fate which he called "the forces behind life."Sailors want to go back home and settle down at the farm with their family; however nobody can go back home. Their farmland and home can represent their lost Eden and peace. The wrecked passengers are drowned in spite of their desperate hope for being rescued. Mammy has a vain dream about Dreamy, the grandson, because he is a rogue who killed a whiteman and wanted by the police. Captain Bartlet wants to find the hidden treasures, but he dies with an insane illusion of Mary Allen's coming back home. In Rope, father wants his prodigal son to repent and find his presents, the gold through hanging the rope. But his son doesn't know about that. The characters of O'Neill's early plays try to reach unattainable dreams only to fail. Finally, however, O'Neill takes an optimistic attitude toward life and accepts the ugly reality as it is. In his last autobiographical plays, he ceases the struggles with life and tries to reconcile with it. He shows us that life is valuable and meaningful even though it has many scars. That is the reason why so many people today call him a great dramatist and love him.