Eugene O'Neill: Expressionism vs. Realism in Two Plays

O'Neill as an American Playwright

Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) is one of the most prolific and highly recognized American playwrights of the twentieth century, though he had no real American contemporaries or precursors to speak of. He remains the only American dramatist to win the coveted Nobel Prize, and while his work was written for American audiences and is certainly American in most respects, he was greatly influenced by European writers and thinkers who shaped his literary interests and had a serious impact on his early plays.

O'Neill is often viewed in histories of American drama as a kind of inexplicable upthrust — a towering figure looming between William Vaughn Moody or Percy MacKaye and Arthur Miller or Tennessee Williams, without appearing to have solid connections to either his predecessors or his successors. As Raleigh observes, it is more revealing to place him within the tradition to which he belongs: the tradition of serious American writing of both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Once this readjustment is made, it becomes apparent that O'Neill is a major American writer whose work constitutes one of the quintessential expressions of American culture. "In fact few other American writers have explored so thoroughly the ranges and the depths of the national experience... O'Neill's work had stronger popular appeal for middle-class American audiences than that of almost any other serious writer of his time. Many of his plays were Broadway successes, and on several occasions were made into moderately popular movies." (Raleigh, 239)

Two Career Phases: Expressionism and Realism

When discussing Eugene O'Neill, it is important to understand that his work can be divided into two broad phases. The first phase of early fame was the 1920s, when the playwright, under the influence of writers like Strindberg and Ibsen, wrote a number of important expressionist plays, including Dynamo and The Emperor Jones. Expressionism can be defined as "the attempt to create the essence rather than the appearance of reality through the use of non-related realistic symbols" (Elwood, 1966).

The second period began after his work came under the strict scrutiny of stern critics such as Francis Fergusson, Lionel Trilling, and Eric Bentley. This was a low period in his life and career: his work began suffering in quality, and the criticism led to a kind of oblivion that proved almost fatal to his reputation. Yet it was during this second phase that he produced some of his best and most important plays, including A Touch of the Poet (1935–1942), More Stately Mansions (1935–1941), The Iceman Cometh (1939), A Long Day's Journey into Night (1939–41), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943). His work in the second phase was certainly more intense and showcased a heightened realism. Unlike the early expressionist plays, in which reality was often distorted, the later plays infused a strong element of realism, making the two phases of his career distinctly different.

O'Neill was an authentic writer who experimented with expressionist techniques but did not find as much success as he later achieved with his more realistic plays. The forces of expression and naturalism in his early plays turned his writing into ambiguous pieces that often appeared elusive, and not many viewers could relate to the constant conflict between actuality and dream that those plays contained. It was when O'Neill became determined to prove his merit as a serious writer — having been severely criticized by a new breed of critics — that he produced plays that received worldwide acclaim and carried him to new heights of fame.

References

Falk, Doris V. Eugene O'Neill and the Tragic Tension: An Interpretative Study of the Plays. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1958.

Tornqvist, Egil. A Drama of Souls: Studies in O'Neill's Super-naturalistic Technique. New Haven: Yale UP, 1969.

Elwood, William. "Early Manifestations of German Expressionism in New York Productions of American Drama." Diss., University of Oregon, 1966.

Raleigh, John Henry. The Plays of Eugene O'Neill. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965.

Liu, Haiping, and Lowell Swortzell, eds. Eugene O'Neill in China: An International Centenary Celebration. New York: Greenwood Press, 1992.

Williams, Raymond. Drama from Ibsen to Brecht. Oxford University Press, 1968. Reprinted in Harold Bloom, ed. Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1987.