"밤으로의 긴 여로"에 나타난 비극적 갈등의 연구

Abstract

ABSTRACT Long Day's Journey Into Night에 나타난 비극적 갈등에 관한 연구 A Study on the Tragic Conflicts in Long Day's Journey Into Night

Park Su-Mi Faculty Advisor: Prof. Kim Young-Kwan, Ph. D Department English Language and Literature Graduate School of Chosun University

This paper is an attempt to discuss the tragic conflict among the family relationship shown in Long Day's Journey Into Night. Eugene O'Neill requires that we would recognize the human universal agony, that should be the reality of essential loneliness in life, the conflicts of love and hate, and the human tragic agony. Eugene O'Neill is one of the major figures of American Literature. From the beginning of his career he attempted to transmit his practical experiences into his plays. When we consider his plays in relation to his life, both autobiographical and symbolic, it seems to suggest his continuing search for salvation in a spiritual sense. He, in his many plays, treated various tragic materials which would effect on man's inner life. He took into consideration about the existential question in our life. He represented his own dramatic style against inhumanity resulted from the development of modern science. Long Day's Journey Into Night, which is said to be the most autobiographical, derives from O'Neill's memory in his family. The mammonish father - James Tyrone, his drug using wife - Mary, His alcoholic elder son - Jamie, and his nihilistic younger son - Edmund, all want to get away from the present reality. They escape from the darkness that hovers about their family. They are unable to restore the good days, feeling perfectly helpless. In this play, Tyrone's stinginess and Mary's drug addiction act as the Force behind. The Tyrones bound to the chain of love-hate suffer from the conflict which appears in the wife-husband, the parents-child, and the brother-brother relationships. But they come to confess to each other their remorseful past and their complicated emotions of love and hatred. With this confession all the family members have the courage to accept their unhappiness caused by both their fault and life itself. Especially Edmund who is the portrait of O'Neill himself purifies his painful life and has a deep understanding about himself and his family. In conclusion, his tragedies in this play achieve a relentless inner awareness, with an occasional mysterious moment of transcendence. It is commonly accepted that his domestic tragedies are lack of affection among the characters and the reconciliation of the family can come from the self-realization of each other. O'Neill thought that man can find his real ego by denying his pseudo-ego and have a new appreciation of himself and gain the real human understanding. Through this play, O'Neill shows that man realize the meaning of the most valuable life by enduring the pain even though he is bound by tragic fate.