유진 오닐 극에 나타난 열린 결말에 관한 연구

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to discuss the “open closure" in some main plays of O'Neill which have been remembered as his remarkable contribution to American literature and drama of the world. This study is concentrated on plays selected for their relevance to closure rather than for their overall quality. Though closure has always been problematic for playwright, O'Neill had recognized his own difficulty with endings for better artistic judgement. The other reason the endings fail for early dramas is their almost ubiquitous reliance upon violence. Other reason his early play endings have often failed to satisfy viewers is his explicitness. In fact, O'Neill's quest for closure began long before he wrote his first play. His lifelong search for reassurance from his anxieties appears directly traceable to his mother's morphine addiction. If the affirmative closures of his plays may be interpreted as an effort on O'Neill's part to procure his souls peace, his creative action reflects the desire for finality, for which our hearts yearn with a longing greater than the longing for the loaves and fishes of this earth. O'Neill's emphasis was on effort rather than completion. Thus, through his effort to reach extraordinary dramatic goals, he became the struggling hero of his own plot. His romanticization of the unattainable can be strongly linked with the closure of his late plays. O'Neill's vision of man's glory as lying in the active pursuit of unattainable goals is a vision which commits the individual to an unending struggle and logically results in plays that end without any real sense of completion. The closure of Mourning Becomes Electra had opened up a new technique for O'Neill that proved an invaluable aid to closing the dramas of his late period - commencing with a preconceived ending. He had planned the tragic end of his "Electra" before starting to write the trilogy. Beginning with an ending in mind, as opposed to a situation that could end innumerable ways, also contributed to the successful closures of his fine plays. The closure of the late plays, many of which deal with people from O'Neill's own past, are excellent. The most important technique to closure in O'Neill's plays(Mourning Becomes Electra, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night) is the effective use of pantomime. Still more important aspects of his improved closure, which merit further elaboration, include increased structural fulfillment, more believable reversals of character, a more purposeful use of ambiguity, and greater truthfulness or fidelity to life. In A Moon for the Misbegotten, the ambivalence of Jim Tyrone's conflicting feelings toward Josie is comparably enriching. In conclusion, O'Neill's late plays, by dint of their more consistent realism and lack of artificiality as rendered possible through the improved closures, fulfill one of the most important functions of literature - moral direction. Through the lifelike characters and their credible situations, we gain the heightened insight into human experience that will help him to endure and prevail.