Iceman Cometh Research Articles

Acts of Recovery: Eugene O’Neill and Addiction Treatment in Post–World War II America

ABSTRACT This article includes a summary of “Acts of Recovery: Eugene O’Neill and Addiction Treatment in Post–WWII America,” the author’s dissertation completed in 2018. In it, the author focuses on how Eugene O’Neill’s late plays—The Iceman Cometh (1939), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1939–41), and A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943)—captured the shifting cultural attitudes about addiction following World War II, and argues that the playwright’s representation of those with substance use disorders influenced doctors and scientists who engaged with his work from 1943 until the present.

Eugene O’Neill and the Unity of Addiction

ABSTRACT Eugene O’Neill has cast a long shadow over the discourse on drug addiction in American theater. Yet, his conception of addiction is unique in theater history. This article explores the ways he infuses his dramaturgy with the cycles and themes related to addiction. It also places O’Neill in a literary context by tracing some potential influences on his conception of addiction. With a primary focus on Long Day’s Journey Into Night and a secondary focus on A Moon for the Misbegotten and The Iceman Cometh, this article examines how the cyclical nature of habituation serves as a scaffolding for characterizations, dialogue, and dramatic structure. It reveals O’Neill’s activation of addiction as part of a grand ontological metaphor and a manifestation of an existential philosophy. This article parses these uses and how they relate to other authors, including Thomas De Quincey, Charles Baudelaire, the British Decadents, and philosophers Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.

Genealogical Traces of the Misogynistic Murder Motif in Eugene O'Neill's Autobiographical Tragedies

Abstract Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical tragedies, such as Dynamo, Days Without End, The Iceman Cometh and More Stately Mansions, are characteristic of the misogynistic murder motif. In these tragedies, the male protagonists actually kill or are motivated to kill their mistresses, wives and mothers. We argue that this unique phenomenon is in essence a matricide in disguise, which originated from August Strindberg's philosophy of misogyny and O'Neill's own adolescent psychological trauma. The revelation of O'Neill's misogynistic murder motif and its genealogical origin from the perspective of biographical criticism helps to explicate the dramatist's sense about the tragic fate of human beings.

Eugene O’Neill’s Philosophy of Difficult Theatre: Pity, Fear, and Forgiveness

Eugene O’Neill’s Philosophy of Difficult Theatre: Pity, Fear, and Forgiveness

The American Pipe Dream: Performance of Drug Addiction, 1890–1940

The American Pipe Dream: Performance of Drug Addiction, 1890–1940

Finding Eugene O’Neill in Maxim Gorki’s The Lower Depths

ABSTRACT In his early days as an author, Eugene O’Neill modeled himself on Maxim Gorki, even mimicking the Russian playwright when posing for an early portrait. Gorki’s 1902 play, Na dnie, had an immediate impact on European and American writers by demonstrating radical new ways a drama could speak to the modern world. O’Neill probably first encountered the play in its 1912 translation as The Lower Depths. In its many translations and productions Gorki’s play established for early twentieth-century theater artists a standard of integrity, though the play was also frequently misinterpreted. Near the end of his career, O’Neill utilized many elements of The Lower Depths in The Iceman Cometh, for reasons that have been debated. But Gorki’s play informs an interpretation of many other O’Neill plays, and the example of Gorki as a figure of modern artist resonated in the way O’Neill self-consciously fashioned himself as a modern artist.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Long Day’s Journey Into Night

The parable: Analogy of illusion and reality in “The Iceman Cometh”

The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill has a linear structure of a journey from illusion to reality and back again to illusion. Carefully considered, The Iceman Cometh is a parable analogous to the famous parable of “The Simile of the Cave” in Plato’s Republic. The parable, which is about the nature of reality and man’s relationship to it, describes the human condition as identical to with that of a group of prisoners chained to wall in a cave. Outside of the cave, in the clear light of the sun, lies reality. Plato then describes how painful it would be for the prisoners to face reality, if they were set free.

“THE ICEMAN COMETH” IN WORLD DRAMA AND O’NEILL’S CREATIVE WORLD

The play “The Iceman Cometh” is central to Eugene O’Neill’s creative world as it represents the parable of man’s ability to live with or without illusions in terms of the perennial antithesis: reality vs illusion. Developing one of the eternal themes in world literature, the play finds common ground with a number of literary and philosophical works which in turn draw the line of literary continuity. The present paper explores cross-references of "The Iceman Cometh" with other works and offers a commentary on various interpretations of the play, covering the artistic pursuits of O'Neill’s and our time.

Staging Depth: Eugene O’Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse

Staging Depth: Eugene O’Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse

Michael Gold: The People’s Writer

Michael Gold: The People’s Writer

Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill

Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill

Circle in the Square Theatre: A Comprehensive History

Circle in the Square Theatre: A Comprehensive History

Magnum Opus: The Cycle Plays of Eugene O'neill

Magnum Opus: The Cycle Plays of Eugene O'neill

Unlikely Temple: Building a Theater at Tao House

ABSTRACT During the height of his popularity in the 1920s, Eugene O'Neill imagined “a theatre returned to its highest and sole significant function as a Temple where the religion of poetic interpretation and symbolic celebration of life is communicated to human beings.” As the artistic director of the Eugene O'Neill Foundation, I have labored for the better part of a decade to establish O'Neill's “temple” with productions at the playwright's former home, Tao House, in Danville, California. Directing Chris Christophersen, The Iceman Cometh, Desire Under the Elms, The Emperor Jones, A Touch of the Poet, Hughie, and Long Day's Journey Into Night in Tao House's Old Barn has been a unique artistic and spiritual experience. My goal has been to build reverence for the sacred experience of seeing O'Neill's plays a stone's throw from where he created some of his best work.

The Iceman Cometh (1939) is the Representation of the Social Problems by Eugene O’ Neill: Modern American Drama

The main aim of this paper is to trace the social problems in The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill. The social issues are the pipe dream and hopelessness of man in American family and society. These social problems leads to tragic issues. The researcher is going to use the socialism theory by Karl Marx to tackle social issues (the hopelessness of man and the pipe dream) to present the tragic problems. The analysis of data will be qualitative approach and the technique is interpretive as storytelling type. The data is collected by the textual method. In the analysis and discussions part, the researcher will use the play (The Iceman Cometh) as the main idea of analysing. In conclusion, the findings will be analysed the speech of the characters in the play such as the actions of the plot, setting, and characters. This study will contribute/ add to academic, social, cultural, and literary in modern American drama. For example, literary contribution will be generalized as new study about the social problems in O’Neill’s plays. This study adds the literary background to modern American drama.

The Iceman Cometh: “An unique dramatic achievement” (Tennessee Williams, letter to Eugene O'Neill, November 6, 1946)

<i>The Iceman Cometh</i>: “An unique dramatic achievement” (Tennessee Williams, letter to Eugene O'Neill, November 6, 1946)

The Iceman Cometh

The Iceman Cometh

Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Views of His Writings and Ideas

Arthur Miller for the Twenty-First Century: Contemporary Views of His Writings and Ideas

Absolution Without God: Pipe Dreams, Tragedy, and Kierkegaardian Selves in The Iceman Cometh

Abstract Both Eugene O'Neill and Søren Kierkegaard identify the same source of tragedy inherent in the human condition: anxiety that arises in people as they evaluate the stories they tell themselves about who they are. O'Neill presents four visions of tragedy in The Iceman Cometh, each involving a crisis of the self. All four are understood more clearly by considering Kierkegaard's ideas about anxiety and despair. The residents of Harry Hope's display tragedy as denial and diversion; Hickey, tragedy as a loss of self; Larry Slade, tragedy as a confrontation with one's own phoniness; and Parritt, an anguished passage through tragedy to absolution, a movement similar to Kierkegaard's teleological suspension of the ethical. Slade is the first of a series of characters O'Neill uses to explore confrontations with phoniness in his later plays. The relationship of tragedy to the teleological suspension of the ethical is explored by American dramatists following O'Neill.