Eugene O’Neill’s Writing University of Central Florida Yongjie (Tim) Liu

When he was 27(1916), that Fate in the form of certain lung spots caught up with him and he was sentenced to a year in a sanitorium. This year was for O'Neill a spiritual as well as a physical rebirth. (rid depression;read books by Nietche, Shaupanhauer, Ibsen; become a dramatist)

Leaving the sanitorium, O'Neill turned to Professor George Pierce Baker's "English 47" at Harvard for a serious study of dramatic technique. His first contacts with the stage as a playwright were in the "Little Theater" movement in Provincetown.

First appearance as a playwright: In the summer of 1916,in the quiet fishing village of Provincetown, Mass., where a group of young writers and painters had launched an experimental theatre. In their tiny, ramshackle playhouse on a wharf, they produced his one-act sea play Bound East for Cardiff. O'Neill's first play, Bound East for Cardiff, premiered at this theatre on a wharf in Provincetown, Massachusetts

The infulence on O’Neill His family His sea experience as a sailor Renouncing their Catholic religion(September 1895,Eugene O'Neill enters the strict Catholic boarding school St. Aloysius Academy for Boys. He leaves the Catholic Church as a teenager and never returns. ) Nietzsche, Strindberg, Ibsen; Chekhov Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung

The Influence of Nietzsche on Eugene O’Neill When 18, he became acquainted with Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He reread it about once a year thereafter. (Another book: The Birth of Tragedy) “Zarathustra…has influenced me more than any book I’ve ever read. I ran into it through the bookshop of Benjamin Tucker…when I was eighteen and I’ve always possessed a copy since then and every year or so I re-read it and am never disappointed, which is more than I can say of almost any other book ”

Main themes of Thus Spoke Zarathustra Overman (the superman):is the ultimate state of being in which man can achieve total self-mastery. The will to power Eternal return(eternal recurrence):the notion that time is eternal and that all things that have ever happened will happen again. God is Dead Nihilism: nothingness where there is no ultimate meaning to anything Pity: Zarathustra believes that the notion of pity is one of the main themes that need to be overcome by mankind. Pity is for those that are too weak to rise to the state of the overman. Envy: For Zarathustra, envy is a key tool in becoming the overman.

Influence of August Strindberg on Eugene O’Neill Swedish playwright, novelist, and short-story writer, who combined in his works psychology, naturalism, and later elements of new literary forms. Strindberg was married three times – several of his plays drew on the problems of his marriages and reflected his constant interest in self-analysis.

Influence of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung on Eugene O’Neill Modern psychology (Oedipus complex, Electra complex, unconscious etc.)

The Influence of Henrik Ibsen on Eugene O’Neill a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre Problem plays; realism;naturalism,moral plays

The Influence of Anton Chekhov on Eugene O’Neill a Russian physician, playwright and one of the great masters of modern short story. ("Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress.") Chekhov portrayed often life in the Russian small towns, where tragic events occur in a minor key, as a part of everyday texture of life. His characters are passive by-standers in regard to their lives, filled with the feeling of hopelessness and the fruitlessness of all efforts.

Other Influence on Eugene O’Neill Greek drama European arts (expressionis→mexperimental) Oriental thoughts (Taoism:a philosophical or religious tradition in which the basic concept is to establish harmony with the Tao ( 道 ), which is the mechanism of everything that exists. The word "Tao" (or "Dao", depending on the romanization scheme) is usually translated as "way", "path" or "principle", although the word also means "nature" as in the nature of all things as well as the natural world. )

Taoist theology emphasizes various themes found in the Daodejing and Zhuangzi, such as naturalness, vitality, peace, "non-action" (wu wei, or "effortless effort"—see below), emptiness (refinement), detachment, flexibility, receptiveness, spontaneity, the relativism of human ways of life, ways of speaking and guiding behavior.