title: O'Neill's journey.
abstract: This paper considers some of the processes through which Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) dramatically shaped his inner life and through which he created his plays. These processes at their finest are evident in his composition of Long Day's Journey into Night (1941a). During its 21-month composition, the play went through three different versions, as evidenced by the playwright's handwritten and typed materials (O'Neill, unpublished, a, b, c, d). This paper posits that each version reflects O'Neill's changing state of mind as he began to master his instinctual life, developing increasingly rich characters and creating a painful, deeply tragic vision. Thus, this paper shows that O'Neill's great artistic achievement reflected a great psychological one.
authors.affiliation: Former Associate Professor of English Literature and Humanities at Mercy College in New York, has taught extension courses on O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Strindberg's late plays at the New York Psychoanalytic Society, and is currently a Visiting Scholar at the William Alanson White Institute.
authors.forename: George
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Mandelbaum
mesh_terms: D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D008093:Literature, Modern / Q000266:history*
keywords: Anna Christie; Eugene O'Neill; Long Day's Journey into Night; absent mother; aggression; compensatory fantasy; dramatic action; dramatic characterization; drug addiction; melodrama; personal tragedy; process of writing; transcendence