Terror and ambivalence of the human soul in O’neill’s the Emperor Jones, and the hairy ape

Abstract

This study tries to analyze the Terror and Ambivalence of the Human Soul in the selected plays of Eugene O’Neill which does not seem to have received a significant attention by the researchers. O’Neill constantly looked into the mysterious, terrifying Gorgon-faces of reality with a subjective and artistic passion. In his drama we have life coming full circle as it traces the double pattern of experience passing into art, and art flowing back into experience again. He was always searching for the missing elements in life with a restless curiosity and an uneasy consciousness of the penultimate quality of all human discoveries. He swiftly moved from one horizon to another, continually looking beyond the
horizon for a clue to the essence. If as a playwright he dramatized with a fascinating variety and ingenuity, the vision of the human torment, as a man in search of his soul, he also projected the torment of the vision. It is perhaps natural that a cycle of achievement and reaction in the world of criticism. Cargill (1962, p. 2) commented:
The plays of O’Neill, it seems touch something fundamental in those who expose themselves to their effect. They reach down to frightening depths; they step on private, social, religious, philosophical, aesthetic toes; they either evoke immoderate enthusiasm or provoke immoderate anger.