o'neill's technique of expressionism - DSpace@INFLIBNET Home

223social hatred in her unconscious gradually making her a maniac. The Congomask has come to symbolize for her the social barrier between her and Jim.The difference between the Black and the White is represented by stagesetting and use of songs.In the street leading left, the faces are all white; in the streetleading right, all black…From the street of the whites a high -pitched, nasal tenor sings the chorus of‘Only a Bird in aGilded Cage. ’ On the street of the blacks a N egro strikes up thecho rus of: ‘I Guess I’ll Have to Telegraph My Baby. ’(301)elms:Desire Under the Elmsopens with the description of two enormousThey bend their trailing branches down over the roof… theirtears tric kle down monotonously and rot on the shingles.(O’Neill III: DUTE 202)While these two elms appear to represent the characteristic qualitiesof that household, they are particularly two brooding symbols of violatedmaterial spirit which works its vengeance t hrough Eben and Abbie. Thefarm and the farmhouse symbolis e emotional and material security andstability in their lives, and thus, all desire to posses it. Old Cabot hasworked hard so that the farm may prosper, and he may acquire security andprestige as its possessor, Eben desired it to avenge his mother. Thefarmalso symbolises the life – denying sterility of the Puritan ideals, for it warpsand twists the lives of those who are slaves to it.In The Great God Brown , Eugene O ’Neill experiments with the use ofmasks to show the doubts of man ’s being which resu lts from suppression ofhis natural instincts. He uses expressionist ic technique to lay bare the soulof his protagonists. The two central characters , Dion Anthony and WilliamBrown , are seen with and without masks, indicatin g alteration between theconsci ous and the unconscious or the sub -conscious, between the ego andthe id, between the external social self and the hidden, inner true self. Man ’spsychological need to wear another person ’s mask, to become what he isnot, results in a tragic suspension bet ween opposites. “The ultimate effect ofO’Neill ’s use of mask is to portray inner action and penetrate the depths of