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

231A vague terror underlies the most obviously expressionistic surface ofLong Day ’s Journey Into Night . A sense of doom pervades the action;symbols emerge; the fog that enshrouds the action; the lust for land, forrootedness, of the father; the mother ’s nostalgic return to her weddinggown; the consumption eating up Edmund. But the sadness and frustrationthat envelops the characters are to be considered as stepping stones toreality, not as indications of man ’s doom. The characters face their dilemmaand determine to go on trying to understand themselves. O’Neill expresses ,in the play , his understanding of man ’s position in relation to his creator.O’Neill ’s rejection of the tradition and the experiments with drama insubject -matter and technique gave new direction to the American dra ma. Hisportrayal of new themes and delineation of new ideas, and indiv idualism, hispreoccupation with spiritual values, and his concern with the tragic visionhave enriched his plays. John Gassner has rightly evaluated his dramatictraits,Combined with a deeply felt (if also fashionably Bohemian)rejection of Victorian ge ntility, Puritanical prissiness, dollary -idolatry, and the entire cult of go-getting opportunism.O’Neill ’s lofty individualism placed him in the fore -front ofthose who began to modernise the content of American dramano less than its form. His response t o the vogue of depthpsychology led him to modernise further both dramatic formand content by attempting to manifest subconscious tensions.(166)In order to probe the abysmal depths of the human psyche , O ’Neillfinds the existing mechanical devices highl y unsatisfactory. He has devisedhis own radical methods. The inner struggle of modern man , and the tragicintensity cannot be depicted in the traditional manner. He evolves hismethods , and they are characteristic of his genius. His achievement isoutstan ding , and he introduces a sense of modernism and novelty in hisplays.Expressionism thus is a technique of expressing that inexpressible,i.e. the unconscious in which the conscious lie inextricably mixed up, and