Social Criticism and Mask in Eugene O'Neill's Selected Plays

Abstract

In The Great God Brown and in Mourning Becomes Electra, two of his prominent mask plays, Eugene O’Neill voiced a sharp social criticism by portraying the psychological and spiritual suffering of characters, who could not assimilate into the alienated, modern American society. Through a deep knowledge about human nature, modern psychology and the renewed mask tradition of drama, he created two plays that grasp the gist of living in the modern, industrialized America. The family unit is represented in the two plays as an organic part of life and a unity which is strongly reactive to social problems, and in which social and psychological struggles of the individual converge.