• Dr.S.B.Sharma

The modern American playwright Eugene O’Neill’s plays present the modern man in his varied versions ranging from a romantic dreamer to a neurotic lost in the machinations of the machine age and the one having fluid personality always in the process of reinventing himself. The present paper having traversed all the major plays of O’Neill attempts to demonstrate not only quintessential trials and tribulations of the modern man in his quest for the exploration of his real self but, more than this, it seeks to delve deep into the contemporary American psyche as well through the subtle portrayal of different shades of ‘self’. The paper brings to fore a general point that in the journey called life it is pride that imprisons the free spirit of a human being and becomes the cause of his undoing i.e. hamartia of the tragedy called life. Ironically it is in this tragedy only that he explores himself and finds himself in true sense through the process of looking inside instead of looking outside , a common mistake that one tends to make. He comes to realize that man is just a speck on the infinite canvas of cosmos without any control whatsoever over himself and his destiny. But still he is given ample amount freedom to opt for certain choices which might enable him to slug it out in the battlefield of life in order to understand the basics of life. Obviously this fight or quest is doomed to be a mere mirage for self fulfillment, nevertheless it is worth pursuing as it gives the individual some meaning and significance in the beauty of ‘fighting, willing and living’ of this tragedy called life. The fighter peels off the masks after masks to reach the bare naked truth of his true self. So, the present paper bears significance in the light of its being a sort of documentary over life as it accords a testing ground to life as represented in the plays of O'Neill by subjecting it to certain experiments to arrive at some basic psychological truths in each individual case. Despite the tinge of pessimism embracing the researcher or any other reader for that matter along the way, he is bound to get enriched with the experiences of varied shades of life consequent upon his close shave with life as represented through a host of characters from O'Neill's plays .

tension of duality, mask, tragedy of life, realization of self

"Trajectory of exploration of self in the plays of Eugene O’Neill", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 6, page no.227-236, June-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1906467.pdf

"Trajectory of exploration of self in the plays of Eugene O’Neill", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 6, page no. pp227-236, June-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1906467.pdf