Eugene O'Neill

depth. To the majority of critics, he is revered as the greatest

dramatist that America ever produced. He is accepted as “the founder

of American drama,” and his continuing preeminence as such is

remarkable. A few critics, however, have dismissed his plays as a

"mass of undisciplined emotions and jejune opinions" (Carpenter,

171). In this paper, the opposing viewpoints of the praise and blame

To understand O'Neill's style of playwriting, one must first have

a thorough knowledge of his background. "His biography is

exceptionally important to the understanding of his work, and because

it is exceptionally interesting. Many of his plays are autobiographical,

of course. But beyond biography, his life as a whole seemed to

develop the dramatic stages of a kind of continuing "quest." O'Neill

struggled with the problems of his individual life, of his family, and of

his times (with what he calls "the sickness of today"). And these

personal struggles have also seemed to recapitulate the universal

problems of man's "long journey" through all times and places. The

crushed worms,” by the London Times Literary Supplement. The fact

challenged every idea, and ended with a renewed understanding of

Days Without End; then, nostalgically, came home to the family-for

was embarrassed by the crudity of the language, the poet by his

after attending a Catholic boarding school (Gould, 54). After he

America by his influence and example. In granting him this

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