Illusion and Reality in Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night"

Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,3, Ruhr-University of Bochum (Englisches Seminar), course: Eugene O'Neill, language: English, abstract: The Iceman Cometh (published in 1940) and Long Day's Journey into Night (published in 1956 after O'Neill's death) are widely recognized to be two of Eugene O'Neill's best plays. Both belong to his late plays and apart from that bear a lot of similarities. The focus of this paper will be to analyze The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night with special regard to the importance of illusion and reality for both the characters and the progress of the play. Furthermore a comparison will be made between Hickey in The Iceman Cometh and Mary Cavan Tyrone in Long Day's Journey into Night in order to show that they have similar functions in their respective plays. Finally a conclusion will be given which will sum up the argumentation.