The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill

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Eugene O’Neill was the leading playwright in America in the first half of the 20th century. In his entire artistic career, He completed nearly 50 plays, which deal with a wide variety of subjects, concerning issues in religion, society, family and humanity. As a pioneer of modern American theatre, he made a great contribution to American drama, American culture and American ideas. The critical studies of Eugene O’Neill have long since focused in his expressionistic techniques, his tragic tensions, his tragic consciousness, and his philosophy. In fact, he possesses abundant emotional life experience, acute social observation and high artistic expressive force. He has been in pursuit of presenting a unique poetic style. Therefore, Eugene O’Neill’s plays are poetic, well rounded, and full of emotion and true beauty.
Most of O’Neill’s plays have connections to his life and his writing styles are also influenced by his experience and social observation. O’Neill always said that he never had any literary ambition until he was grown, and generally ascribed the great turning point of his life—his decision to became a writer—to a period of ill-heath. At different times he told interviewers: “I just drifted along till I was twenty-four and the I got a jolt and sat up and took notice. Retribution overtook me and I went down with T.B. It gave me time to think about myself and what I was doing—or, rather, wasn’t doing. I got busy writing one-act plays… If I hadn’t had an attack of tuberculosis, if I hadn’t been forced to look at myself, while I was in the sanatorium, harder than I had ever done before, I might never have become a playwright” (Sheafer, 72). Almost as far as back as O’Neill could remember he had always wanted to be a writer, n...

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... Night. 2nd ed. Yale University Press. 2002.

Anonymous. "Eugene Gladstone O’Neill 1888 – 1953 America’s First Major Playwright". Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House. 23 March 2014.http://www.eugeneoneill.org/about/aboutEON.php

Eugene O'Neill. Eugene O'Neill Complete Plays 1932-1943. New York; Literary
Classics of the United Slates. 1988.

Richard F. Mconon, Jr. Eugene O'Neill's Century: Centennial Views on America s Foremost Tragic Dramatis. New York: Greenwood Press. 1991.

Michael Manheim. The Cambridge Companion to Eugene O'Neill. Shanghai:
Shanghai Foreign Education Press. 2000.

Eugene O'Neill. Eugene O'Neill Complete Plays 1932-1943. New York: Literary Classics of the Uniled Slates. 1988.

John H. Houchin. The Critical Response to Eugene O'Neill. Westport, Conn:
Greenwood Press. 1993.

Louis Sheafer. O’Neill: Son and Playwright. New York: Parago Home. 1968.

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