The present study attempts to scrutinize Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night. Here, the critical picture is based on “The American Dream” as a national myth; it is the myth of success or a fulfilling life for all Americans. The theoretical framework is based on the ideas of some critics such as Lewis, Carpenter and Pradhan on “The American Dream”.
This study follows a historical perspective and states that “The American Dream” has been with Americans since the beginning of American history. And then it shows that this particular dream has become a myth for centuries.
For this research, in the first place, an exhaustive study is carried out on the history of America, as well as on concepts such as “The American Dream” and “American Myth”. Then elements of “The American Dream” are drawn in The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night. These items are then considered inaccessible myth. In full, it shows how O’Neill represents “The American Dream” in both of his works.
When O’Neill began writing plays, there was an unreasonable acceptance of materialism and traditional values in American drama, and the presentation of life and character was hackneyed. O’Neill’s works from the beginning reveal a better and truer understanding of the man and his life. Tilak Raghukul (1975) believes that:
From the beginning, O’Neill saw life as something that should not be carefully organized in a studio, but as something terrifying, magnificent, and often quite horrible, something akin to a tornado, earthquake or devastating fire (p. twenty).
O’Neill considers the mythical characters who have come to America and have been searching for their dreams and a fulfilled life. He writes about forty plays, most of them about the American family. O’Neill began and ended his dramatic career in realism. All his important works represent a tragic vision of America. A dozen violent deaths and more than two dozen non-violent deaths, as well as the causes of insanity in his drama, are an indication of the consistency of his tragic vision. H. Clark Barrelt (1947) says:
When the United States was close to victory in World War II, O’Neill told his compatriots that I followed the theory that the United States, instead of being the most successful country in the world, is the greatest failure (p. 152).
This quote shows how much O’Neill was aware of the failure of American values. In both The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey, he represents the failure of the American man. It shows the man who seeks a full life but does not find it in reality, so reality becomes painful for him. Metaphorically, in both works O’Neill reveals the lie in “The American Dream” and sees it as a way to escape reality.