Eben’s conflicts leading to his imprisonment in eugene o’neill’s desire under the elms

ABSTRACT

Literature is identical with life. It can be seen that literature is a true picture or reflection of human life. It describes what and how human life is usually it reflects the events which happen in the society.

There are some reasons that provide the basic for the writer in choosing this topic. They are by studying literature we can learn that literary helps US to understand human sentiment, human interest and human problem. It can bring US closer to another human being from other times, nationalities, cultures and races. We can also learn to feel what other people feel about certain things and appreciate what other appreciates. The writer also want to know more about literary works; in this case she is interested in analyzing Eugene 0’neill’s play Desire Under the Elms a reflection of human problem as relevant today problem in some ways. Besides the story will entertain US, giving US a new experience, we can also gain the benefits from the characters involved such as Eben, Cabot, Abbie, and many others who have their own uniqueness as reflection of American society in 18805. Another reason is the writer is eiger to analyze the conflicts in Desire Under the Elms particularly in analyzing the conflict that faced by Eben as one of the characters in the play.

The objective of this research is to know what kind of conflict that Eben has undergone and to know how the conflicts lead Eben to his imprisonment.

This thesis is a literary research. As a literary research, there are several method that can be used and the writer used objective structuralism. It is a method that is used to analyze literary work by emphasizing its study on the text of literary work, that is play. Especially conflict of the play.

The sources data that are used in this research are taken from the playwright Desire Under the Elms by Eugene O’neill published by The Modem Library, New York. After got the data the writer starts to analyze them based on the classification, this referred to the conflicts of the play. In analyzing the data, the writer using the theory suggested by Edward H. Jones in his book Outlines of Literature.

In this research, the writer has found that there are two kinds of conflicts happened to Eben that leading him to his imprisonment. The first is social conflict and the second is psychological conflict.

Eben’s social conflict happened when he quarreled with his father, his stepbrothers and his stepmother. His conflict concern with the farm, his love affair, his baby, his imprisonment and the hidden money.

Eben’s psychological conflict happened when he had to suppress his feeling of attract to his stepmother while he had already hated her because of the farm.

Finally, after knowing and getting the main points of this research, the writer realizes that this thesis is only a small contribution to literature. Therefore, for the future researchers who want to continue this thesis, she hopes that a further study will be done by other researchers who are interested in analyzing literary works by using another specified discussion.