While reading the dramas of Eugene O'Neill and Sam Shepard I observed that both playwrights shed light on the problem of art and the artist. In their dramas the two writers try to find answers to the questions of authenticity, corruptness, success and the inner response of the artist to his own profession and place in society. In my essay I will compare Long Day's Journey into Night (1941) by O'Neill to True West (1980) and Seduced (1979) by Shepard. According to these dramas I will sum up the attitudes of these writers to the problem given, and try to compare these ideas and the characters of the different plays on the basis of the above mentioned themes.
The first difference that is conspicuous if someone examines these three works is that the two writers put the artists in different environments. O'Neill describes a more or less traditional family, while Shepard's characters are very much influenced by the twentieth century pop culture and its art. As a consequence, O'Neill's "classic- family consists of people who represent classical fields of art: the mother is a pianist, the father and Jamie are actors in a theatre and Edmund (and in a way his brother, either) are poets. On the other hand Shepard's heroes fit their twentieth century environment and all of them are involved in Hollywood's filmmaking industry: Henry is a producer, Austin and Lee are scenario-writers.
It is also important that in Journey the characters' conflict is an unquestionably inner.
one, while in Shepard's works the artists are in collision not only with themselves but also with the outside world, so the nature of these oppositions are more complex. O'Neill poses the problem of art versus inner life, while the author of True West is more concerned about the possibility of authenticity in the Hollywood-infected world. .
In O'Neill's drama the setting is insignificant from the point of view of art and the artist.