Abstract
Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten (1943) is his last work and deals with maternal love and forgiveness; those things which O'Neill craved for throughout his life. In A Moon for the Misbegotten, the leading character, James Tyrone Jr. tries to confess his ambivalent feelings of grief, anger, longing, guilt, and love toward his lost mother. Tyrone loved his mother so blindly that when she died, Tyrone's mind was much distracted by those feelings, and he sought solace in women and alcohol. O'Neill portrays his own brother Jamie as Tyrone, and some of the episodes Tyrone confesses in the play are based on what O'Neill heard from Jamie himself. As an example, when Tyrone had to transfer his mother's body from California to New York by train, he got too drunk in his private car with a prostitute and was in a drunken stupor by the time the train arrived at New York. Worst of all, he was too drunk to attend her funeral. This incident left a wound in Tyrone's mind and he wished to be forgiven by his mother.
Tyrone makes a confession in Josie Hogan's arms in the moonlight. Josie, who is a daughter of a tenant farmer in Tyrone's estate, is the only one who shows understanding toward his feelings and offers him maternal love and forgiveness. Josie is an extraordinary, large-built woman, and although she wants to become Tyrone's lover, she gives up this hope and decides to become his mother-substitute. After the confession, Tyrone sleeps in Josie's arms like a dead child, for his body has been affected by the long term of drinking habit. Finally, he bids Josie farewell with the rising sun never to return.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the mental states of Tyrone and Josie from a psychoanalytical point of view, before, during, and after Tyrone makes his confession. By doing so, we may discover O'Neill's interpretation of ‘a moon’ and his feelings toward this play.
