Desire Under the Elms and the Emperor Jones as Pictures of Tragic- Conflict by Eugene O’Neill’s Plays in Modern American Drama

Abstract

This paper aims to study The Desire Under the Elms and The Emperor Jones as the pictures of conflict. The dramatist, O’Neill attempts to reveal the metaphorical expressions in the selected plays. These metaphorical expressions lead to the tragedy in modern American drama. The researchers use the qualitative method, the narrative analysis as the storytelling techniques. This study uses the conceptual metaphor theory by Lakoff and Johnson (1980-1988) to justify the metaphorical expressions in the plays of O'Neill to tackle the characters, the actions and plot in the plays mentioned above.