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“The Mother’s Image of Salvation: Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude and A Moon for the Misbegotten.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 37.2 (2011): 185-204. Eugene O’Neill, through his research of modern man’s conflict and suffering, hoped to find the meaning of existence and salvation. The female characters in his plays have a cold recognition as to the reality and play an important role for the male characters and help them acquire salvation through awakening. Both Nina, a mythologized woman and an active, positive mother in Strange Interlude, through her Life Force, and Josie, a perfect woman god and Earth Mother in A Moon for the Misbegotten, through her pity, forgiveness, and love, lead the male characters of the former, who suffer from mother-complex, and Tyrone of the latter, who suffers from his mental anguish and conflict caused by his mother’s death, to salvation for the return of true reality. Nina and Josie, as a mother and a helper, play a decisive and important role leading the male characters to salvation beyond the tradition and the restriction of mask. Therefore, the female characters, in the long run, enable the male characters to draw hope, brightness, affirmation, victory, and delight from despair, darkness, negation, defeat, and sorrow. (Wonkwang University · Cheongam College)