In the following essay. Bogard analyzes how O 'Neill perceives "man as a prisoner in his body" and presents how that relationship is shown in The Great God Brown.

In The Great God Brown, O'Neill sees man as a prisoner in his body. His only escape is in an inner direction toward the roots of God he holds in himself. In all the world, there is no human being he can comprehend or whose comprehension enables him to unmask himself, and thus be freed of loneliness....

In The Great God Brown, however, such a union is seen to be impossible, and man is condemned to the cell of self until his death.

To the outer, hostile world, he must turn a face that will not startle by revealing the terrifying agony within him. It must be an expressionless face, bland and unchanging except as it is inevitably...