Questions

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Questions

1. Who is the American dramatist that once won the
   Nobel Prize in literature? And when did he get
   it?
2. Who are the three great dramatists regarded as
   the first generation of contemporary American
   drama?
3. Who is the author of the play Desire Under the
   Elms, and when was it published?

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Unit 18
Eugene ONeill (1888-1953)
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Content

• I. A Brief Introduction to American drama
• II. Introduction to ONeill
• A. His position in American theatre
• B. His life and writing career 1. His
  family life
• 2. Period of major works
• III. Analysis of Desire Under the Elms
• A. Main characters
• B. The story
• C. The theme

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I. A Brief Introduction to American Drama

• With the stimulus that came from the
  naturalistic, symbolic, and critical drama of
  Europe, and possibly moved by the vigorous
  stirrings in American poetry and fiction,
  American drama began the process of developing
  itself into a department of American literature
  equal in significance to both poetry and the
  novel. Experimental theatres sprang up, and the
  works of European dramatists like Ibsen,
  Strindberg, and Bernard Shaw appeared on the
  stage. In the meantime, modern American
  dramatists began to attract attention. The
  performance of Eugene ONeills Bound East for
  Cardiff (?????) in 1916 is regarded as the
  beginning of American drama.

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II. Introduction to ONeill

• A. His position in American theatre
• Eugene ONeill was one of the greatest
  playwrights in American history. Through his
  experimental and emotionally exploring dramas, he
  addressed the difficulties of human society with
  a deep psychological complexity. He is regarded
  as Father of American Theatre.

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• Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888
  November 27, 1953) His plays are among the first
  to introduce into American drama the techniques
  of realism, associated with Russian playwright
  Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen,
  and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His
  plays were among the first to include speeches in
  American vernacular (language or dialect of a
  particular country). His plays involve characters
  who inhabit the fringes of society, engaging in
  depraved behavior, where they struggle to
  maintain their hopes and aspirations but
  ultimately slide into disillusionment and
  despair. O'Neill wrote only one well-known comedy
  (Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays
  involve some degree of tragedy and personal
  pessimism.

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• B. The life and writing career of ONeill
• 1. His family life
• a. Early life
• Born in a hotel on Broadway in 1888, Eugene
  ONeill was the son of Ella Quinlan and the actor
  James ONeill. Eugene spent the first seven years
  of his life touring with his fathers theater
  company. These years introduced ONeill to the
  world of theater and the difficulties of
  maintaining artistic integrity (honesty). His
  father, once a well-known Shakespearean, had
  taken a role in a lesser play for its sizable
  salary.

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• b. First Marriage
• In 1910 ONeill fell in love with and married
  the first of three wives, Kathleen Jenkins. Soon
  after, however, ONeill left his wife for the
  adventures of traveling. When he returned he
  found Kathleen pregnant with his child. Without
  seeing the boy (Eugene ONeill, Jr.), ONeill
  shipped out again. In 1912, Kathleen filed for
  divorce and soon after, plagued by illness,
  ONeill returned to his parents home. It was
  there that he decided to become a playwright.

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• c. Second marriage and primary achievements
• ONeill spent the next five years working
  primarily on one-act plays. In 1918 he married
  Agnes Boulton, who was a writer of short novels
  and stories, and with her had two children, Shane
  and Oona. He continued to publish and produce his
  one-acts, but it was not until his play Beyond
  the Horizon (1920), that American audiences
  responded to his genius. The play won the first
  of three Pulitzer Prizes for O'Neill. Many saw in
  this early work a first step toward a more
  serious American theater. ONeills poetic
  dialogue and insightful views into the lives of
  the characters held his work apart from the less
  sober playwriting of the day.

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• d. Third Marriage
• O'Neill and Carlotta Monterey, who was an
  actress, were married in July 1929. This time, he
  lasted his marriage to his death. But after his
  death, Carlotta chose to claim that their
  marriage was not a product of a mad love affair.
  She appreciated O'Neill as an artist, she said,
  and provided him a protective environment in
  which he could work. Her husband "never loved a
  woman who walked," she said. "He loved only his
  work. But he had respect for me." However, soon
  after O'Neill's death, she privately published a
  volume of his letters, inscriptions and poetry
  expressing his passionate love for her.

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First wife Kathleen Jenkins
Third wife Carlotta Monterey
Second wife Agnes Boulton
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• 2. Period of the major works
• Between 1920 and 1943 he completed 20 long
  plays--several of them double and triple
  length--and a number of shorter ones.
• a. First period
• His most-distinguished short plays include the
  four early sea plays, Bound East for Cardiff, In
  the Zone, The Long Voyage Home, and The Moon of
  the Caribbees, which were written between 1913
  and 1917. And these plays about the sea theme are
  the products of his first writing period.

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• b. Second period
• In the second period of writing, ONeill wrote
  some experimental plays, such as The Emperor
  Jones and The Hairy Ape in which expressionism
  were used.
• O'Neill's plays were written from an intensely
  personal point of view, deriving directly from
  the scarring effects of his family's tragic
  relationships--his mother and father, who loved
  and tormented each other his older brother, who
  loved and corrupted him and died of alcoholism in
  middle age and O'Neill himself, caught and torn
  between love for and rage at all three.
• Despite (or because) of these tragedies, he
  went on to create a number of penetrating and
  insightful views into family life and struggle.
  With plays such as Desire Under the Elms (1924)
  and Morning Becomes Electra (1931), ONeill uses
  the moral and physical entanglements similar to
  Greek drama to express the complexities of family
  life.

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• c. Third period
• Throughout much of the 1930s and 1940s, ONeill
  continued in this vein working on a cycle of
  plays (nine) which would deal with lives of a New
  England family. But in his final years, ONeill
  returned to the writing of realistic plays and
  fulfilled his will of writing biography. Both The
  Iceman Cometh, a story of personal desperation in
  the lives, and Long Day's Journey into Night, a
  view into the difficult family life of his early
  years, were profound insights into many of the
  darker questions of human existence. Produced
  posthumously, these were to be his two greatest
  achievements. By the time of his death in 1953,
  ONeill was considered one of the twentieth
  centurys greatest writers.

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III. Analysis of Desire Under the Elms
Desire Under the Elms,a play produced in 1924,
enjoys high praise from most of the O'Neill
experts. Travis Bogard comments that the play
"fulfills the promise of O'Neill's early career
and is the first important tragedy to be written
in America. Virginia Floyd ranks it "first truly
American historical play" and "most naturalistic
play" The highest comment comes from John
Gassner, who writes "1n any case, nothing
comparable to this work in power derived from a
sense of tragic character and situation had been
achieved by the American theatre in the hundred
and fifty years of its history.
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A. Main Characters
Simeon (first son)
Ephraim Cabot (father)
Peter (second son)
Abbie Putnam (step-mother)
Eben (third son)
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B. The story

• Ephraim Cabot abandons his New England farm to
  his three sons, who hate him but share his greed.
  Eben, the youngest and brightest one, feels the
  farm is his birthright, as it originally belonged
  to his mother. He buys out his half-brothers'
  shares of the farm with money stolen from his
  father, and Peter and Simeon head off to
  California to seek their fortune. Later, Ephraim
  returns with a new wife, the beautiful and
  headstrong Abbie, who enters into an adulterous
  affair with Eben. Soon after, Abbie bears Eben's
  child, but lets Ephraim believe that the child is
  his, in the hopes of securing her future with the
  farm. Eben felt that his love was cheated by
  Abbie and planed to leave her. Madly in love with
  Eben and fearful it would become an obstacle to
  their relationship, Abbie kills the infant. Angry
  Eben calls the policeman, but later, he admits
  his true and deep love to Abbie, and thus
  confessing his own role in the infanticide.

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Questions

1. Why does Abbie murder the infant?
2. What is the symbol of the Elms?
3. What does the desire refer to?
4. What is the motif of the play? anwers
5. What is Puritanism? anwer

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Desire Under the Elms ??????
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Answers

• Abbie murders the infant to express her true love
  to Eben because she believes that the baby is an
  obstacle to their love.
• The symbol of the elms is desire.
• In this play, people are possessed by two kinds
  of desires desire for material wealth
  represented by gold and farm and desire for
  sexual love. It is the various desires that
  compose the basic dramatic conflicts and lead to
  the tragedy. We can see the intense controversy
  among the family members driven by the abnormal
  desires for material wealth and physical
  pleasure.
• The motif of the play originates from the ancient
  Greek tragedy. It absorbs the tragic themes of
  abnormal love, murdering infant and revenge of
  destiny. It uses the story of Euripides
  Hippolytus (?????).

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Puritanism

• A Puritan of 16th and 17th century England was
  an associate of any number of religious groups
  advocating for more "purity" of worship and
  doctrine, as well as personal and group piety .
• Puritanism in New England (Massachusetts,
  Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine and
  Rhode Island) made a great influence on American
  culture. The Puritans hoped to build "a city upon
  hill"an ideal community. Since that time,
  Americans have viewed their country as a great
  experiment, a worthy model for other nations. New
  England also established another American
  traditiona strain of often intolerant moralism.
  The Puritans believed that government should
  enforce God's morality. They strictly punished
  drunks, adulterers, violators of the Sabbath(???)
  and other religious believers different from
  themselves. The American values such as
  individualism, hard work, and respect of
  education owe very much to the Puritan beliefs.