Eugene O’Neill (1888 - 1953 )
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General Introduction:
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Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill (October 16, 1888 - November 27,
1953) was an American playwright best known for explorations
into the darker aspects of the human condition. Frequently, his
plays show people on the outer edges of society or begin in a
situation of ennui and despair and move dramatically
downwards to a grim finish.
While he was born in a New York City hotel, his family and his
early life were intimately connected to New London,
Connecticut. They had owned property in New London since
before his birth, and he would have summered there with them
virtually from his first memory until they made it the family
home.
From boarding school he entered Princeton in 1906 but
remained there only a year. During the next few years he
traveled widely and held a variety of jobs, acquiring experience
that familiarized him with the life of sailors, stevedores, and the
outcasts who populate many of his plays.
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O’Neill was stricken with tuberculosis in 1912 and spent six
months in a sanatorium, where he decided to become a
playwright. In the next two years he wrote 13 plays.
Connecticut College there maintains a major O'Neill archive, and
the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, with its major facilities there
and in the adjacent town of Waterford, fosters the development of
new plays under the aegis of his name.
In 1929 he moved to the Loire Valley in France where he lived in
the Chateau du Plessis in St. Antoine-du-Rocher, Indre et Loire.
He received the Pulitzer Prize four times and received the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1936 for the power, honesty and deep-felt
emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original
concept of tragedy, making him the first US dramatist to do so.
He was married three times. His daughter Oona married Charlie
Chaplin on June 16, 1943. Oona was 17; Chaplin was 54. Despite
the tremendous gap in their ages, the marriage was a happy one,
producing eight children.
9) O’Neill’s final years were spent estranged from much of
the literary community and his family. Though he was
awarded the Nobel Prize in 1936, most of his later
works were not produced until after his death. His
failing health did not prevent him, however, from
writing two of the greatest works the American stage
has ever seen. Both "The Iceman Cometh", a story of
personal desperation in the lives a handful of barflys,
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.
10) In 1953 he died and was buried in Forest Hills
Cemetery in Boston
II. His Major Works:
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Desire Under the Elms (1924)
Mourning Becomes Electra (1931)
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The Iceman Cometh (1946)
1920’s Pulitzer Prize for Beyond the Horizon
1921’s Pulitzer Prize for Anna Christie
1928’s Pulitzer Prize for Strange Interlude
1956’s fourth Pulitzer Prize posthumously for his
autobiographical, and to an extent, darkest play and his
apex, Long Day's Journey into Night
III. His masterpiece: Long Day's
Journey into Night
1. About the play:
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Long Day's Journey into Night was never performed during
O'Neill's lifetime because this deeply autobiographical play
would have been too painful to produce during O'Neill's life.
On his twelfth wedding anniversary with his wife Carlotta,
O'Neill gave her the script of the play as a gift.
The play was first performed in 1956, three years after
O'Neill's death. It won a Pulitzer Prize and has often been
hailed as O'Neill's greatest play.
Certainly, the play is invaluable for scholars seeking to
understand O'Neill's work; It reveals the most formative forces
of O'Neill's life, as well as the values and virtues he valued
most. The play also represents an established artist making
peace with his troubled past, forgiving and understanding his
family and himself.
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Short summary of the play:
The play is set in the summer home of the Tyrone family,
August 1912. The action begins in the morning, just after
breakfast. We learn as the first act unravels that Mary has
returned to her family recently after receiving treatment in a
sanatorium for morphine addiction. Edmund, meanwhile, has in
recent weeks begun to cough very violently, and we learn later
on in the play that, as Tyrone and Jamie suspect, he has
tuberculosis. Throughout the course of the play, we slowly find
out that Mary is still addicted to morphine, much to the
disappointment of her family members.
The gradual revelation of these two medical disasters makes up
most of the play's plot. In between these discoveries, however,
the family constantly revisits old fights and opens old wounds
left by the past, which the family members are never unable to
forget.
3) Tyrone, for example, is constantly blamed for his own
stinginess, which may have led to Mary's morphine
addiction when he refused to pay for a good doctor to
treat the pain caused by childbirth. Mary, on the other
hand, is never able to let go of the past or admit to the
painful truth of the present, the truth that she is
addicted to morphine and her youngest son has
tuberculosis. They all argue over Jamie and Edmund's
failure to become successes as their father had always
hoped they would become. As the day wears on, the
men drink more and more, until they are on the verge
of passing out in Act IV.
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Most of the plot of the play is repetitious, just as the cycle of
an alcoholic is repetitious. The above arguments occur
numerous times throughout the four acts and five scenes.
All acts are set in the living room, and all scenes but the last
occur either just before or just after a meal. Act II, Scene i is
set before lunch; scene ii after lunch; and Act III before
dinner. Each act focuses on interplay between two specific
characters: Act I features Mary and Tyrone; Act II Tyrone
and Jamie, and Edmund and Mary; Act III Mary and Jamie;
Act IV Tyrone and Edmund, and Edmund and Jamie.
The repetitious plot also helps develop the notion that this
day is not remarkable in many ways. Instead, it is one in a
long string of similar days for the Tyrones, filled with
bitterness, fighting, and an underlying love.
3. Major Themes
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The Past, as refuge and burden:
The Past, along with forgiveness, is one of two dominant themes
in the play. At different parts, the Past plays different roles. On
one hand the past is a burden. Mary speaks with a terrible
fatalism, claiming that nothing they are can be helped: past sins
and mistakes have fixed their present and future irrevocably. The
past also takes the form of old hurts that have gone unforgiven.
We hear the same arguments again and again in this play, as the
Tyrone's dredge up the same old grievances. Letting go is
impossible, and so the Tyrones are stuck.
The past also becomes a refuge, but not in a positive way. Mary
uses an idealized recreation of her girlhood as escapist fantasy. As
she sinks further and further into the fog of morphine, she relives
her childhood at the Catholic girls' school. The past is used to
escape dealing with the present.
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Forgiveness: Forgiveness is the other pivotal theme of the play.
Although old pains cannot be forgotten and the Tyrones are, in a
way, a doomed family, Edmund is able to make peace with his
past and move on to what we know will be a brilliant career. His
ability to do so is based in part on his capacity for forgiveness
and understanding. The four Tyrones are deeply, disturbingly
human. They have their jealousies and hatreds; they also remain a
family, with all the normal bonds of love, however troubled, that
being a family entails. Unlike his brother, Edmund is able to
forgive and understand all of the Tyrones, including himself.
Breakdown of communication: Breakdown of communication
is a very apparent theme. We are forced to listen to the same
arguments again and again because nothing ever gets resolved.
The Tyrones fight, but often hide the most important feelings.
There is a deep tendency towards denial in the family. Edmund
tries to deny that his mother has returned to morphine. Mary
denies Edmund's consumption. Often, avoidance is the strategy
for dealing with problems.
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Religion: Although Tyrone professes to keep his faith, his two
sons have long since abandoned the Catholic religion. Tyrone's
religion spills over into his taste in art. He considers Edmund's
favorite writers to be morbid and degenerate. Mary's loss of
faith also recurs as an issue. Although she still believes, she
thinks she has fallen so far from God that she no longer has the
right to pray.
Drug and alcohol abuse: Mary's morphine addiction is
balanced by the men's alcoholism. Although the morphine is
perhaps a more destructive drug, alcohol does its fair share of
damage to the Tyrone men. It is Tyrone's great vice, and it has
contributed to Mary's unhappiness. Drunkenness has been
Jamie's response to life, and it is part of why he has failed so
miserably. And Edmund's alcohol use has probably contributed
to ruining his health.
6) Isolation: Although the four Tyrones live under the
same roof this summer, there is a deep sense of isolation.
Family meals, a central activity of family bonding, are
absent from the play. Lunch happens between acts, and
dinner falls apart as everyone in the family goes his
separate way. Mary's isolation is particularly acute. She
is isolated by her gender, as the only woman of the
family, and by her morphine addiction, which pushes
her farther and farther from reality.