Eugene O'Neill
Lifetime
•
Eugene O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) was an
American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His titled plays
were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of
realism earlier associated with Russian and Swedish playwright .
•
His plays were among the first to include
speeches in American vernacular and involve
characters on the fringes of society, where
they struggle to maintain their hopes and
aspirations, but slide into despair.
•
O'Neill wrote only one well-known comedy
(Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other
plays involve some degree of tragedy.
Early years
O 'neal came from an actor family in
New York city, his father is Irish. He
had been to South America and Africa,
used to work for a small gold digger,
sailor, hobo staff, etc.
After returning to the country in 1911,
he worked in his father's troupe.
He planed to major in dramatic skill in
Harvard University and started to write in
1914.
•
In 1943, his daughter married to Charles
Chaplin, but he was strongly against that
marriage. After that, he never talked to his
daughter again.
• O 'neal got Parkinson's disease in his old age.
•
2024/4/27
Desire Under the Elms
Desire Under the Elms
is a play by Eugene
O'Neill, published in
1924, and is now
considered an American
classic. Along with
Mourning Becomes
Electra, it represents
one of O'Neill's
attempts to place plot
elements and themes of
Greek tragedy in a rural
New England setting.
Main Characters
• Cabot
• Simeon
• Peter
Cabot's sons
• Eben
• Abbie (Cabot's third wife)
Synopsis
•
Cabot abandons his New England farm to his three
sons, who hate him but share his greed. Eben, the
youngest son, feels the farm is his birthright. He buys out
his half-brothers' shares of the farm with money stolen
from his father. Peter and Simeon head off to California
to seek their fortune.
•
Later, Cabot returns with a new wife, the beautiful
Abbie, who enters into an adulterous affair with Eben.
Later Abbie bears Eben's child. The neighbors openly
mock Cabot as a cuckold. Madly in love with Eben and
fearful it would become an barrier to their relationship,
Abbie kills the baby. Eben turns Abbie over to the
sheriff, but not before admitting to himself the depths
of his love for her and thus confessing his own role in the
infanticide.
Tragic pattern
• Desire for wealth
• Desire for love
• Conflicts
In this drama, every
character appearing on
the stage shows a desire
for wealth. Cabot is a
typical representative of
Puritans. Working hard
and getting rich is the
religious tradition of
Puritanism.
•
Desire for wealth
not only drove Simeon
and Peter to California
but also drove Abbie to
marry Cabot, a rather old
man.
•
•
This theme is mostly implied in
Abbie and Eben. Love changed
Abbie. But Eben didn’t understand
her sacrifice at first. This made
her desperate.
Eben didn’t
realize the love between Abbie and
himself until he had informed
against Abbie. He then decided to
share punishment with Abbie. .
•
Great conflicts are indicated
in Cabot’s personality.
Conflict between duty and
joy, that is, between working
hard and enjoying life. We
can also see conflict between
hardness and weakness from
Cabot’s words. He was hard
indeed, but he also had a side
of weakness. When he was
trying to be hard, his
weakness betrayed himself.
Symbolism
• What do “the elms” refer to?
• It has some connection with Eben’s mother.
Cabot often mentioned her. What she
represents can be the tender side of Cabot’s
character, or the tender side of human
beings, the beautiful side of the whole world.
The elms can also be symbols for everything
beautiful. They make the home beautiful, but
in this beautiful scenery, something ugly was
happening. This gives us a sharp contrast in
mind, which adds some bitterness to the
tragic elements.