O’Neill and the Quest For a Personal Truth

The assignment I had given in class last week should be written and posted by Monday, March 24. Here it is again:

As a blog entry, I would like you to identify the attribute of modernism that you believe is most evident in Desire Under the Elms. Explain how that attribute contributes to the play’s effectiveness. Also, identify and discuss any other major attributes evident in this play. You may find that there is more than one attribute that is significantly evident.

Now, you’ve spent several days with Eugene O’Neill up close and personal. All of you, at this point, have a solid understanding of the demons tormenting O’Neill as he attempted to navigate his life, to find meaning in his despair and anger, and to confront the tyranny of his memory. Let’s think about this….

Desire Under the Elms is one of many plays written during O’Neill’s Triumvirate period. There is much to plumb in Elms, both from a modernist perspective and through O’Neill’s thematic lens.

Here are some things to consider. From Contour In Time by Travis Bogard:

Now experiment serves realism and also, unobtrusively, opens the play to fuller perspectives. The characteristic dramatis personae—poetic hero, Strindbergian woman, materialistic brother, aloof and difficult father—are present, but they are drawn without the self-consciousness that derives from excessive autobiographical concern.* The typical themes—the yearning for a lost mother, for a home, for identification with a life force to be found in nature, and for the discovery of a god in marriage—are rooted, at last, in a credible fiction and characterizations. In all respects, Desire Under the Elms fulfills the promise of O’Neill’s early career and is the first important tragedy to be written in America.

Think about the “typical themes” referenced here: maternal loss, sense of home, purpose for living, and the affirmation of marriage. What resonates here for you in terms of this play and O’Neill’s life?

Think about Eben’s character, who he reminds you of, and how ultimately tragic his quest for solace and love is:

Eben’s sensitivity is the core of the play’s poetic extension beyond simple realism. His sensibility creates a perspective within the action that permits a view of all the characters sub species aeternitatis, as images of more than particular, external truths. Eben’s need, which generates his habits of thought, enlarges the meaning of the life on the farm, giving the events the qualities of a symbolic action, and providing a context wherein may be understood general and universal meanings. Through Eben, for instance, the beauty of the farm is made real, and through his awareness, Abbie is linked with that beauty. He causes Ephraim to become aware of the natural forces that shape his life and enables him to define the nature of the hard and easy Gods, and to clarify the influences that are concentrated in the sinister elms. Through Eben’s touch of poetry, the farm is transformed, and what transpires there is heightened as is the action of great poetic drama.

Be sure to read Bogard’s entire exploration of Desire. Does it make sense? Based on your reading of the play and your understanding of O’Neill, does it make sense? Write about it.

Some other helpful links:

• An Electronic Eugene O’Neill Archive
  
• Eugene O’Neill Foundation, Tao House
  
• Project Gutenberg Australia: Desire Under The Elms (Online Text)