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Complete Plays #2
Complete Plays, 1920–1931
The Library of America’s collection of Eugene O’Neill’s plays “displays O’Neill more thoroughly than any playhouse ever could,” according to Time magazine. This volume, the second of three, contains 13 plays written between 1920 and 1931, years in which O’Neill achieved his greatest popularity while experimenting with a wide variety of subjects and styles.
In Diff’rent, The First Man, and Welded, egotistical characters have their illusions about love shaken by the force of other people’s desires. All God’s Chillun Got Wings depicts the web of racial hatreds and spiritual longings that surround the marriage of a black man and a white woman.
The Fountain tells of Ponce de Leon’s search for the fountain of youth. Marco Millions satirizes American materialism by portraying Marco Polo as a hustling businessman blind to the riches of Eastern culture. Lazarus Laughed shows its Biblical hero preaching love, laughter, and the defeat of death.
The stoker Yank in The Hairy Ape, the architect Dion Anthony in The Great God Brown, and the minister’s son Reuben Light in Dynamo all try to find a place for themselves in an increasingly soulless and mechanistic world. Yank believes that he “belongs” in his stokehold until a terrified heiress calls him a “filthy beast.” His rage turns to despair as he encounters a brutally indifferent society onshore. The Great God Brown uses masks to depict the divided souls of its hero, his wife, and his alter ego, the successful businessman William Brown. Betrayed by his mother, Reuben Light forsakes the God of his father for the new electrical god of the dynamo but finds no escape from the sexual conflicts that O’Neill characteristically intertwines with his hero’s religious doubts.
Strange Interlude follows its heroine Nina Leeds through nine acts and 25 years of passionate and painful involvement with three men. Inspired by contemporary psychology, the novels of James Joyce, and the soliloquies of the Elizabethan theater, O’Neill uses spoken asides to reveal the shifting flow of his character’s inner thoughts. His most commercially successful play, it won him his third Pulitzer Prize.
Ephraim Cabot, the patriarchal farmer in Desire Under the Elms, believes in a God as hard as the stony ground he works. He takes as his third wife sensual Abbie Putnam, who covets both his land and his resentful son Eben, unleashing passions that move with stark inexorability toward their fulfillment. In Mourning Becomes Electra, murderous lusts and hatreds wreak havoc upon the proud Mannon family, leaving the survivors pursued not by the avenging Furies of Greek myth but by their own scourging consciences. Searching desperately for peace, they repeatedly confront the temptation to choose oblivion that will haunt many of O’Neill’s last plays.
In Diff’rent, The First Man, and Welded, egotistical characters have their illusions about love shaken by the force of other people’s desires. All God’s Chillun Got Wings depicts the web of racial hatreds and spiritual longings that surround the marriage of a black man and a white woman.
The Fountain tells of Ponce de Leon’s search for the fountain of youth. Marco Millions satirizes American materialism by portraying Marco Polo as a hustling businessman blind to the riches of Eastern culture. Lazarus Laughed shows its Biblical hero preaching love, laughter, and the defeat of death.
The stoker Yank in The Hairy Ape, the architect Dion Anthony in The Great God Brown, and the minister’s son Reuben Light in Dynamo all try to find a place for themselves in an increasingly soulless and mechanistic world. Yank believes that he “belongs” in his stokehold until a terrified heiress calls him a “filthy beast.” His rage turns to despair as he encounters a brutally indifferent society onshore. The Great God Brown uses masks to depict the divided souls of its hero, his wife, and his alter ego, the successful businessman William Brown. Betrayed by his mother, Reuben Light forsakes the God of his father for the new electrical god of the dynamo but finds no escape from the sexual conflicts that O’Neill characteristically intertwines with his hero’s religious doubts.
Strange Interlude follows its heroine Nina Leeds through nine acts and 25 years of passionate and painful involvement with three men. Inspired by contemporary psychology, the novels of James Joyce, and the soliloquies of the Elizabethan theater, O’Neill uses spoken asides to reveal the shifting flow of his character’s inner thoughts. His most commercially successful play, it won him his third Pulitzer Prize.
Ephraim Cabot, the patriarchal farmer in Desire Under the Elms, believes in a God as hard as the stony ground he works. He takes as his third wife sensual Abbie Putnam, who covets both his land and his resentful son Eben, unleashing passions that move with stark inexorability toward their fulfillment. In Mourning Becomes Electra, murderous lusts and hatreds wreak havoc upon the proud Mannon family, leaving the survivors pursued not by the avenging Furies of Greek myth but by their own scourging consciences. Searching desperately for peace, they repeatedly confront the temptation to choose oblivion that will haunt many of O’Neill’s last plays.
1092 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1988
10 people are currently reading
156 people want to read
About the author
Eugene O'Neill
530 books1,242 followersAmerican playwright Eugene Gladstone O'Neill authored
Mourning Becomes Electra
in 1931 among his works; he won the Nobel Prize of 1936 for literature, and people awarded him his fourth Pulitzer Prize for
Long Day's Journey into Night
, produced in 1956.
He won his Nobel Prize "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism that Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg pioneered to Americans and first used true American vernacular in his speeches.
His plays involve characters, who, engaging in depraved behavior, inhabit the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote Ah, Wilderness! , his only comedy: all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
He won his Nobel Prize "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism that Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg pioneered to Americans and first used true American vernacular in his speeches.
His plays involve characters, who, engaging in depraved behavior, inhabit the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote Ah, Wilderness! , his only comedy: all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
August 3, 2024
No sé porque los gringos le dan bajas calificaciones a O’Neill cuando es buenísimo. Sus obras están tan bien detalladas y delineadas que bien podrían ser cuentos u novelas cortas. En español es difícil encontrar traducciones de su trabajo - a excepción de Largo Viaje Hacia la Noche, Hughie y el Vendedor de Hielo (todas corresponden a su última etapa)-, así que recomiendo las ediciones de Library of America quienes han publicado toda la obra de O’Neill en tres volúmenes. Este es el segundo volumen que retoma todas sus obras escritas entre 1920 a 1931; muchas de las obras se caracterizan por un distanciamiento del realismo de su primera etapa para abrazar el simbolismo, expresionismo y también las teorías psicoanalíticas de Freud y Jung. Son 13 obras y así me parecen de menos a más (todas son buenas, simplemente me gustaron unas más que otras):
-Marco Millions: Lo que pudiera considerarse un panegírico a la figura de Marco Polo, en su lugar, revela una reflexión irónica sobre la avaricia y el materialismo excesivo contrapuesto contra lo espiritual.
-The First Man: Creo, la obra más de «telenovela» de todo el conjunto. Una obra sobre las tensiones psicosexuales de pareja; la dimensión íntima/privada enfrentada a una sociedad jerarquizada con valores arcaicos materialistas y prejuicios.
-Dynamo: Eugene considero la obra como un fracaso. El primer acto es francamente risorio por sus excesos dramáticos, pero entendible para la época. Los dos otros actos son mejores. O’Neill reflexiona sobre el aceleramiento hacia un mundo cada vez más industrializado y mecánico; si Dios está muerto, ¿quién es ahora tu Dios? se pregunta el autor ante la crisis en el sistema de creencias derivado de este nuevo mundo.
-Welded: Una obra sobre la relación de amor tortuoso entre artista y musa. Tiene un gran simbolismo al final.
-The Fountain: O’Niell retoma la figura del explorador y conquistador Juan Ponce de León durante su arrogante juventud y su búsqueda de la mítica Fuente de la Juventud en su senectud. Una obra sobre el tiempo, la avaricia, el fanatismo, la vejez física, moral y sexual, y, al final, la redención.
-Diff’rent: La obra que abre el libro y pone el tono trágico que veremos constantemente en todo el volumen. Un amor juvenil truena por rumores y estándares exageradamente moralinos: años después el amor perdura pero acabará de la forma más dolorosa. Tiene a uno de los villanos más detestables de la toda las obra de O’Neill.
-Desire Under the Elms: Una de sus obras más famosas donde O’Neill retoma el mito trágico griego de Fedra y lo recontextualiza en el Estados Unidos rural. Amor y deseo prohibido que se enreda con el hambre de riqueza y una relación de odio entre padre-hijo. Bien podría ser una novela.
-All God’s Chillun Got Wings: De las obras más controversiales de Eugene. O’Neill era bastante progresista en lo que se refiere a los derechos entre blancos y negros y aquí expone el racismo en su forma más brutal y pulverizante. La relación entre hombre negro y mujer blanco pone sobre la palestra la venosa hiel del racismo que lleva a la locura e impide la felicidad. Eugene también exhibe la discriminación no como algo natural sino como algo que envenena la sociedad desde lo cultural.
-Lazaro Laughed: De las obras más ambiciosas de O’Neill donde lleva hasta los límites sus exploraciones simbólicas y expresionistas. Tan ambiciosa que muy pocas veces ha podido ser montada tal y como fue concebida. Situada poco después de la resurrección de Lázaro, e incluyendo como protagonistas a Tiberio, Calígula, Pompeya y, obviamente, al mismo Lázaro. Obra bastante metafísica donde se pregunta el sentido de la vida, sus traumas, la búsqueda materialista del hombre por convertirse en Dios, cuál es la naturaleza de Dios y qué nos depara en lo que llamamos «más allá».
-The Hairy Ape: Gran obra sobre el capitalismo, la industrialización, la marginación y la naturaleza del hombre dentro de esa marginalidad; también cuestiona la incapacidad del socialismo frente a la máquina capitalista. Qué significa no ser visto por la sociedad y el triste y brutal papel que ejerce el hombre dentro de esta triste obra que hemos creado para nosotros y que le llamamos modernidad.
-Strange Interlude: Otra obra ambiciosa. Bien podría ser novela (es la más larga del volumen y se extiende por casi 200 hojas). Los montajes normalmente suelen recortar la obra puesto que en su versión íntegra duraría, al menos, 6 horas. Probablemente de los personajes más complejos que haya ideado O’Neill y donde podemos ver una sucesión de traumas y psicopatías que muestran el interés de Eugene por los escritos de Freud y Jung. También habla sobre el tiempo y como ponderamos el presente frente al pasado y futuro.
-Mourning Becomes Electra: Otra gran obra donde O’Neill retoma la épica caída de los Atreídas de la mitología griega y la sitúa durante el fin de la Guerra Civil Estadounidense. Dividida en tres partes (Bienvenida, Los Cazados y Los Malditos), como la Orestíada de Esquilo, presenta las relaciones de venganza, odio, amor, incesto y autodestrucción que llevan al fin de la mítica casa Mannon. Gran, gran obra.
-The Great God Brown: Uso de máscaras y simbolismo para ocultar la identidad, los deseos y el resentimiento. Las máscaras se cambian y se quitan rápidamente tanto que los protagonistas terminan perdiéndose a ellos mismos y sus identidades y lo único que persiste de ellos es una vaga idea de lo que fueron, y que a su vez, probablemente fuera sólo una máscara y no el rostro real.
-Marco Millions: Lo que pudiera considerarse un panegírico a la figura de Marco Polo, en su lugar, revela una reflexión irónica sobre la avaricia y el materialismo excesivo contrapuesto contra lo espiritual.
-The First Man: Creo, la obra más de «telenovela» de todo el conjunto. Una obra sobre las tensiones psicosexuales de pareja; la dimensión íntima/privada enfrentada a una sociedad jerarquizada con valores arcaicos materialistas y prejuicios.
-Dynamo: Eugene considero la obra como un fracaso. El primer acto es francamente risorio por sus excesos dramáticos, pero entendible para la época. Los dos otros actos son mejores. O’Neill reflexiona sobre el aceleramiento hacia un mundo cada vez más industrializado y mecánico; si Dios está muerto, ¿quién es ahora tu Dios? se pregunta el autor ante la crisis en el sistema de creencias derivado de este nuevo mundo.
-Welded: Una obra sobre la relación de amor tortuoso entre artista y musa. Tiene un gran simbolismo al final.
-The Fountain: O’Niell retoma la figura del explorador y conquistador Juan Ponce de León durante su arrogante juventud y su búsqueda de la mítica Fuente de la Juventud en su senectud. Una obra sobre el tiempo, la avaricia, el fanatismo, la vejez física, moral y sexual, y, al final, la redención.
-Diff’rent: La obra que abre el libro y pone el tono trágico que veremos constantemente en todo el volumen. Un amor juvenil truena por rumores y estándares exageradamente moralinos: años después el amor perdura pero acabará de la forma más dolorosa. Tiene a uno de los villanos más detestables de la toda las obra de O’Neill.
-Desire Under the Elms: Una de sus obras más famosas donde O’Neill retoma el mito trágico griego de Fedra y lo recontextualiza en el Estados Unidos rural. Amor y deseo prohibido que se enreda con el hambre de riqueza y una relación de odio entre padre-hijo. Bien podría ser una novela.
-All God’s Chillun Got Wings: De las obras más controversiales de Eugene. O’Neill era bastante progresista en lo que se refiere a los derechos entre blancos y negros y aquí expone el racismo en su forma más brutal y pulverizante. La relación entre hombre negro y mujer blanco pone sobre la palestra la venosa hiel del racismo que lleva a la locura e impide la felicidad. Eugene también exhibe la discriminación no como algo natural sino como algo que envenena la sociedad desde lo cultural.
-Lazaro Laughed: De las obras más ambiciosas de O’Neill donde lleva hasta los límites sus exploraciones simbólicas y expresionistas. Tan ambiciosa que muy pocas veces ha podido ser montada tal y como fue concebida. Situada poco después de la resurrección de Lázaro, e incluyendo como protagonistas a Tiberio, Calígula, Pompeya y, obviamente, al mismo Lázaro. Obra bastante metafísica donde se pregunta el sentido de la vida, sus traumas, la búsqueda materialista del hombre por convertirse en Dios, cuál es la naturaleza de Dios y qué nos depara en lo que llamamos «más allá».
-The Hairy Ape: Gran obra sobre el capitalismo, la industrialización, la marginación y la naturaleza del hombre dentro de esa marginalidad; también cuestiona la incapacidad del socialismo frente a la máquina capitalista. Qué significa no ser visto por la sociedad y el triste y brutal papel que ejerce el hombre dentro de esta triste obra que hemos creado para nosotros y que le llamamos modernidad.
-Strange Interlude: Otra obra ambiciosa. Bien podría ser novela (es la más larga del volumen y se extiende por casi 200 hojas). Los montajes normalmente suelen recortar la obra puesto que en su versión íntegra duraría, al menos, 6 horas. Probablemente de los personajes más complejos que haya ideado O’Neill y donde podemos ver una sucesión de traumas y psicopatías que muestran el interés de Eugene por los escritos de Freud y Jung. También habla sobre el tiempo y como ponderamos el presente frente al pasado y futuro.
-Mourning Becomes Electra: Otra gran obra donde O’Neill retoma la épica caída de los Atreídas de la mitología griega y la sitúa durante el fin de la Guerra Civil Estadounidense. Dividida en tres partes (Bienvenida, Los Cazados y Los Malditos), como la Orestíada de Esquilo, presenta las relaciones de venganza, odio, amor, incesto y autodestrucción que llevan al fin de la mítica casa Mannon. Gran, gran obra.
-The Great God Brown: Uso de máscaras y simbolismo para ocultar la identidad, los deseos y el resentimiento. Las máscaras se cambian y se quitan rápidamente tanto que los protagonistas terminan perdiéndose a ellos mismos y sus identidades y lo único que persiste de ellos es una vaga idea de lo que fueron, y que a su vez, probablemente fuera sólo una máscara y no el rostro real.
June 9, 2017
All the plays here were good, most were very good, and “Desire Under the Elms”, “Strange Interlude” and “Mourning Becomes Electra” were all three fantastic. By this point in his career O’Neill was producing some amazingly original theater.
April 30, 2024
Read only "The Great God Brown," pp. 469-535. An experimental, avant garde play of O'Neill's, first staged in 1926. As the blurb on the dust jacket states, the play "uses masks to depict the divided souls of its hero, his wife, and his alter ego, the successful businessman William Brown."
March 25, 2025
Read:
All God’s Chillun Got Wings
Mourning Becomes Electra
The Iceman Cometh
The Hairy Ape
Desire under the Elms
All God’s Chillun Got Wings
Mourning Becomes Electra
The Iceman Cometh
The Hairy Ape
Desire under the Elms
February 26, 2020
I don’t think I can point to any single play of O’Neill’s that I really admire. The Hairy Ape, The Emperor Jones and Strange Interlude are very interesting experiments and extensions of the theatrical arts, but they don’t wow me. The Ice Man Cometh is just too dark. I guess Long Day’s Journey into Night is his best work overall.
But I admire the experimentation, and the firmly American themes of his plays. All American dramatists must come to some terms with O’Neill (as American poets must come to terms with Whitman). I get a sense that he was trying to prove American drama could be as forward thinking as European drama, and I wonder if he sometimes sacrificed the good for the revolutionary.
The Hairy Ape **** – O’Neil does a wonderful job creating a claustrophobic mood. And in this closed environment are characters that move, that breathe and surprise. Yank is probably the least interesting character in the play. Mildred and the Aunt are excellently drawn, as are the men in the stokehole with Yank, particularly Paddy and Long.
The play is largely a monologue by Yank and at times it can move slowly, and the ending seems predictable. But it is an exquisite work of mood and emotion.
It’s interesting to note that Yank does not turn toward Fascism or racism to explain his condition and place in society, as is commonly the outlet. O’Neil seemed to miss those key human motivations.
Strange Interlude *** – This play is probably most famous for its use of asides, creating a kind of dramatic “stream of consciousness.” In the excerpts I’ve seen online, this technique works better than I thought it would. It gives it a rather Shakespearean feel, which is not something you can say about O’Neill.
The story, though. Ugh. Its like something pulled out of a soap opera. A woman’s lover is killed in WWI so she decides the appropriate thing to do is to have indiscriminate sex with wounded war veterans. Of course. Then the play delves into arranged marriages, genetic madness, abortions, affairs, secrets, strokes, and more marriages, etc. And there’s a little too much – okay, a lot too much – Freudian psychology. The whole Oedipal/incest thing gets a little thick.
All that said, the technique is actually the cynosure of the play. And it seems to work surprisingly well on stage. The plays is excessively long – nine hours I think I read – so I don’t know if it has ever been shown in it’s whole. I imagine the asides are often the first things cut.
If you can get past the soap opera plot and Freudian depths, this is an interesting work. (04/19)
Mourning Becomes Electra – O’Neil (9/10)
Great God Brown – O’Neil (7/10)
But I admire the experimentation, and the firmly American themes of his plays. All American dramatists must come to some terms with O’Neill (as American poets must come to terms with Whitman). I get a sense that he was trying to prove American drama could be as forward thinking as European drama, and I wonder if he sometimes sacrificed the good for the revolutionary.
The Hairy Ape **** – O’Neil does a wonderful job creating a claustrophobic mood. And in this closed environment are characters that move, that breathe and surprise. Yank is probably the least interesting character in the play. Mildred and the Aunt are excellently drawn, as are the men in the stokehole with Yank, particularly Paddy and Long.
The play is largely a monologue by Yank and at times it can move slowly, and the ending seems predictable. But it is an exquisite work of mood and emotion.
It’s interesting to note that Yank does not turn toward Fascism or racism to explain his condition and place in society, as is commonly the outlet. O’Neil seemed to miss those key human motivations.
Strange Interlude *** – This play is probably most famous for its use of asides, creating a kind of dramatic “stream of consciousness.” In the excerpts I’ve seen online, this technique works better than I thought it would. It gives it a rather Shakespearean feel, which is not something you can say about O’Neill.
The story, though. Ugh. Its like something pulled out of a soap opera. A woman’s lover is killed in WWI so she decides the appropriate thing to do is to have indiscriminate sex with wounded war veterans. Of course. Then the play delves into arranged marriages, genetic madness, abortions, affairs, secrets, strokes, and more marriages, etc. And there’s a little too much – okay, a lot too much – Freudian psychology. The whole Oedipal/incest thing gets a little thick.
All that said, the technique is actually the cynosure of the play. And it seems to work surprisingly well on stage. The plays is excessively long – nine hours I think I read – so I don’t know if it has ever been shown in it’s whole. I imagine the asides are often the first things cut.
If you can get past the soap opera plot and Freudian depths, this is an interesting work. (04/19)
Mourning Becomes Electra – O’Neil (9/10)
Great God Brown – O’Neil (7/10)
April 13, 2012
This is the second volume of three total of the Library of America's O'Neill series. The first volume consisted of one-acts and apprentice works where O'Neill was really learning his craft. This volume is where he has mastered the basics of play writing and is really experimenting. The modernism of the twenties really took hold with O'Neill as he plays with psychological stream-of-consciousness, really overt symbolism, and the fusion of Greek tragedy with American plots.
These experiments are fascinating ("Strange Interlude", "Lazarus Laughed", "Desire Under the Elms") but they are deeply flawed in my opinion. The last play in the collection, "Mourning Becomes Electra" is the culmination of O'Neill's experiments, a true masterpiece. He tones down the symbolism, keeps the good parts of Greek tragedy and has well rounded characters in a great story.
I'm glad I read the plays leading up to "Electra" as it gave me a much deeper appreciation of his achievement. It is like listening to Mozart. Yes, Mozart is a genius, but wait until you hear his contemporaries. They essentially do the same thing as Wolfgang, as Wolfie was not a trailblazer like Beethoven, but they write bars and bars and bars of boring music, while every bar of Mozart just sparkles and keeps your attention. For me this is like "Electra" after O'Neill's experiments. I'm looking forward to reading the next volume of O'Neill's plays now that he is writing like a master!
These experiments are fascinating ("Strange Interlude", "Lazarus Laughed", "Desire Under the Elms") but they are deeply flawed in my opinion. The last play in the collection, "Mourning Becomes Electra" is the culmination of O'Neill's experiments, a true masterpiece. He tones down the symbolism, keeps the good parts of Greek tragedy and has well rounded characters in a great story.
I'm glad I read the plays leading up to "Electra" as it gave me a much deeper appreciation of his achievement. It is like listening to Mozart. Yes, Mozart is a genius, but wait until you hear his contemporaries. They essentially do the same thing as Wolfgang, as Wolfie was not a trailblazer like Beethoven, but they write bars and bars and bars of boring music, while every bar of Mozart just sparkles and keeps your attention. For me this is like "Electra" after O'Neill's experiments. I'm looking forward to reading the next volume of O'Neill's plays now that he is writing like a master!
March 30, 2015
This is the second of three volumes of Eugene O'Neill's plays I have now made my way through. Only the third volume to go.
As with the first volume, the plays continued to show development, in this volume from 1920 with "Caleb" and "The First Man" through to what I would consider to be the first of O'Neill's classics, "Mourning Becomes Electra" in 1930. Although there is an uneven development from play to play, there is a definite movement from generally competent plays, although some bombs too, to self-conscious genius. The over all theme, as in the first volume, continues to be our inability to overcome some overriding fate in our lives.
"Mourning Becomes Electra", loosely based on "Oresteia" by Aiskhylos, continues with the theme. Here the characters are well developed as they move inexorably towards their family fate. The central character, Lavinia (Electra), struggles relentlessly to avoid the family curse, only to find each move on her part takes her ever closer to her fate. What is most impressive for me is that, as this inevitable fate unfolds, I find myself unable to predict the ending. Exactly what will happen remains uncertain until it is upon the reader. I should love to see it performed.
As with the first volume, the plays continued to show development, in this volume from 1920 with "Caleb" and "The First Man" through to what I would consider to be the first of O'Neill's classics, "Mourning Becomes Electra" in 1930. Although there is an uneven development from play to play, there is a definite movement from generally competent plays, although some bombs too, to self-conscious genius. The over all theme, as in the first volume, continues to be our inability to overcome some overriding fate in our lives.
"Mourning Becomes Electra", loosely based on "Oresteia" by Aiskhylos, continues with the theme. Here the characters are well developed as they move inexorably towards their family fate. The central character, Lavinia (Electra), struggles relentlessly to avoid the family curse, only to find each move on her part takes her ever closer to her fate. What is most impressive for me is that, as this inevitable fate unfolds, I find myself unable to predict the ending. Exactly what will happen remains uncertain until it is upon the reader. I should love to see it performed.
September 11, 2009
I love O'Neill. My favorite of his plays by far - The Iceman Cometh - a bunch of burnt out men waiting for someone to save them from themselves. When the play is over, every character has been permanently psychically destroyed until there is nothing left to do but drink until death. The movie with Jason Robards is outstanding. After seeing it with a friend - who not long ago went off the deep end and became a raving reactionary - he commented `That was SO depressing - I feel great'. Anyhow, O'Neill knew how to touch the pathos in life, broken dreams, broken relationship, people who can't seem to find each other or even if they care for each other, spend their lives half loving, half torturing one another. I do not think that `this is how life is'...but do think that this is how life is for many people. His other plays are just as good. Especially good reading for young people who have not yet developed their own built-in-shit detectors.
July 1, 2025
Strange Interlude -finished 6/22/02
Mourning Becomes Electra -finished 6/24/02
Diff'rent, The First Man, The Hairy Ape, The Fountain, Welded, All God's Chillun Got Wings - finished 02/23/24
Desire Under the Elms, Marco Millions, The Great God Brown, Lazarus Laughed - finished 06/30/25
Mourning Becomes Electra -finished 6/24/02
Diff'rent, The First Man, The Hairy Ape, The Fountain, Welded, All God's Chillun Got Wings - finished 02/23/24
Desire Under the Elms, Marco Millions, The Great God Brown, Lazarus Laughed - finished 06/30/25
June 1, 2008
"The First Man"
Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg
January 23, 2013
Powerful drama here. Love the quality and feel of The Library of America editions.
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