Thirst; And Other One Act Plays

by Eugene O'Neill

"Eugene O'Neill has been a totally white spot on my personal map of literature so far. I knew that he had a Nobel prize in 1936, but that had never, so far, motivated me to find out more about him.
I chose the LoA edition of his plays for my first encounter.
I found that EON spent some time at sea, which puts him in a respected neighborhood with Melville and Conrad. He grew up in a stage family, his father being an itinerant actor, an Irish immigrant traveling the US.
His father paid for the publication of EON's first book, a collection of 5 one-act plays. All of them are fairly sensationalist. None of them played any role in its author's later fame. The plays were written in 1913/14. Two of them were staged. Three are about shipwrecks, 2 about jealousy and revenge in love triangles.

The Web: consumption, domestic violence, jealousy, heroism, and murder in the underworld. A fugitive robber is the hero, a pimp the villain, and a sick prostitute the victim of bad police work.

Thirst: two men and a woman on a raft on a tropical ocean after a shipwreck. Sharks circle the raft. Sun burns down. Water has run out. No ship or island in sight.
The play was staged in Provincetown with Louise Bryant. I wonder how the production handled the constant movement of the raft in the swell, which is quite important to the writer.

Recklessness: young wife loves wealthy husband's chauffeur; husband lacks sense of humor and finds revenge easy.

Warnings: wireless operator falls deaf and sinks his ship, as he can't hear the warning messages from other ships; he also had had warnings about his hearing, but couldn't quit his job as he had to feed wife and 5 kids.

Fog: 3 people adrift in a lifeboat without oars after a shipwreck, in fog near Newfoundland. Unexpectedly it turns out to be a ghost story.
This one was also staged in Provincetown. " - Amazon Reviewer

Genres: Plays

172 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 25, 2007

About the author

American 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.

Reviews

[Cloudy · Rating 3 out of 5]

«تشنگی»، «بی‌پروایی» و «سقط جنین» سه نمایشنامه‌ی این کتاب هستند که حول تلاش برای بقا و ناامیدی و سوسوی امید و خیانت و عشق می‌چرخه و نهایتا توی هر کدوم واقعیت کوبیده می‌شه به صورت شخصیت‌‌ها و ما که از ابتدا با یه صحنه‌ی تارِ روشن مواجهیم که کم کم واضح و تاریک می‌شه.

[Atamoghani · Rating 4 out of 5]

فراتر از حد انتظار بود

[Milaad · Rating 4 out of 5]

به نظر موقعیت هر سه نمایشنامه نمادی از گم‌گشتگی انسان مدرنه!

[Lunacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

"تشنگی"،"بی‌پروایی"و"سقط جنین" سه نمایشنامه تک پرده‌ای هستن که در آنها شخصیت های اصلی که در ابتدای پرده به خود می‌بالند و خودرا قدرتمندتر از محیط اطراف خود میدادند، در آخر پردن خودرا عاجز و ناتوان در برابر حقیقتی که مستقیم به صورتشان کوبیده میشود پیدا می‌کنند.
در "تشنگی" شخصیت های داستان خودرا عاجز دربرابر قدرت طبیعت پیدا می‌کنند. چیزی که حتی گران قیمت ترین جواهر هم نمی‌تواند آنان‌را نجات دهد.
در دو نمایشنامه دیگر، شخصیت اصلی به دلیل خطایی که خود مرتکب شده به هلاکت می‌افتد. آنان که در ابتدا امید به تحت کنترل داشتن شرایط دارند در آخر خودرا گرفتار و گناهکار اصلی می‌یابند و تمام رشته هایشان پنبه می‌شود.

در کل مضمون این سه نمایشنامه تکبر انسان مدرن نسبت به حقایق موجود است که در نهایت با بی‌توجهی‌ خودشان موجب فلاکت خود آنها می‌شود.