Lecutre 18 Eugene O'Neill

typically overflowing with emotion, set in mysterious locations, and peopled with stereotypical characters: heartless villains, heroines in distress, and strong heroes who faced almost insurmountable odds in rescuing those heroines.)
Lecture 18 American Drama
--- Eugene O’Neill
As a sensitive artist he felt “the discordant, broken, faithless rhythm” of his time and tried to “get at the root” of human desires and frustrations. His best tragic plays reflect his statement that he was “always conscious of the Force behind—Fate, God, our biological past creating our present, whatever one calls it—Mystery certainly— and of the one eternal tragedy of Man in his glorious, selfdestructive struggle….” O’Neill’s plays show a profound understanding of human existence with a wide-ranging themes that include the need for a sustaining illusion to justify one’s existence; the desire to ally oneself with some larger purpose; the destructive consequences of abusing alcohol and drugs, the persistence of racial memories; the Oedipal triangle; the eternally tragic predicament of humanity
Lecture 18 American Drama --- Overview
Three giants that represent the best of American theatre in the 20th century: Eugene O’Neill(1888-1953 ) ---The Hairy Ape(1922), The Iceman Cometh (1946), --- Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1940) Tennessee Williams(1911-1983) --- A Streetcar Named Desire (1947) Arthur Miller (1915-2005) --- Death of a Salesman (1949); The Crucible (1953)
--- American drama was not born until the end of World War I.
Lecture 18 American Drama
--- Overview
late-19th-century and early 20th century --- psychological realism in European theater (Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen). --- American playwrights began to move in the direction of Ibsen. 1900s --- Realism: dominant trend of the 20th century American drama --- New levels of psychological realism (Ibsen); experimental devices of the expressionists (Strindberg) Eugene O’Neill: America’s first dramatist of world stature; before him, Am. drama was considered of minor significance; revolutionized Am. theatre by inspiring other playwrights to write serious and challenging scripts for the stage. Tennessee Williams: most important dramatist after the W.W.II. Arthur Miller: along with Tennessee Williams, led the postwar new drama
Lecture 18 American Drama
--- Overview
17th century to the present: --- American drama begins in the American colonies in the 17th century and continues to the present.. Before the mid-18th century: --- little theatrical activity : 19th century --- British influence; --- melodrama (the most pervasive dramatic genre of the 19th century;
Lecture 18 American Drama --- Eugene O’Neill
O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape (1922) was one of the first plays to introduce expressionism in America. Expressionism was a movement in the visual, literary, and performing arts that developed in Germany in the early 20th century, in part in reaction against realism. Expressionism emphasized subjective feelings and emotions rather than a detailed or objective depiction of reality. The Hairy Ape depicts a rejected ship laborer who feels he belongs nowhere until he confronts an ape in a zoo. He sets the caged animal free only to be destroyed by it.
Lecture 18 American Drama --- Eugene O’Neill
•1936 Nobel Prize winner for literature. •Influenced by realism of Ibsen and expressionism of Strindberg •His work dramatizes the plight of people driven by elemental passions, by memory and dream, and by an awareness of the forces that threaten to overwhelm them. •The tragic sense of modern man being helpless and impotent remained with O’Neill all through his career.
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Lecture 18 American Drama--- Eugene O’Neill
Desire under the Elms reveals the passions beneath the calm surface of a nineteenth-century New England farm family. "God's hard, not easy!" cries old patriarch Ephraim Cabot, toughened by years of labor. The play is set on the Cabot farm in rural New England in 1850. Ephraim Cabot is a greedy, cold man who has buried two wives, the second of which he worked to death to gain control of her farm. He has fathered three sons, all of whom hate him. The eldest two have left home; only the third, Eben Cabot, remains. His contempt for his father is so great that he has secretly bought off his two brothers so that he alone can claim the farm as his after his father's death. Ephraim has married Abbie Putnam, a woman half his age, to deny his sons their inheritance. But Abbie has plans of her own for the farm: she has seduced Eben and is now pregnant by him, thus insuring that her child will inherit the farm. Ephraim is proud enough to believe that the child is his, but complications arise when Abbie falls in love with Eben, and to prove her love, she murders the child when it is born, leaving Eben the sole heir. She tells Ephraim what she has done, and Eben, in shock and horror, goes for the sheriff. Yet he acknowledged that he loves Abbie, and when she is arrested, Eben goes with her to share her guilt and punishment.