榆树下的欲望读后感

Wealth, or Love

In the old society, everyone’s heart was driven by desire for wealth and power which they were eager to possess and control at any cost.

Desire Under the Elms written by Eugene O’Neill, well revealing an existing circumstance at that time, tells a story of a ruthless struggle for family property, a farm and the mansion, between father and sons, between husband and wife, between brothers, and between lovers.

Eben whose mother was forced by his father Cabot to work extremely hard and was eventually abused to death, was desperately trying to seize the opportunity to get the farm from his father. 76-year-old Cabot married the third wife Abbie who was young and beautiful and desired for Cabot’s properties. However, she couldn’t bear a child with gerontic Cabot, so in order to keep her inheritance, she induced Eben to have sex with her and finally gave birth to a boy. While inducing and taking advantage of Eben, Abbie fell in love with him, but Eben thought she didn’t love him at all and she just wanted an heir to succeed to Cabot’s properties. When Abbie could not prove her true love for Eben by all means, she killed her baby in anguish. At last, although they bridged the gap, both of them were put into prison.

The drama ends with a tragedy, reflecting that money has predominated in that society, which results in the great oppression and distortion of human nature and emotions. Such emotional forces of human desires as jealousy, resentment, lust, incestuous love, and insatiability for wealth can eventually lead to fatal tragedy.

In this drama, every character appearing on the stages shows a powerful and greedy desire for wealth. Such insatiable desire for wealth makes people lose balance of a healthy mind. Cabot, a selfish, relentless and stone-hearted man, compelled his two ex-wives to work extremely hard to death and later he made all his three sons to work hard on the farm without any intention to let any of them inherit his properties. Cabot got the farm by marrying Eben’s mother and it is right and proper for a father to pass his fortune on to his son. However, Cabot said to Abbie that he would rather burn his farm to the ground instead of leaving it to Eben. Therefore, Cabot’s mind has been overwhelmed with money instead of kinship and even a sense of humanity.

For Abbie, she had no affection for Cabot, and she married him just because she was also eager for his wealth. She even had incestuous love with his son to have a child who could get the right of inheritance. In today’s society, such behavior will be regarded as absurdity and immorality and cannot be accepted. Nowadays, there exists a phenomenon that some young and beautiful girls choose to marry those who are almost 20 years older than them. Although there may be true love between them, in my view, people nowadays have become a bit more snobbish and many girls are just concerned about money and power which have turned into a criterion to judge whether a person is successful or not.

However, the drama not only talks about characters’ desire for wealth but also presents readers other desires like love, both sensual and spiritual. In the beginning, there was no true love between Abbie and Eben just in the pursuit of carnal happiness, but, as the story developed, they fell in love with each other. Abbie even can kill her