O\'Neill Dreams and Man\'s Tragic

o'neill

Dreams and Man's Tragic Fate According to Eugene O'Neill

Playwright Eugene O'Neill built his reputation on creating works of stark realism at a time when theatre was largely melodrama and musical camp. This would produce a body of plays largely dedicated to exploring the human condition and the tragic fate of man. In a consideration of some of his earliest works, it is possible to view this exploration in a state of evolution. Between 1920's Beyond the Horizon and 1924's Desire Under the Elms, O'Neill channels a discussion on the human condition through a consideration of how man's dreams can ultimately lead to tragedy.

In this first work, O'Neill seems to be driven by the idea that we are nothing if we surrender our dreams. To an extent, the work as a whole centers on the two dreadful realities that either one might never attain one's dream or, perhaps the worse of possibilities, that one might attain one's dream and find it to be a grave disappointment. In Beyond the Horizon, each character is on his or her own separate journey either toward or away from a long-cherished dream. In a sense that becomes increasingly clear as the play moves toward its tragic denouement, either disposition reveals something damning about man's nature.

That is, the human condition as O'Neill sees it is a state of constant suffering and discontent. Perhaps, he seems to suggest in the subtext of his first notable play, we are destined to suffer this lot whether we follow or abandon those dreams which we allow to define us. In the character of Robert perhaps more than any other, we are confronted with the bitter realities of a dream unrealized. In Act 1, Scene I, Robert awaits the voyage overseas upon which he has longed dreamed of embarking when his brother Andy engages him in conversation. It is hear that we learn of those conditions which most drive Robert. Both sickly and sensitive, Robert's health and happiness seem to hinge on leaving the family farm even as he secretly harbors a love for Ruth. The daughter of the neighboring farm, she is also the object of Andy's affection. Within the confines of this love triangle, Robert tells his brother why he never returned to school after his most recent bout of sickness. He reveals, "You know why I didn't go back, Andy. Pa didn't like the idea, even if he didn't say so; and I know he wanted the money to use improving the farm. And besides, I had pretty much all I cared for in that one year. I'm not keen on being a student, just because you see me reading books all the time. What I want to do now is keep on moving so that I won't take root in any one place." (ln. 22)

This is, however, precisely what happens to Robert, who determines to remain on the family farm when Kate declares her love for him. Andrew, primarily because he also loves Ruth, eschews his own dream to remain on the family farm and instead takes Robert's place at sea. The consequences are devastating for all parties involved. In spite of their love, neither Ruth nor Robert find what they dream of in one another. Robert's death after battling a lifetime of sickness may well have been inevitable, even on an overseas voyage. But it is perhaps so that had the man followed his dream, he would have died content rather than in abject misery and with a sense of imprisonment in the confines of farm and family. In this regard, Beyond the Horizon suggests that man's tragic fate is to be pulled at once by his dreams and by the realistic imperatives of life such as love, family, work and obligation. In the resolution, this internal paradox renders man an empty and discontent shell of what he dreams to become.

If this perception of man's tragic fate is altered in any regard during the intervening four years between the two plays in question, it is perhaps in the yet less redeeming nature of the dreamers in Desire Under the Elms. Where the parties in Beyond the Horizon bypassed their dreams in spite of themselves, the greedy brothers and the inconstant wife of Desire pursue their dreams in spite of one another. Eben, Ephraim and Abbie are, similarly, locked into a love triangle. However, unlike the figures in his first play, O'Neill casts these as characters with no regard for one another. In this sense, man's tragic fate seems less to center on the inevitable disappointment of dream, materialized or lost, and instead to center on the power of a dream to corrupt, to transform into greed and ultimately to manifest as malice toward others.