From Loving to the Misbegotten: Despair in the Drama of Eugene O'Neill

From Loving to the Misbegotten: Despair in the Drama of Eugene O'Neill JAMES R. SCRIMGEOUR I. THIS PAPER TRACES Eugene O'Neill's treatment ofdespairing human consciousness throughout his dramatic career, focusing both on the unchanging characteristics of human beings in despair and on O'Neill's changing treatment of these despairing individuals. O'Neill consistently presents despair as a state of mind that grows naturally out of disobedience , idleness, pride, anger, and self-contempt; and he sees clearly the limitations of human "pleasures," rages over these limitations, is under the control of demonic forces, and finally tempts man to suicide. Further , his method of presenting this increasingly familiar blackening of human consciousness and his characters' responses to this blackness is often startlingly original. In Days Without End,! however, O'Neill's protagonist, John Loving, responds to despair in a traditional, morality-like way. John Loving is divided in half and is portrayed by two different actors, one playing "John," the other playing "Loving." Loving is the despairing half of the protagonist's divided consciousness. He represents the force within men that perceives beyond pipe dreams, hates all pleasures in this world - especially love, acts as a kind of antichrist, and tempts the other half of his consciousness to suicide. Here, as in the early morality plays, evil takes on the name ofgood. O'Neill continually reminds us that Loving is a sneering, prideful character who can find no value in life. As in all of O'Neill's plays, the 37 38 JAMES R. SCRIMGEOUR stage directions are especially significant. O'Neill describes Loving's face as "the death mask ofa John who has died with a sneer ofscornful mockery on his lips."2 Loving is a character who "hates life," laughs "with mocking scorn," and tempts John (in a voice that is "singularly toneless and cold but at the same time insistent" [po 16]) to believe that his cynical view of life in this world is "really true."Loving explicitly tells John that adultery is an act as "meaningless as that of one fly with another, of equal importance to life." (p. 102) Loving, like the despairing Gloucester in King. Lear, views human life as being no more important than the life offlies. Loving views suicide as the logical response of clear-sighted human beings to life. In Loving's view: "Death is not the dying. Dying is life, its last revenge upon itself. But death is what the dead know, the warm, dark tomb of nothingness." (p. 147) He tempts John to accept this vision of life and death, to accept the "one beautiful, comforting truth of life: that death is the final release, the warm, dark peace of annihilation." (p. 95) When John is convinced that his wife will never forgive him for his adultery, Loving offers John the following "consoling reminder": "There is always death to wash away one's sins - sleep untroubled by love's betraying dream." (p. 87) Thus, the main temptation which Loving (despairing human consciousness) presents to John (everyman) might be summed up in Loving's two short sentences: "There is no God. There is only death." (p. 154) In Days Without End, the state of mind that tempts everyman to death is linked to the devil and the powers ofdarkness. Loving represents "that malignant spirit hiding behind life" which feels an instinctive antipathy towards God. Loving is by his own admission a character who "once cursed Him and would curse Him again." (p. 149) Loving (like the protagonist of John Loving's story within a play) is a character who "in his awakened pride ... cursed his God and denied Hini, and, in revenge, [for the death of his mother] promised his soul to the Devil - on his knees, when everyone thought he was praying!" (p. 49) Father Baird, a true man of God, intuitively recognizes Loving for what he is. Baird explicitly tells John: "It's the hatred you once gave your soul to which speaks, not you," and then continues ''pleadingly,'' "I implore you to cast that evil from your soul!" (p. 142) . John Loving responds to this special pleading, accepts the counsel of the character who represents...