Exorcism, or the Road Not Taken

Thirty years from now, Exorcism will be published with O’Neill’s early works, and a footnote will probably explain how the 1919 play was recovered and eventually made available to the reading public, ninety-three years after its conception. Today, for O’Neillians, this discovery proves an extraordinary experience, because it was common knowledge among scholars that Exorcism was a finished one-act play about which the author had “second thoughts,” as a result of which he “destroyed all the copies of the script he could obtain.”¹ Bearing in mind that O’Neill often misjudged his dramatic works, claiming that some were masterpieces immediately after writing them, only to reject them at a later stage, critics were left to wonder if the author’s choice had been aesthetically justified. After reading Exorcism, it seems difficult to disagree with O’Neill’s harsh verdict, since contrary to early plays like Bound East for Cardiff, Exorcism is obviously not a masterpiece. In this respect, and even if it retraces a major episode of the playwright’s life, one might predict that it is unlikely to upset the field of O’Neill studies. Even so, this early work takes readers on familiar tracks, reminding us of other plays, and not merely those of O’Neill’s youth. Indeed, reading Exorcism provides the kind of pleasure one feels when listening to one of Mozart’s early operas, in which an almost palpable trace of future masterpieces suddenly comes to light.

After the initial enjoyment, however, in a post-discovery stage, a question comes to mind. To the extent that there is a norm for an O’Neill play, how closely does this play adhere to that norm? Among many others, I have argued that there are identifiable characteristics and common patterns of his plays, and so now I ask to what extent Exorcism corresponds to the critical perspectives formerly provided on O’Neill’s works. In Struggle, Defeat or Rebirth, I argue that O’Neill’s characters are generally caught in a series of existential struggles, which often cause individual defeats, but a form of rebirth is always sought, sometimes paradoxically through suicide (on suicide, see pages 172–74). Since Exorcism retraces O’Neill’s choice to kill himself when he was twenty-four, should one consider it as a model for his other suicide plays?

In analyzing the play, I propose to follow the criteria used to assess the other forty-nine plays in Struggle, Defeat or Rebirth. First, this means focusing on the suicide episode through the echoes one finds in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, also in The Iceman Cometh. I suggest that both plays are successful extensions of the rejected one-act play. In his suicide plays, O’Neill adheres to a regular pattern for the staging of individuals who opt for self-destruction: a portrait of the character precedes an explanation of the motives, which leads to a confession, including a desire for expiation, as a symbolic prelude to a rebirth. A study of these characteristics and of the staging of Ned’s suicide attempt will enable us to define how the play does and does not conform to the pattern of O’Neill’s plays.

O’Neill’s biographers and many other critics have shown that the author could never really free himself from his family history. The suicide attempt depicted in Exorcism was obviously a major episode in his life, and it comes as no surprise to find echoes of the incident in his dramatic works. Indeed, although Louis Sheaffer alludes to the humorous way in which the playwright later recounted this episode, choosing to put an end to one’s life cannot be reduced to an entertaining story.² O’Neill himself was aware of this, as is shown by Edmund’s mention of his failed attempt in Long Day’s Journey:

edmund (Dully sarcastic)

Yes, particularly the time I tried to commit suicide at Jimmie the Priest’s, and almost did.

tyrone

You weren’t in your right mind. No son of mine would ever—you were drunk.

edmund

I...