The Ending of O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon

The Ending of O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon WILLIAM J. SCHEICK IN GENERAL, CRITICS of Eugene O'Neill's plays agree that in spite of its importance in 1920, Beyond the Horizon is a flawed work. Chief among the problems is the ending of the play, which Emil Roy typically describes as burdened with "unresolved tensions," with "a cluster of irreconcilable impressions.'" Doris Falk objects to the explicitness of the final scene as well as to the way its "tragic affirmation lacks convincing logical steps"'; and Frederic Carpenter similarly complains of the play's uncertain and confusing conclusion, remarking that this defect probably derived from O'Neill's vacillating attitude toward Robert Mayo'> Such observations, among others of identical nature, indicate that in some sense Beyond the Horizon is indeed marred; but I would like to suggest that however unsatisfying the final scene may be, it does in fact follow from what has preceded it in the play. Specifically, Rob's waning capacity to articulate his dream,' read in the light of that dream's origin and of the death motif in the play, not only anticipates the conclusion but also informs the audience how to respond to it. The difference between Rob's initial articulateness when speaking of his dream and the truncated nature of his last remarks should be an important consideration when assessing the final scene. In the first act Rob may wrestle with the vague impulse behind his dream - "There's something calling me"- and protest that he cannot explain it,' but in fact he does speak of it exuberantly and eloquently: "it's just Beauty that's calling me, the beauty of the far otT and unknown, the mystery and spell of the East which lures me in the books I've read, the need 293 294 WILLIAM J. SCHEICK of the freedom of great wide spaces, the joy of wandering on and onin quest of the secret which is hidden over there, beyond the horizon" (III, 85). A similarly worded assertion understandably causes Ruth Atkins to exclaim, "You tell things so beautifully" (III, 90). Rob's eloquence, however, is subverted by its characteristic dependence on elusive abstractions; such words as beauty, mystery and secret intimate the essentially vaporous nature of his dream and undermine Rob's articulateness by implying the ultimate unknowableness of human motivation and of life in general. Mter some experience with life, Rob becomes less articulate. In the second act his language reflects the prosaic reality encountered on the farm, and he instinctively seems more aware of both the limits and the dangers of language. No longer given to "cheap, silly, poetry talk," as his wife describes his former eloquence, he intuitively warns Ruth, who now imagines that Andrew Mayo's love will redeem her, "You'll be sorry for talking like that" (III, 127). Later, when Andy tries to explain, first to Rob and then to Ruth, how foolish he was in his initial reaction to their marriage plans, Rob exclaims, "for God's sake, let's not talk about it!" (III, 135), and Ruth similarly utters, "For God's sake, Andy-won't you please stop talking!" (III, 139). O'Neill intends a direct correlation between loss of dream and diminishment of language, a tendency toward silence. Paralleling the realization of the loss of his wife's love (the surrogate of his quest for beauty) and of honest, open communication with his brother, Rob's language in the second act moves from the prosaic articulateness of his heated argument with his wife, through the tentative and somewhat muted conversation with his brother, to the complete silence between him and Ruth at the end of the act. In the third act Robert is too ill to talk at length, and what he says is disjointed or fragmented because his "brain is muddled" (III, 161). But Rob's illness is metaphoric as well as literal; his inarticulateness in the last act is not only appropriate to his physical ailment but also indicative of his loss of vision, the loss of a sense of control over the contour of his life. Now he gropes for words, unable to complete thoughts vaguely...