Desire Under the Elms: In the Light of Strindberg's Influence

Abstract

D ESIRE UNDER THE ELMS (1924) constitutes at once Eugene O'Neill's first great tragedy and his richest exploitation to date of Strindbergian sources. It is not sufficiently recognized that August Strindberg was major influence on O'Neill, biographically as well as dramaturgically.' Scholarship and criticism consistently underestimate that influence, but nowhere more clearly than in Desire. George Jean Nathan, critic most likely to mention O'Neill's debt to Swedish master, states merely that the Strindberg influence is here again clear, without further elucidation.2 Edwin A. Engel, author of The Haunted Heroes of Eugene O'Neill (Cambridge, Mass., I953), while recognizing general influence of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche, is at a loss to discover specific plot sources for play. He makes no mention of Strindberg. In Desire Under Elms, he writes (p. I32), appears for first time an example of bitter hatred that exists between father and son.... What about father-hatred to be found in such early unpublished plays as Bread and Butter (I9I4),3 in The Rope and The Straw (I9I8), Gold and Anna Christie (I920), and The Hairy Ape (I92I) ?4 And if, as Professor Engel suggests, Abbie's