Fluent Essays

In Eugene ONeills Desire Under the Elms, discuss the family dynamic that is at the a heart of the play. Specifically, talk about the unique relationship between Abbie and Eben. Are there some historical theatrical precedents to their relationship. Also, talk about the use of the colloquial language the characters use. What does it tell you about them? Make certain you have a definitive beginning (introduction), middle (body), and end (conclusion) to your paper and The paper should not be a synopsis. basic_writing_tips.doc desire_under_the_elms.pdf Unformatted Attachment Preview Basic Writing Tips Be certain to proofread carefully all your work. A college essay should be free from grammatical and stylistic errors. Please observe the following: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Italicize or underline play titles, just as you would those of a book. Example: Desire Under the Elms, or Desire Under the Elms. Write your paper in the third person; in other words, do not use “I” statements. Do not use contractions (such as don’t); a college paper requires formal language. Use the past tense when referring to actions that occurred in the past; “William Shakespeare wrote “Hamlet.” Use the present tense when referring to an author’s argument; “Eugene O’Neill claims that…” Make sure that your sentences adhere to subject-verb agreement. This is easy to do in short sentences. You would not write, “Jill Lepore state that…” In a longer sentence, however, writers sometimes use an incorrect form of the verb: “Jill Lepore, noted historian and winner of the 1999 Bancroft Prize, state that…” Both these examples should use the verb states. Avoid using the passive voice in your sentence construction. Passive voice does not reveal the source of the action and is considered a weak construction for a college paper. An example of passive voice is: “The Cherokees were relocated to isolated lands in the west in 1838-1839.” This sentence does not tell us who or what relocated the Cherokees. A better statement is: “United States soldiers rounded up the Cherokees for forced relocation to isolated lands in the west in 1838-1839.” Use a formal tone in your writing. Avoid colloquialisms (slang) and clichés. Text-speak is forbidden, and I will actually take away points for its usage. (Examples: b/c, ppl, w/o, 4get, &, gr8) Take care with the forms of words you use: o “There” is an adjective or adverb that indicates direction. “Their” is possessive. Examples: “There they are.” “Simeon and Peter are over there.” “Their bright clothing makes them easy to see.” o “Then” indicates sequence and “than” is used for comparisons. Examples: “Then the Cabot boys left for California.” “They sought a better life than what they had on the farm.” o “Lead” is a noun that refers to a metal. It is also a verb that indicates escort or guidance. The past tense of the verb “lead” is spelled “led.” Examples: “The lead pipe burst.” “Professor Lunt will lead the discussion.” “George Washington led his men.” o Who or whom? “Who” is correct if you can substitute it with he or she. “Whom” is correct if you can substitute it with him or her. o “Two” is quantitative and represents a number. “To” indicates direction or destination. “Too” means also, or very. Examples: “There were two performers on stage.” “Sal and John drove to campus together.” “Max wanted to come along, too.” “Eben Cabot was too hard on his sons.” o “Where” indicates place or position. “Were” is the past tense of the verb, to be. “We’re” is the conjunction of we are, and as such should not be used in a formal university essay. Examples: “Where did Stanly Kowalski live?” “The Zoot Suit Riots were in Los Angeles.” o The word “data” is always plural. The singular form of data is “datum.” Do not split infinitives. It is incorrect grammar to write “to beautifully sing.” The proper construction is “to sing beautifully.” Do not use virgules (slashes) to join words together. Example: “and/or” is too informal for a scholarly paper. Do not use etc. This also is too informal. Finish your thought so the reader is not left with a vague sense of your meaning. I’m particularly adamant about this one. Using etc. is like asking me to fill in the blank. I will take away points if I find “etc.” in your paper. An apostrophe is possessive and is not used in reference to a decade. Example: 1960s, not 1960’s. Do not use block quotes. These are direct quotations more than four lines long. They require special formatting and the essay assignments for this class are too short to warrant such lengthy quotations. Title: Desire Under the Elms Author: Eugene ONeill (1888-1953) * A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook * eBook No.: 0400081.txt Edition: 1 Language: English Character set encoding: Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit Date first posted: January 2004 Date most recently updated: January 2004 This eBook was produced by: Don Lainson dlainson@sympatico.ca Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular paper edition. Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this file. This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook Title: Author: Desire Under the Elms Eugene ONeill (1888-1953) A Play in Three Parts Revised Second Edition, as published by Boni & Liveright, 1925 Characters EPHRAIM CABOT SIMEON PETER--his sons EBEN ABBIE PUTNAM Young Girl, Two Farmers, The Fiddler, A Sheriff, and other folk from the neighboring farms The action of the entire play takes place in, and immediately outside of, the Cabot farmhouse in New England, in the year 1850. The south end of the house faces front to a stone wall with a wooden gate at center opening on a country road. The house is in good condition but in need of paint. Its walls are a sickly grayish, the green of the shutters faded. Two enormous elms are on each side of the house. They bend their trailing branches down over the roof. They appear to protect and at the same time subdue. There is a sinister maternity in their aspect, a crushing, jealous absorption. They have developed from their intimate contact with the life of man in the house an appalling humaneness. They brood oppressively over the house. They are like exhausted women resting their sagging breasts and hands and hair on its roof, and when it rains their tears trickle down monotonously and rot on the shingles. There is a path running from the gate around the right corner of the house to the front door. A narrow porch is on this side. The end wall facing us has two windows in its upper story, two larger ones on the floor below. The two upper are those of the fathers bedroom and that of the brothers. On the left, ground floor, is the kitchen--on the right, the parlor, the shades of which are always drawn down. Desire Under the Elms PART I SCENE ONE Exterior of the Farmhouse. It is sunset of a day at the beginning of summer in the year 1850. There is no wind and everything is still. The sky above the roof is suffused with deep colors, the green of the elms glows, but the house is in shadow, seeming pale and washed out by contrast. A door opens and Eben Cabot comes to the end of the porch and stands looking down the road to the right. He has a large bell in his hand and this he swings mechanically, awakening a deafening clangor. Then he puts his hands on his hips and stares up at the sky. He sighs with a puzzled awe and blurts out with halting appreciation. EBEN--God! Purty! (His eyes fall and he stares about him frowningly. He is twenty-five, tall and sinewy. His face is wellformed, good-looking, but its expression is resentful and defensive. His defiant, dark eyes remind one of a wild animals in captivity. Each day is a cage in which he finds himself trapped but inwardly unsubdued. There is a fierce repressed vitality about him. He has black hair, mustache, a thin curly trace of beard. He is dressed in rough farm clothes. He spits on the ground with intense disgust, turns and goes back into the house. Simeon and Peter come in from their work in the fields. They are tall men, much older than their half-brother [Simeon is thirty-nine and Peter thirty-seven], built on a squarer, simpler model, fleshier in body, more bovine and homelier in face, shrewder and more practical. Their shoulders stoop a bit from years of farm work. They clump heavily along in their clumsy thick-soled boots caked with earth. Their clothes, their faces, hands, bare arms and throats are earthstained. They smell of earth. They stand together for a moment in front of the house and, as if with the one impulse, stare dumbly up at the sky, leaning on their hoes. Their faces have a compressed, unresigned expression. As they look upward, this softens.) SIMEON--(grudgingly) Purty. PETER--Ay-eh. SIMEON--(suddenly) Eighteen years ago. PETER--What? SIMEON--Jenn. My woman. She died. PETER--Id fergot. SIMEON--I reclect--now an agin. Makes it lonesome. longs a hoss tail--an yaller like gold! Shed hair PETER--Waal--shes gone. (this with indifferent finality--then after a pause) Theys gold in the West, Sim. SIMEON--(still under the influence of sunset--vaguely) In the sky? PETER--Waal--in a manner o speakin--thars the promise. (growing excited) Gold in the sky--in the West--Golden Gate--Californi-a!-Goldest West!--fields o gold! SIMEON--(excited in his turn) Fortunes layin just atop o the ground waitin t be picked! Solomons mines, they says! (For a moment they continue looking up at the sky--then their eyes drop.) PETER--(with sardonic bitterness) Here--its stones atop o the ground--stones atop o stones--makin stone walls--year atop o year--him n yew n me n then Eben--makin stone walls fur him to fence us in! SIMEON--Weve wuked. Give our strength. Give our years. Plowed em under in the ground--(he stamps rebelliously)--rottin--makin soil for his crops! (a pause) Waal--the farm pays good for hereabouts. PETER--If we plowed in Californi-a, theyd be lumps o gold in the furrow! SIMEON--Californi-as tother side o earth, amost. calclate-- We got t PETER--(after a pause) Twould be hard fur me, too, to give up what weve arned here by our sweat. (A pause. Eben sticks his head out of the dining-room window, listening.) SIMEON--Ay-eh. (a pause) PETER--(doubtfully) Mebbe. Mebbe--hell die soon. SIMEON--Mebbe--fur all we knows--hes dead now. PETER--Yed need proof. SIMEON--Hes been gone two months--with no word. PETER--Left us in the fields an evenin like this. Hitched up an druv off into the West. Thats plumb onnateral. He haint never been off this farm ceptin t the village in thirty year or more, not since he married Ebens maw. (A pause. Shrewdly) I calclate we might git him declared crazy by the court. SIMEON--He skinned em too slick. He got the best o all on em. Theyd never blieve him crazy. (a pause) We got t wait--till hes under ground. EBEN--(with a sardonic chuckle) Honor thy father! (They turn, startled, and stare at him. He grins, then scowls.) I pray hes died. (They stare at him. He continues matter-of-factly.) Suppers ready. SIMEON AND PETER--(together) Ay-eh. EBEN--(gazing up at the sky) Suns downin purty. SIMEON AND PETER--(pointing) Ay-eh. EBEN--(pointing) Ay-eh. Theys gold in the West. Yonder atop o the hill pasture, ye mean? SIMEON AND PETER--(together) In Californi-a! EBEN--Hunh? (stares at them indifferently for a second, then drawls) Waal--suppers gittin cold. (He turns back into kitchen.) SIMEON--(startled--smacks his lips) PETER--(sniffing) I air hungry! I smells bacon! SIMEON--(with hungry appreciation) Bacons good! PETER--(in same tone) Bacons bacon! (They turn, shouldering each other, their bodies bumping and rubbing together as they hurry clumsily to their food, like two friendly oxen toward their evening meal. They disappear around the right corner of house and can be heard entering the door.) (The Curtain Falls) SCENE TWO The color fades from the sky. Twilight begins. The interior of the kitchen is now visible. A pine table is at center, a cookstove in the right rear corner, four rough wooden chairs, a tallow candle on the table. In the middle of the rear wall is fastened a big advertizing poster with a ship in full sail and the word California in big letters. Kitchen utensils hang from nails. Everything is neat and in order but the atmosphere is of a mens camp kitchen rather than that of a home. Places for three are laid. Eben takes boiled potatoes and bacon from the stove and puts them on the table, also a loaf of bread and a crock of water. Simeon and Peter shoulder in, slump down in their chairs without a word. Eben joins them. The three eat in silence for a moment, the two elder as naturally unrestrained as beasts of the field, Eben picking at his food without appetite, glancing at them with a tolerant dislike. SIMEON--(suddenly turns to Eben) said that, Eben. Looky here! Yed oughtnt t PETER--Twant righteous. EBEN--What? SIMEON--Ye prayed hed died. EBEN--Waal--dont yew pray it? (a pause) PETER--Hes our Paw. EBEN--(violently) Not mine! SIMEON--(dryly) Yed not let no one else say that about yer Maw! Ha! (He gives one abrupt sardonic guffaw. Peter grins.) EBEN--(very pale) haint me! PETER--(dryly) I meant--I haint hisn--I haint like him--he Wait till yeve growed his age! EBEN--(intensely) Im Maw--every drop o blood! stare at him with indifferent curiosity.) PETER--(reminiscently) maws scurse. (A pause. She was good t Sim n me. They A good Step- SIMEON--She was good t everyone. EBEN--(greatly moved, gets to his feet and makes an awkward bow to each of them--stammering) I be thankful t ye. Im her--her heir. (He sits down in confusion.) PETER--(after a pause--judicially) EBEN--(fiercely) She was good even t him. An fur thanks he killed her! SIMEON--(after a pause) No one never kills nobody. somethin. Thats the murderer. Its allus EBEN--Didnt he slave Maw t death? PETER--Hes slaved himself t death. Hes slaved Sim n me n yew t death--ony none o us haint died--yit. SIMEON--Its somethin--drivin him--t drive us! EBEN--(vengefully) Waal--I hold him t jedgment! scornfully) Somethin! Whats somethin? (then SIMEON--Dunno. EBEN--(sardonically) Whats drivin yew to Californi-a, mebbe? (They look at him in surprise.) Oh, Ive heerd ye! (then, after a pause) But yell never go t the gold fields! PETER--(assertively) Mebbe! EBEN--Wharll ye git the money? PETER--We kin walk. Its an amighty ways--Californi-a--but if yew was t put all the steps weve walked on this farm end t end wed be in the moon! EBEN--The Injunsll skulp ye on the plains. SIMEON--(with grim humor) hair! Well mebbe make em pay a hair fur a EBEN--(decisively) But taint that. Ye wont never go because yell wait here fur yer share o the farm, thinkin allus hell die soon. SIMEON--(after a pause) Weve a right. PETER--Two thirds belongs t us. EBEN--(jumping to his feet) Yeve no right! She want yewr Maw! It was her farm! Didnt he steal it from her? Shes dead. Its my farm. SIMEON--(sardonically) Tell that t Paw--when he comes! Ill bet ye a dollar hell laugh--fur once in his life. Ha! (He laughs himself in one single mirthless bark.) PETER--(amused in turn, echoes his brother) Ha! SIMEON--(after a pause) Whatve ye got held agin us, Eben? arter year its skulked in yer eye--somethin. Year PETER--Ay-eh. EBEN--Ay-eh. Theys somethin. (suddenly exploding) Why didnt ye never stand between him n my Maw when he was slavin her to her grave--t pay her back fur the kindness she done t yew? (There is a long pause. They stare at him in surprise.) SIMEON--Waal--the stockd got t be watered. PETER--R they was woodin t do. SIMEON--R plowin. PETER--R hayin. SIMEON--R spreadin manure. PETER--R weedin. SIMEON--R prunin. PETER--R milkin. EBEN--(breaking in harshly) An makin walls--stone atop o stone-makin walls till yer hearts a stone ye heft up out o the way o growth onto a stone wall t wall in yer heart! SIMEON--(matter-of-factly) We never had no time t meddle. PETER--(to Eben) Yew was fifteen afore yer Maw died--an big fur yer age. Why didnt ye never do nothin? EBEN--(harshly) They was chores t do, want they? (a pause-then slowly) It was ony arter she died I come to think o it. Me cookin--doin her work--that made me know her, suffer her sufferin--shed come back t help--come back t bile potatoes-come back t fry bacon--come back t bake biscuits--come back all cramped up t shake the fire, an carry ashes, her eyes weepin an bloody with smoke an cinders sames they used t be. She still comes back--stands by the stove thar in the evenin--she cant find it nateral sleepin an restin in peace. She cant git used t bein free--even in her grave. SIMEON--She never complained none. EBEN--Shed got too tired. Shed got too used t bein too tired. That was what he done. (with vengeful passion) An soonerr later, Ill meddle. Ill say the thins I didnt say then t him! Ill yell em at the top o my lungs. Ill see t it my Maw gits some rest an sleep in her grave! (He sits down again, relapsing into a brooding silence. They look at him with a queer indifferent curiosity.) PETER--(after a pause) Whar in tarnation dye spose he went, Sim? SIMEON--Dunno. He druv off in the buggy, all spick an span, with the mare all breshed an shiny, druv off clackin his tongue an wavin his whip. I remember it right well. I was finishin plowin, it was spring an May an sunset, an gold in the West, an he druv off into it. I yells Whar ye goin, Paw? an he hauls up by the stone wall a jiffy. His old snakes eyes was glitterin in the sun like hed been drinkin a jugful an he says with a mules grin: Dont ye run away till I come back! PETER--Wonder if he knowed we was wantin fur Cali-forni-a? SIMEON--Mebbe. I didnt say nothin and he says, lookin kinder queer an sick: I been hearin the hens cluckin an the roosters crowin all the durn day. I been listenin t the cows lowin an everythin else kickin up till I cant stand it no more. Its spring an Im feelin damned, he says. Damned like an old bare hickory tree fit ony fur burnin, he says. An then I calclate I mustve looked a mite hopeful, fur he adds real spry and vicious: But dont git no fool idee Im dead. Ive sworn t live a hundred an Ill do it, if ony t spite yer sinful greed! An now Im ridin out t learn Gods message t me in the spring, like the prophets done. An yew git back t yer plowin, he says. An he druv off singin a hymn. I thought he was drunk--r Id stopped him goin. EBEN--(scornfully) No, ye wouldnt! Yere scared o him. stronger--inside--than both o ye put together! PETER--(sardonically) Hes An yew--be yew Samson? EBEN--Im gittin stronger. I kin feel it growin in me--growin an growin--till itll bust out--! (He gets up and puts on his coat and a hat. They watch him, gradually breaking into grins. Eben avoids their eyes sheepishly.) Im goin out fur a spell--up the road. PETER--T the village? SIMEON--T see Minnie? EBEN--(defiantly) PETER--(jeeringly) Ay-eh! The Scarlet Woman! SIMEON--Lust--thats whats growin in ye! EBEN--Waal--shes purty! PETER--Shes been purty fur twenty year! SIMEON--A new coat o paintll make a heifer out of forty. EBEN--She haint forty! PETER--If she haint, shes teeterin on the edge. EBEN--(desperately) What dyew know-- PETER--All they is . . . Sim knew her--an then me arter-SIMEON--An Paw kin tell yew somethin too! He was fust! EBEN--Dye mean t say he . . . ? SIMEON--(with a grin) Ay-eh! We air his heirs in everythin! EBEN--(intensely) Thats more to it. 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