Further studies on O’Neill’s life

          Starting October 16, 1888 and ending November 27, 1953 O’Neill’s life, he was on a quest for a personal truth. O’Neill, as negative and pessimistic of a person you could come across, was this way only because he was a confused individual. His entire life was screwed up, all women in his life had reversed roles, he didn’t believe in the American dream and thought everyone would at some point fall, and was very unfortunate with his family, loosing both of his parents and his brother within 3 years. He himself had tuberculosis, Parkinson’s disease and he remarried numerous times. All of these aspects of his troubled life are reflected in his numerous plays.

          Eugene’s play Desire Under the Elms, perfectly reflects the reversed roles of women in his life and the failure of the American Dream. In this play, Eugene is similar to Eben, a confused individual who hates and loves a woman named Abbie, constantly changing his mind, denying that he stated things he clearly previously stated, to the point where he can’t make any decisions for himself. Abbie’s role is reversed, she is Eben’s lover, but also acts as a motherly figure toward him, which Eugene lived that reality with his last wife that he died with. Both Eben and Abbie’s dreams of one day taking over the evil Cabot’s farm were crushed, and the bad guy prevailed, a theme that commonly appear in O’Neill’s plays.

          Another one of O’Neill’s plays Long day’s Journey into Night reflected the sever problems of his home life, only the characters in the play have different names. This play perfectly bastardized his father, Edward who contributed to the beginning of Eugene’s mother’s fatal morphine addiction. She became addicted after giving birth to Eugene and got heavier when he was diagnosed with Tuberculosis. His brother Jamie wasn’t a bad kid, but being 10 years older than Eugene got Eugene into a lot of trouble. Eugene had an early case of alcoholism and wasted his money on prostitutes, and this was introduced to him by his older brother. None of this was meant to hurt Eugene, but it further confused him, kicked him out of college, got him into trouble, and contributed to his negativity and fading away from finding the meaning of his life.

         Was it his poor home life that made Eugene want to be independent at a young age? It could have been his father being a poor role model, or his mothers severe morphine addiction that made Eugene look at seagulls by the beach at a young age and think of how unlucky he was to be a human. There were numerous reasons that contributed to O’Neill’s insecurities and blindness to his problems, but unfortunately his quest for a personal truth wasn’t discovered before November 27, 1953, while O’Neill passed away in Room 401 of the Shelton Hotel on Bay State Road in Boston. O’Neill’s last words being “Born in a hotel room, and God dammit, died in one!”