Historical Figure
Eugene O'Neill
1888–1953
American playwright (1888–1953)
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Biography
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill Sr. was an American playwright. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism, earlier associated with Chekhov, Ibsen, and Strindberg. The tragedy Long Day's Journey into Night is often included on lists of the finest American plays in the 20th century, alongside Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. He was awarded the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature. O'Neill is also the only playwright to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama.
In Their Own Words (5)
We have electrocuted your God. Don't be a fool.
Act 2, Scene 1 , 1929
A credulous, religious-minded fool, as I've pointed out! And he carried his credulity into the next period of his life, where he believed in one social or philosophical Ism after another, always on the trail of Truth! He was never courageous enough to face what he really knew was true, that there is no truth for men, that human life is unimportant and meaningless. No. He was always grasping at some absurd new faith to find an excuse for going on!
Loving, Act 3, Scene 1 , 1933
You seem to be going in for sincerity today. It isn't becoming to you, really — except as an obvious pose. Be as artificial as you are, I advise. There's a sort of sincerity in that, you know. And, after all, you must confess you like that better.
Aunt: Scene 2 , 1922
How thick the fog is. I can't see the road. All the people in the world could pass by and I would never know. I wish it was always that way. It's getting dark already. It will soon be night, thank goodness.
Act 3, p. 104 , 1955
Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue!
Act 4, Scene 1 , 1926
Timeline
The story of Eugene O'Neill, told in moments.
Attempted suicide. Then contracted tuberculosis. Spent six months in a sanatorium. Started reading Strindberg and Ibsen. Decided to become a playwright.
Won his first Pulitzer Prize for Beyond the Horizon. Three more Pulitzers followed. He remains the only American playwright to win four.
Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His acceptance speech from his hospital bed. Too sick to travel to Stockholm. He was only the second American to receive the prize.
Finished Long Day's Journey into Night, his most autobiographical work. A brutal portrait of his own family. He sealed it with instructions not to publish it until 25 years after his death. His wife released it in 1956.
Died in a Boston hotel room at 65. A tremor in his hands had made writing impossible for years. His last words, reportedly: "Born in a hotel room and died in a hotel room."
Artifacts (2)
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