Four times winner of the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Laureate Eugene O’Neill has carved a niche for himself in the world of theatre. His portrayal of life, as he saw it, was very powerful. He took on the larger issues of destiny, religion and psychology out of fine drawing rooms. His characters, who are from the lowest rank of society, come to grips with the problems, for whom destiny triumphs ultimately.

O’Neill was never comfortable with ‘society’ people. He felt he ‘belonged’ to the down-and-outers, the derelicts. Although his plays are peopled with prostitutes, sailors, alcoholics, drug addicts and the like, the underlying themes can be considered Grecian. He used classical techniques of masks, asides and music in a very innovative way and blended them beautifully in his modern plays. O’Neill was also not afraid to grapple with themes like incest, matricide, fratricide, infanticide and suicide, perhaps because these were the experiences of life, as he knew it.

Almost all of O’Neill’s plays are autobiographical. He could write movingly and beautifully about what he had experienced. And except for Long Day’s Journey Into Night, he was not afraid to let them be produced on stage. Perhaps it was his way of making peace with himself and his family, his way of exorcising the ghosts of his past. Whatever the reason, the intensely personal issues of his plays made them very powerful.

BIRTH AND UPBRINGING

On October 16, 1888, Eugene Gladstone O’Neill was born in a hotel room to a successful touring actor, James O’Neill and Ella (Ellan) Quinlan O’Neill. Eugene had to spend his childhood in hotel rooms, trains and on backstage with his mother and elder brother, James Jr He had no permanent ‘home’, except for a small cottage overlooking the Thames River in New London, Connecticut. But there too they were not too welcome as they were "Summer People" and "Theatrical People" and above all, his mother was a known drug addict. Eugene’s childhood memories were not at all pleasant. They brought back dirty dressing rooms, stuffy trains, shoddy hotels; perpetual waiting in the wings and succession of one-night stands.

Eugene’s formal education started as a boarder in Mount St Vincent-on-Hudson at Riverdale, New York. It was a boarding school conducted by the Sisters of Charity. After three years at Mt St Vincent, Eugene was sent to Da La Salle Institute as a day scholar. But in the following year, he became a boarder. He again changed his school and went to Betts Academy in Stamford, Connecticut. It was a typical New England preparatory school, training students to get into Ivy League Colleges. Eugene got into the spirit of things, became quite studious and graduated scoring sufficiently well to be admitted into the Princeton University.

INFLUENCE OF HIS BROTHER

It was around this time that his brother’s influence became evident. He adored his brother, who was an alcoholic and a recognized habitué of all the saloons of Broadway. He introduced Eugene to the seedier side of life, a life of "booze, books and broads." By the end of his freshman’s year, Eugene was suspended from Princeton University. He decided not to return and sought education from ‘Life’. Eugene took up a job at a small mail-order house, The New York – Chicago Supply Company.

RETURNED TO NEST

After this O'Neill decided to go ‘home’ – as he knew it – somewhere in the theatrical circuit. His father gave him a job with a courtesy title of assistant manager of the theatrical company. He had to sit at the gallery door and see that the ticket collector did not allow any of his friends inside free of cost. He hated the job, and after a violent discussion with his father took off to the sea. He did all kinds of jobs on and off ships. He hung around with all kinds of bums, drifters, alcoholics and derelicts. He could not keep a job for long and kept jumping from one place to another. But through all this he did not stop reading. His favorite authors were Jack London, Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling.

He returned to the United States in 1911, still wild with a liking for drinking in bars and reciting poetry. Within one year, he again sailed out for one last time and was discharged as Able Seaman. He cherished the discharge paper as a very important document.

TRYING HAND ON WRITING

Once again Eugene’s father tried to induct his son into the theatre. He gave Eugene two minor roles to play. But he was a terrible actor and hated acting.

When the family went to their summer home in New London, Eugene went to work for the New London Telegraph, as a reporter. He wrote vividly and dramatically when asked to cover a story, but often forgot to mention the details required – who, how, when, where and why. In August, Judge Frederick P Latimer, the owner of the paper, put his faith in O’Neill and asked him to write verse for the editorial page column Laconics. Apart from reporting, Eugene wrote twice a week for Laconics and signed about 24 pieces, some as E O’Neill, or Eugene O’Neill and some as Tigean Te O’ Neil. He liked it better than anything he had done so far. Laconics gave him confidence and he sent his verses to be published in New York in the Masses, the New York Call and F P A’s Conning Tower as well as to New York Tribune. His first appearance in book form was in the Pleiades Club Year Book published in 1912. He wrote a poem Free that was published in it.

A few days later, Eugene published his last verse in New London’s Telegraph, before he was diagnosed as having tuberculosis and the doctor asked him to go into a sanatorium. The Gaylord Farm Sanatorium at Wallingford, Connecticut was chosen for O'Neill. On Christmas Eve of 1912, he entered Gaylord.

REBIRTH

O'Neill spent his time in Gaylord reading not only the classic dramatists but also the modern ones like Ibsen, Wedekind and Strindberg. It was Strindberg’s works, which inspired him to write for the theatre. For Eugene O'Neill, the stay at Gaylord was practically a ‘rebirth’. He matured intellectually and physiologically. He returned home after about six months, but not before his father had confirmed from the doctor that Eugene was really cured.

Eugene’s homecoming was not free from tensions. Even though he was ill, he was determined not only to work hard and write plays, but also to keep his health. He soon recovered from his ill health.

THE PLAYWRIGHT

When the O’Neills closed down the house, Eugene stayed on in boarding house. He was writing one-act plays at the rate of a play a month. He kept on sending them to Broadway. In a short time, he had written eleven one-act and two full-length plays. In-between he read everything he could lay his hands on – Nietzsche, Wedekind, the Greeks, the Elizabethan and other classics as well as the moderns. During this period, he wrote A Wife For A Life (the first one to be copyrighted), Abortion, Servitude and The Web. The Web is believed to be the first play O’Neill wrote. All the plays are naturally crude and melodramatic with poor dialogues. But they do give a glimpse of O’Neill’s characteristics – cruelty, violent death, tragedy and high drama.