Strange Interlude, or the Pursuit of Happiness Revisited
Résumé
The links between a work of art and the society in which it was conceived
are not easy to determine. Some will argue that any work of art is a
direct product of the society in which it came to life, while others would
limit its influence or pay more attention to the person who created it. Strange
Interlude, which was written by Eugene O'Neill in 1927, is in many ways an
echo of the American society of that time; but it should also be studied in a
broader perspective because, through this play, the author addresses a basic
principle that was mentioned when the founding fathers wrote the Declaration
of Independence. Any reader or member of the audience has at the back of
his or her mind a famous sentence, "We hold these Truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit
of Happiness." The constant use of the adjective happy in the play, the many
definitions of happiness given by the characters, and their recurrent question?
ing about the way to reach it echo the words of the Declaration, n, but also call
into question the very possibility and interest of such a quest.
O'Neill's concern lay mainly with Nina Leeds, and his intention when writing Strange Interlude was probably not to expose what had been wrong in the formative years of American society. The action is supposed to take place after the First World War, and O'Neill's criticism is aimed at the society in which he lived. In his famous but unfinished cycle, A Tale of Possessors, Self-Dispossessed, he traced the Harford family back to the eighteenth cen? tury in an attempt to demonstrate what had been wrong in American society ever since the very beginning. Strange Interlude is different though, in that the action actually moves forward in time to forge a link between the famous principles on which American society rests and what is happening in the lives of the characters, his contemporaries.
To begin, [...]
O'Neill's concern lay mainly with Nina Leeds, and his intention when writing Strange Interlude was probably not to expose what had been wrong in the formative years of American society. The action is supposed to take place after the First World War, and O'Neill's criticism is aimed at the society in which he lived. In his famous but unfinished cycle, A Tale of Possessors, Self-Dispossessed, he traced the Harford family back to the eighteenth cen? tury in an attempt to demonstrate what had been wrong in American society ever since the very beginning. Strange Interlude is different though, in that the action actually moves forward in time to forge a link between the famous principles on which American society rests and what is happening in the lives of the characters, his contemporaries.
To begin, [...]