Anna Christie, the Emperor Jones, the Hairy Ape (Vintage International) - Softcover

O'Neill, Eugene

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679763953 ISBN 13: 9780679763956

Publisher: Vintage, 1995

Synopsis

This edition provides three original plays by Eugene O Neill, about men at war with themselves and society. In The Emperor Jones Brutus Jones is a black man who has escaped the law in the United States and found refuge on an island in the West Indies. Through deceit, Jones becomes emperor over the `bush Negroes he so despises. The play opens on an empty court with a cockney confronting the last of Jones servants who is preparing to `run away to the hills . When Jones awakes and is told of the situation by Smithers, he masks his cowardess with fake bravado and is soon overcome by his guilty conscience of taxing the people and of his former life. O Neill delivers his vision of a destitute man and his guilty conscience masterfully, using the vibrant pulse of a tom-tom to keep the continuous beat that spells Jones doom. In `Anna Christie , a Swedish Sailor and his daughter are reunited only to discover that everything can not be perfect after 15 years of separation. It is the story of Chris coming to terms with the knowledge that he could have provided a better life for his daughter, Anna. At the same time, Anna must realize that she can not live in a lie, but must tell her father and boyfriend the truth and ask for their forgiveness, while also learning how to love. As in O Neill s other plays, the characters portrayed are at the bottom of the social ladder and must also come to terms with their station in life. Finally, O Neill tells the story of a coal stoker on a steam-ship who is confronted with the realization that he is nothing but the dregs of society. With the innocence of a child, Yank personifies himself as steel, he is the power of the steamboat and nothing can stop him. Yank thinks only of himself and those around him, not daring to imagine a world outside that of his natural habitat, the furnace. In five minutes Yank s world comes crashing down as a woman from the outside looks in and is horrified by what she sees in the men. Through possible jealousy

About this title

Product Description

Winner of the Nobel Prize

This edition includes Anna Christie, The Emperor Jones, and The Hairy Ape three classic plays of uncontested power from the Nobel laureate and winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for drama.

In Anna Christie, a sailor reunites with his estranged daughter after years apart. As she begins to fall in love with a younger sailor, she realizes she must come clean to her father and her new love interest and reveal her troubled past.

In The Emperor Jones, African American fugitive, Brutus Jones, recounts his life through a series of flashbacks as he runs from rebelling subjects through a West Indies Jungle, showing just how he came to rule over a small island, and his eventual downfall.

In The Hairy Ape, O'Neil explores class and identity as he follows the existential crisis of Yank, an engine worker for an ocean liner. After being called a beast from the daughter of a rich industrialist, Yank realizes he has no place in modern society, or even a class he can call his own.

William Faulkner, Philip Roth, Alice Munro, Thomas Mann, Doris Lessing, Albert Camus, V.S. Naipaul, Gabriel García Márquez, Salman Rushdie, Joan Didion, and Cormac McCarthy, among many others: Vintage International is devoted to publishing the best writing of the past century from the world over. Offering both classic and modern fiction and literary nonfiction in elegant editions, Vintage International aims to provide readers with world-class writing that has stood the test of time and essential works by the preeminent authors of today.

About the Author

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) is one of the most significant forces in the history of American theater. With no uniquely American tradition to guide him, O'Neill introduced various dramatic techniques, which subsequently became staples of the US theater. By 1914 he had written 12 one-act and two long plays. Of this early work, only Thirst and Other One Act Plays (1914) was originally published. From this point on, O'Neill's work falls roughly into three phases: the early plays, written from 1914 to 1921 (The Long Voyage Home, The Moon of the Caribbees, Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie); a variety of full-length plays for Broadway (Desire Under the Elms, Great God Brown, Ah, Wilderness!); and the last, great plays, written between 1938 and his death (The Iceman Cometh, A Moon for the Misbegotten). O'Neill is a four-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1936.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0679763953
• ISBN 13: 9780679763956
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208