The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-02-16


Eugene O'Neill placing rs a t a
Claus" wit h
"Eugene O'Neill," though then the
last half becomes somewhat doubt
.ful, to say the least.
Way back in O'Neill's early days,
In the "Hairy Ape" for instance,
there was a lurking mysticism, a
tendency to fetishism, personifica-
ton ard capitalization of such me-
chanical things as ships, etc. There
was also a healthy grasp of social
situation, a recognition of class war,
a feeling throbbing through every
line that this man O'Neill was close
to life, even if he did sometimes
look away from it. One had right
to expect great things of O'Neill
He did do great things. He
evolved a new technique of the the
atre. He let his art grow, with prac-
tice, into a more and more finely
tempered instrument of his thought.
But the thought suffered. The grasp
on reality oozed away. The mys
teal, dream-like attitude grew upon
him. Some literary form of demen-
tia praecox, with a paronoic delu
sionaf system fixed itself upon him.
Or so it seems. Now either O'Neill
is crazy or he thinks the rest of us
are; which is a bad stage of de-
mobilization either way you look at
it. 800
"Dynamo" is O'Neill's 32nd play.
It is said to be the first of a trilogy
devoted to the preachment that man
is by nature religious, that when
you take away from him Jehovah Of
the. Hosts, admittedly somewhat an
achrpnistic for a machine age, the
machine itself is deified and be-
comes !, god in the minds of men.
This is nothing new; O'Neill got it
from a swarm Of musty and misty
speculative scientific philosophers;
it Is a decadent armchair theory,
onIy worth considering as a social
product of class Of drones, and
only then when it is in nebulous
FORM, very much generalized. You
can find some such vague idea in
the minds of the second generation
of descendants of captains of in
dustry," some theory that machine
civilization, seen only as capitalism,
has a divine and permanent flavor.
And even such men might be little
worried by the fact that machine
civilization, industrialization, can
also have the form of Soviet So
ciety-a doubtful sort of god in their
eyes.
But O'NeilI does not leave the
theory in this nebulous form. He
concretizes it, and apparently with
cut the slightest inkling of the lu-
dicrousness he brings to it.
He sits down and writes with con-
siderable skill drama of a preach
er's son, betrayed in critical mo-
ment by his fathers god, or by the
code of ethics this god idea symbol
ICES. The son breaks loose from
the bonds of tradition. After being
an electrician for over a year, i'm,
agine it, he reaches point where
he considers the dynamo he tends
oils and repairs, deity itself, tt
be prayed to, propitiated and mar
tyrized for.
The lad is in love with an appa
rently normal girl, genus flapper
Ada Fife (Claudette Colbert), thu
daughter of an atheist superinten
dent of the power plant. After mucl
praying to electricity, his new god
praying literally, in a posture o
arms and fingers extended to repre-
sent the wires springing from tn
dynamo, this electrician, this ma
chine tender. kills the girl becaus
he thinks she leads him into I'm
purity and makes him unworthy o
aDynamo," the Magma Mater, Q
,ghom he demands a miracle.
He ends by embracing his ne'
god a little too closely and gettin
Jolt that kills him. But before h
is through, he has the whole GROVE
with the exception of the athels
Ramsay Fife Dudley Digges). an
Nav Fife, the girls mother tCatf
crime Doucet) about as looney as h
is. The girl regards the dynamo
ipcrsonified rival, and curses i
the mother thinks Of it as sweet
singing, happy symbol of her ow
niryanic bliss, nothing more than
drifting with the tide and a yleldir
I'd every gushing breeze OF sent
mentality and cheap luxuriousnes
THE 1ireacher-father feels it, to
OILY IF course he thinks OF -,
nan1o'' as the anti-christ of h
b5blesiiG
los all the characters who have
rdal part in the play three-quarte
blco,ue drunk with this impossib
faith; only the atheist stays still {;
atheist, and even he seems TO
slipping at times. !,
when O'Neill gets away from !
c(ntralE theme, in the by-piay
which. he works it out, he is wo
dtrful. 4 The atheist. resource1ul a
straightforward, is a great char =;
terEut O'Neill leaves him foil
in the end. u,
All the O'Neill technique is her
the asides, better handled than
0Stranre Interlude"; the two-sto
bouses on the stage, with roofs a
aides out; the sense Of spectacle, t
4.