A Study Guide for Eugene O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness!"

By Gale and Cengage

A Study Guide for Eugene O'Neill's "Ah, Wilderness!", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama for Students for all of your research needs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: May 15, 2018
• ISBN: 9781410393340

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Ah, Wilderness!

Eugene O'Neill

1933

Introduction

First performed on Broadway in 1933, Ah, Wilderness! remains the only comedic work of the great American playwright Eugene O'Neill. As a distinct departure from his usual blend of contemporary and classic themes of tragedy, the play is set instead right after the turn of the twentieth century, before the outbreak of World War I and during the period of the playwright's own boyhood. The play was an immediate success among American audiences and managed to draw unprecedented attendance despite the crushing poverty of the Great Depression (1929–1939), an era in which many citizens could scarcely afford their daily bread, let alone theater tickets.

A requiem for youth and the innocence of a bygone age, Ah, Wilderness! remains a monument to American perseverance in otherwise dark times. O'Neill himself described it as an evocation of the mood of emotion of a past time and a comedy that made him weep. The outwardly lighthearted play touches upon a number of sobering themes: the plight of wayward youth and the corrupting influence of alcohol and unchecked physical desire, even foreshadowing the gradual disappearance of the hallowed American nuclear family unit. The play's lasting message, however, is ultimately optimistic and represents O'Neill's hugely successful revival, ushering in a period of unparalleled productivity and professional achievement for the playwright.

Author Biography

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill is hailed as the father of American tragedy and a visionary of the modern and postmodern stage. His personal life was as complex, and at times as squalid, as the story lines for which he would become immortalized. He was born on October 16, 1888, in a New York City hotel room. He was the second son of a famous actor of melodramas, James O'Neill, and his wife, Mary Ellen Quinlan. The transient circumstances and setting of his birth would prove emblematic of O'Neill's young life, as he spent much of his childhood deprived of the comfort of a permanent home, touring the nation in accordance with his father's successful acting career.

As a young teenager, his eyes were opened prematurely to some of life's harsher realities. O'Neill first encountered alcohol with his wayward older brother, Jamie; drinking would cause irreparable harm to both brothers over the course of their lives. This newfound dependency on drink contributed, less than half a decade later, to O'Neill's expulsion from Princeton University after just one semester of failing grades. His second attempt at higher education in the form of tutoring by a well-regarded Harvard professor of drama, George Pierce Baker, proved no longer lived than the first.

With the financial backing of his father, O'Neill was able to put his intuitive, largely untrained gift