The Straw

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About this book

Eugene O'Neill's play includes a list of characters: Bill Carmody and his children Mary, Nora, Tom and Billy, Eileen Carmody, Bill's eldest child, and Stephen Murray. The list also names Miss Howard, a nurse in training, Miss Gilpin, superintendent of the Infirmary, Doctor Stanton of the Hill Farm Sanatorium, and Mrs. Turner, matron of the Sanatorium, along with patients such as Peters.

In one family scene Nora and Tom rush in after a race and argue over who won, while Carmody grumbles about spending money on coal and asks Billy for his plug of tobacco. In another scene a crowd talks and laughs, and Murray asks Eileen whether she has noticed how forced they act on Saturday mornings before they are weighed. She refuses to tell him a secret. A silence falls when every eye turns to the hall door, and a woman asks Peters to play something. Detailed stage directions describe gestures and expressions.

About the author

Eugene O’Neill

Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) was an American playwright and the first from his country to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. A four-time Pulitzer winner, he brought tragic depth and stark realism to the American stage in works drawn from his own troubled life.