Genre
Drama
Language
English
Setting and Context
New York, 1920s
Narrator and Point of View
Third person through the traditional dramatic structure of the characters delivering lines, but first person through the use of the asides that let us know what the characters are truly thinking
Tone and Mood
Tone: strained, bitter, impassioned
Mood: overwrought, intense, dramatic
Protagonist and Antagonist
There are no clear protagonists or antagonists.
Major Conflict
Will Nina and Darrell find happiness or will they sublimate their own in favor of Sam's? Will the truth of Gordon's parentage come out?
Climax
Darrell and Nina decide to sleep together and have a child in order to avoid the Evans curse.
Foreshadowing
Nina thinks the Evanses' house is strange and hideous, which foreshadows what we learn about the Evanses' line. This is reinforced by Mrs. Evans's strange tone when she asks Nina why she slept poorly in the house, wondering if the young woman had felt anything funny.
Understatement
“Coming back safe from Europe isn’t such an unusual feat now, is it?” (70) is an understatement because it is meant to sound a lot less serious and important than it actually is—an indictment of Marsden not fighting in the war in which Gordon died.
Allusions
“There’s the rub”: an allusion to Hamlet
Florence Nightingale: a famous British social reformer and nurse
“Stetit unus in arcem…” 77 Book IV of Marcus Manilius's Astronomica, lines 905-908
“Herr Freud”: a reference to Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalyst
Oedipus: the Greek man who killed his father and married his mother
Dido: a founder of Carthage in ancient Greece
Galahad: one of the knights of Arthur’s Round Table
Imagery
Most of the imagery is of stolen embraces, tortured conversations, embittered glances. These domestic dramas take place in confined spaces in order to emphasize how stuck and depressed most of the characters are with their lives.
Paradox
“Yes, he’s dead—my father—whose passion created me—who began me—he is ended. There is only his end living—his death.” (Nina, 90)
“You’re like the daughter of my sorrow! You’re closer to me now than ever Sammy could be!” (Mrs. Evans, 112)
“Charlie, what a perfect lover he would make for one’s old age!...what a perfect lover when one was past passion!...” (Nina, 180)
Parallelism
N/A
Personification
“...the war had really blown my heart and insides out!” (Nina, 95)
“It’s a queer house, Ned. There is something wrong with its psyche, I’m sure.” (Nina, 98)
“I’ve never married the word to life!” (Marsden, 179)
Use of Dramatic Devices
1. Aside
2. Stage directions
3. Monologue (mostly through the characters' internal asides)
