Thirst by Eugene O’Neill – Explanations and Short Answer Type Questions

Q. Mention four important elements in expressionism.

    1. A modern technique in painting.
2. Avant Garde technique
3. The way of asserting subjective perspective
4. The way of distorting realist vision.

Q. Mention some of the expressionist arts.

“To Make It New” – an essay by Ezra Pound, “The Scream” – a painting by Edvard Munch, Nietzche’s “Thus Spoke Zarathrustra”, Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”, “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman, Van Gogh’s painting – “The Rooftop” – all are the examples of expressionist art.

Q. Why are the characters in O’Neill’s Thirst nameless?

    The characters in O’ Neill‘s Thirst are nameless mainly because –

    i. Anonymity of the characters universalizes them.
ii. Their predicament represents the common human condition on earth.
iii. Their struggle for getting rescued is a Darwinian struggle for existence.

Q. Briefly introduce yourself with Thirst.

Thirst is a one-act play by Eugene O’Neill, a 20th Century American playwright who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936. Other plays by Neill are, The Emperor Jones, Strange Interlude, and, Mourning Becomes Electra among many others.

Thirst is an expressionist tragedy of three anonymous characters, the Gentleman, the Dancer and, the Mulatto Sailor. Published in 1914, the play is often considered as a dramatization of the Titanic massacre. The Titanic sank in 1912 and Thirst was written in 1913.

    The play involves existentialist reading. The predicament of the three characters and their thirst for survival manifest existentialist urge. The play borders on the Absurdist theatre. The condition and the context of dramatic struggle of the three characters resembles the plight of Estragon and Vladimir in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The perpetual waiting of the three characters is a Beckettian waiting. We can quote from Beckett to summarize the play: “No one comes, no one goes, nothing happens.”

Q. What are the three characters of Thirst referred?

    The three characters of Thirst – a Gentleman, a Dancer and a West Indian Mulatto Sailor represent the bourgeois, the art world and the working class respectively.

    The three characters are nameless because they represent the three prominent classes that constitute the society of man. As a result the anonymity of the characters implies their universal significance.

Q. What is the locale of the play?

    The central action of Thirst takes place on a white life raft drifting on an anonymous ocean. The lack of geographical identity of the setting implies universality.

Q. What do the sharks symbolize?

    The sharks moving in circle symbolize the cycle of fate. They represent the ‘memento mori’ i.e. the reminder of death.

Q. What does the sun symbolize in the play?

    O’Neill uses expressionist technique in portraying the landscape. The sun, repeatedly called ‘a great angry eye of God’ symbolizes cruelty and merciless indifference. Unlike its classical implication of life-giving light and warmth, the sun is a negative symbol in the play.

Q. What is a life-raft?

    Raft is a flat structure especially made from a plank of wood that floats on water. It is a kind of boat used in emergency exit of the passengers.

    The rising and falling of the raft symbolize vicissitude or the rise and fall of the human fate.

    The raft is a carnivalesque space where the social hierarchy does not operate. The gentleman, the sailor and the dancer are sailing on the same boat. Following Foucault, we may call the raft a heterotopia.

Q. ‘….glares down from straight overhead like a great angry eye of God.’ – why is the sun compared to a great angry eye of God?

    In the stage direction of Thirst, O’Neill described the sun in an expressionist manner by comparing it to a great angry eye of God. The tropical sun seemed to be angry and merciless because it emitted heat, scaring sunbeams. Like an angry God, it seemed to punish the three passengers on the life-raft.

Q. Why is the sailor called Mulatto?

    The term ‘Mulatto’ means ‘of mixed blood’. The word refers to an offspring of a white and a black-skinned (usually African) persons. The sailor in the play is a West Indian one of mixed blood.

Q. Describe the Mulatto Sailor.

    In the stage direction of Thirst, O’Neill gives minute and vivid descriptions of the three characters. The sailor is a West Indian Mulatto. He is in a blue uniform of sailor. “Union Mail Line” is written in red letters across the jersey. He is wearing rough shoes and his head is bare. When he speaks indolently, his voice sounds like drowsy humming. He is crooning a monotonous Negro song and watching the sharks.

Q. Describe the Gentleman.

    The Gentleman is a middle aged European, in an extremely creased and spoiled Evening dress. His white shirt is stained. The collar and the black tie are transformed into a pulp and a black ribbon respectively. His bald spot is burnt red by the sun. His moustache droops and the black dye has run of it to make a black line. His face is red and his lips are swollen. From time to time he is licking his lips with his blackened tongue.

Q. Describe the dancer.

    The dancer looks more bizarre than the sailor and the gentleman. She is lying with her face downward on the raft.

    She is in a dancer’s costume of black velvet, now spoiled completely. Her stockings look loose and baggy and her shoes swollen. She is wearing a diamond necklace. Her makeup is spoiled too. She is crying endlessly and hopelessly.

Q. “This silence is driving me mad” – who said this and why?

    The dancer cried the quoted statement in a fit of agony and frustration. By silence, she referred to the stifling silence looming largely before her. The silence of the gentleman and the sailor amidst the silent landscape of sea and the pitiless sky reminded her aloofness from the rim of civilization. She was out of humanity’s reach. She was reminded of death too. The silence seemed to be at all intolerable to the dancer.

    The dancer’s agonized speech marks extreme frustration and fear. She was in a despairing mood. (O’Neill underlines the dancer of loneliness and silence contrary to the traditional romantic longing for the same.)

Q. “Everywhere I look I see great crimson spots.” – who said this and why?

    The dancer traced the hallucinatory crimson spots everywhere. Evidently they were the spots of blood. Extreme starvation, thirst, and fear of death got manifested in the form of a hallucination. The expressionist vision of the dancer expresses her agony, fear and despair.

Q. “It is as if the sky was raining drops of blood” – who said this and why?

    Extreme hunger and thirst made the dancer long for rain. The absence of rain and the fear of death got mingled in her sub-conscious resulting in hallucination. She envisioned rain in the form of blood.

Q. What does ‘red’ or ‘blood’ symbolize in Thirst?

    Red is associated with life. It symbolizes the vitality of life. Besides it also symbolizes death because they were surrounded by sharks.

Q. “You are horrible” – who said this and why?

    The dancer rebuked the gentleman for recapitulating the traumatic experience of the horrible ship-wreck. She called it horrible for this reason.

Q. “But today everything is red” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman said this in response to the dancer’s speech that the sky was raining drops of blood.

    Everything appeared red to the gentleman because his mind was gripped with the thoughts of death. Red is associated with death in the play. Starvation and thirst caused delirious weakness. He envisioned everything red.

Q. “Talk to me about anything you please, but, for God’s sake, talk to me! I must not think! I must not think!” – who said this and why?

    Human voices prevent subconscious musing (thought). The dancer urged the gentleman to talk about anything so that she could forget the present danger of drifting on a raft, of the past fear – the ship-wreck. The gentleman’s voice would make her feel secure.

Q. “Water? Who’s got water?” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman and the dancer longed for water. Their conversation attracted the notice of the sailor. He turned and demanded water in the hope of getting some.

    The very mention of water made the sailor attentive who was otherwise indifferent. Water is a biological necessity. The three on the raft was surrounded by salty water but they could not drink a single drop. The irony of the situation constitutes the tragedy of man:

“Water, water everywhere
And all the boards did shrink
Water, water everywhere
Nor any drop to drink.”

Like Tantalus, they seemed to be condemned to be surrounded by water, eternally inaccessible. In “The Wasteland” water is used as a symbol of the agent of spiritual purification:

“If there were water
And no rock
If there were rock
And also water
And water
A spring
A pool among the rock”

    In O’Neill’s Thirst , water is not a symbol but a biological necessity that provides sustenance to life.”

Q. What does O’Neill mean by ‘dirge’?

    Dirge refers to a funeral song.

Q. Why was the sailor singing a Negro song?

    The Mulatto sailor was singing a folk song. It was a charm to keep the sharks away from him and the other two passengers on the raft. It was a superstition that the so called magical song could resist death.

    Evidently the sailor’s attempt to resist death by an ordinary folk song reflects the universal human tendency to keep death at a distance. Extreme fear of death makes man superstitious. But death is inevitable. In Sophocles, Leus sacrificed Oedipus to avoid his own death. Later, he was killed by Oedipus who was ignorant of Leus’s identity.

Q. “Oh, it is horrible!” – who says this? What has been called horrible here by the speaker?

    The dancer exclaimed that, the sharks circling the raft were horrible. She cried hysterically in absolute fear. The information of the gentleman, that the sharks were moving round the raft and might eat them frightened the dancer. She was mortified with the thought of sharks.

Q. “They are all cowards” – who is the speaker and why did the speaker say so?

    The gentleman said this in reply to the dancer’s query whether sharks eat man? The gentleman assured her with a false faith that the sharks are cowards and are afraid of touching a single person.

    The lie the gentleman told to assure the dancer that the sharks are not man eaters represents man’s tendency to forget death with fruitless acts. Absolute fear of death makes man deliberately oblivious to it but death looms everywhere, either in form of the sharks or in any other form. The gentleman’s lie would not stand for long.

Q. “I am afraid of him.” – who said this and why?

    The dancer said this in response to the gentleman’s comment that the sailor should be pitied for he had some verbal obstruction. The dancer replied that she did not pity him; rather she was afraid of him.

    The cause of fear from the Mulatto sailor is racial bias. It is her subconscious fear from all the black skinned people that makes her pass the comment.

Q. “That is foolish” – who said this and why?

    By ‘foolish’, the gentleman refers to the dancer’s fear from the Mulatto sailor. According to him it is the scorching heat that maddens the dancer to have such foolish thoughts.

Q. “I dreamed he had a knife in his hand” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman is the speaker here. His hallucination of a dagger held by the Mulatto sailor is an external projection of his racial fears. The gentleman’s racial prejudices constitute the imaginary knife. In Macbeth, the eponymous tragic hero saw an ‘air-borne dagger’. In A Passage to India, Adela fancied that she was molested by Dr. Aziz in one of the caves. This fancies are the children of heat of pressed brain.

    The gentleman’s vision of hallucinatory dagger held by the sailor functions as a powerful dramatic irony in the play. Towards the end the sailor will hold a dagger. The irony is Sophoclean as well.

Q. What is ‘sea reach’?

    Visible part of sea is called ‘sea reach’.

Q. “To wait and wait for something that never comes” – who said this and why?

    The dancer passed the comment after the Mulatto sailor had informed that there was no ship visible. The dancer sobbed hysterically for their fertile waiting for a ship. After the ship wreck, they boarded on a white raft. Since then, they were waiting for a ship. Their thirst for rescue i.e. thirst for life was not answered. They were caught in a Sisyphean struggle. Their condition was like the condition of Estragon and Vladimir in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. The two tramps waited forever fruitlessly for Godot.

    However, the waiting gives their existence. Their universal human condition of absurdist survival is not purposeless at all. They are alive because they wait.

Q. What do you mean by ‘bridge’?

    The upper platform of a ship on which a captain stands and gives direction for navigating the ship is called ‘bridge’.

Q. What is a ‘promenade deck’?

    Promenade deck is a luxurious deck or the upper part of a ship where first class passengers stroll about for relaxation and pleasure.

Q. Mention the dancer’s account of the captain.

    The dancer recapitulated the death of the captain. She informed the gentleman that she had seen him standing on the bridge, his face pale. He looked like a dead man. After a while he shot himself. The dancer recalled hoe courteous the captain was to her. He promised her to see her dance.

Q. “The dead do not pay” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman is the speaker here.

    He passed the comment after the dancer stated that the captain had shot himself and thus paid for his guilt.

    The gentleman implied that death cannot be a payment but an escape. The captain was guilty because he navigated the ship to an unknown untrodden track. Besides the ship wreck made him guilty. He committed suicide. According to the gentleman, the captain avoided payment by killing himself. He was cowardly and simply escaped the crisis.

    The gentleman’s speech dismisses the traditional notion that death promises an afterlife. But, it is evident that for the captain death has been a means of evading the ‘fitful fever’ of live:

Duncan is in his grave
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well

[Macbeth]

    We are also reminded of the ending of Owen’s “Strange Meeting” that death is a means of forgetting the painful reality: “Let us sleep now….”

Q. What is ‘banquet’?

    Banquet refers to a sumptuous dinner.

Q. What do you mean by ‘victual’?

    Victual refers to food and drink.

Q. What do you mean by ‘vicissitude’?

    The fluctuation of human fortune is meant by ‘vicissitude’.

Q. “Oh, the damned irony of it” OR “The joke that has been played on me” – who said this and why?

    The Gentleman is the speaker here (Thirst).

    The Gentleman passed the sarcastic comment after he had pulled out a card case accidentally from his pocket. The card case contained a menu card with names of victuals printed on it. It was the menu card of a souvenir banquet arranged in the honour of the Gentleman by United States Club of Buenos  Aires. The menu card contained the names of delirious victuals such as “Martini cocktails, soup, sherry, fish, burgundy, chicken, champaigne”. The ‘irony’ or the ‘joke’ the gentleman spoke of refers to the sudden vicissitude – the reversal of his condition. Just a few days ago he was enjoying savoury from extreme starvation: ‘we are dying for a crust of bread, for a drink of water!’ The tragedy of the gentleman is the reversal of situation.

    The gentleman’s speech is wrought with tragic overtones. The sudden reversal of situation – from the luxurious banquet to extreme starvation results in the tragic fall of the gentleman. The gentleman’s tragedy is not Aristotlean but it underlines tragic fall. The reference to the ‘crust of bread’ and ‘a drink of water’ alludes to the starvation of Jesus for forty days (Luke 4.2). After the starvation Jesus resisted the temptation of the devil. But the gentleman’s starvation is not redemptive like that of Jesus.

Q. What is Martini cocktail?

    It is a kind of cocktail of gin and French vermouth.

Q. What is Sherry?

    Sherry is a white wine.

Q. What is Champaigne?

    Champaigne is a white wine made from grapes.

Q. What is Burgundy?

    Burgundy is a red wine distilled in Burgundy.

Q. “God! God! What a joke to play on us.” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman complained vainly to God for the sudden reversal of situation. Just a few days ago he enjoyed sumptuous meal at a banquet and now suffered from extreme starvation. The tragic reversal is sudden. It borders on the absurdist notion of a Godless world where people wait for Godot in vain. The gentleman’s appeal is unanswered. The indifference of God to man’s suffering is poignant: 

“Given the existence as uttered forth in the public works of Puncher and Wattmann of a personal God quaquaquaqua with white beard quaquaquaqua outside time without extension who from the heights of divine apathia divine athambia divine aphasia loves us dearly with some exceptions for reasons unknown….”

[Lucky’s Tirade, Waiting for Godot]

qua => Existence; Apathia => Indifference; Athambia => Who cannot be disturbed (Imperturbability); Aphasia => Silence

Q. “The very sight of it is a mockery” – who said this and why?

    The dancer said this. She referred to the sight of the menu card. She called it a ‘mockery’ because the list of delicious victuals on the menu card mocked the suffering due to extreme starvation of the Dancer, the Gentleman, and the Sailor on a white raft.

Q. What is a ‘salon’?

    Room for entertainment, dance, music etc. is called salon.

Q. “It is so with me” – who said this and why?

    By the comment quoted above, the Dancer implied that her mind preserved an insignificant remark: “I shall be late, I must cable! I can never make it”. The remark was passed by a poor little man during the ship wreck.

Q. What does ‘cable’ refer to in Thirst by Eugene O’Neill?

    ‘Cable’ refers to ‘send a telegram’.

Q. “I shall be late. I must cable. I can never make it.” – who said this and why?

    The dancer quoted the speech of a fat little man who was moving over his broken appointment. Evidently the man was out of his mind. Extreme fear and anxiety unhinged his brain. In a delirious state of frenzy he uttered the quoted speech.

Q. What is a bulkhead?

    Bulkhead refers to the partition that separates one compartment from another in a ship. The gentleman referred to the bulkhead while recapitulating the horrible crash.

Q. What is a stateroom?

    A stateroom is a special room for the first class passengers. It is a kind of large cabin. A first class passenger can lodge in a stateroom privately.

Q. “The whole thing is a horrible nightmare in my brain” – narrate the episode on how the gentleman came on the raft in your own words.

    While conversing with the dancer the gentleman recapitulated the recent past – the crash, his struggle for rescue, and success at finding out the raft. After the crash had come, the passengers were thrown forward and into the ocean. The gentleman managed to board a boat but it was swamped due to overload. He swam and tried to board another boat. But he was beaten off by others with the oars. The second boat turned over too a moment later. He was surrounded by people gargling and struggling to get rescued. He traced a trail of phosphorescence that was a marker of the sharks. He swam desperately with horror behind him. After sometimes, he clutched the white raft and climbed on it.

    The gentleman’s struggle to save his life represents man’s struggle for existence. Surrounded with death, man veinly struggles to protect himself. Man’s struggle for existence ends in death. But, the Sisyphean struggle is what defines man on earth. We may say following Camus that we must think that Sisyphus is happy.

Q. “What pitiful creatures we are” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman comments on the universal human misery. Man is a pitiful creature on earth. Every man struggles for existence and dies. Man tries hard to forget death (thanatos) by celebrating life (eros). The gentleman’s speech underlines the absurdist philosophy that human life is an absurdity itself.

Q. “You lied to me” – who lied to whom and why?

    The gentleman lied to the dancer about the sharks. He told her that the sharks surrounding their raft would not eat them because they did not eat man.

    The gentleman lied to console the dancer and alleviate her fears from the sharks.

Q. “Sharks or no sharks – the end is the same” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman passed the comment after the dancer had rebuked him for lying about the sharks.

    The gentleman implied that shark or no shark, death would come all the same.

    The gentleman’s speech is a philosophical statement on the universal human condition. Man is destined to die. The sharks in the play are the representatives of death. Their presence reminds the passengers on the raft on their impending death. They are the reminder of death (memento mori). The gentleman’s speech sums up the absurdist philosophy that the very human condition on earth is an absurdity. Man’s struggle is a Sisyphean one like Vladimir and Estragon waiting for Godot, the passengers on the raft wait for rescue, but in vein.

Q. “I do not know” – who said this and why?

    The sailor told the gentleman that he did not know whether the second officer had sent the dancer and him on the white raft. The moment the dancer informed the gentleman that the second officer loved loved her and he must have kissed her, the gentleman concluded that the raft was arranged by that man. He disregarded his duty of saving many passengers by sending the dancer alone on the raft excepting the sailor.

    The gentleman’s tendency to find a cause for an event is a common human tendency. The sailor’s denial to confirm the dancer’s claim undermines the romantic story of the second officer loving her.

Q. What do you mean by ‘dream-fire’?

    It means ‘torture of nightmare’.

Q. “I must die out here on a raft like a mad dog” – who said this and why?

    The dancer passed the comment to assert the sudden vicissitude of her fate. She compared her misery to the misery of a mad dog. After years of struggle, she was returning to home with fame, success, and money – the life itself. But the crash topsyturvied everything. On the white raft she was suffering with the gentleman and the sailor. She was dying like a mad dog for a drop of water. Misery can reduce man down to the unhappy lot of the animals. King Lear must aptly be quoted:

Q. “Is this the end, oh God?” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman uttered the speech of protest against the so called injustice to him. After many years of extreme labours he was returning home on his first vacation. But the  sweet homecoming turned into a fatal one after the ship-wreck. He veinly protested to God. The indifference of God to human predicament echoes a Calvinistic outlook. The tragedy of the gentleman is an absurdist one. The reference to blindness resonates with the motif of blindness in King Lear. But in O’Neill’s play it is God who is blind and not the gentleman. The suffering of the gentleman undermines the Aristotelean philosophy of poetic justice. He suffers for nothing, no hamartia of his own. The gentleman’s tragedy is the universal tragedy of man; his labour is a Sisyphean labour.

Q. “See! An Island!” – who said this and why?

    The dancer envisioned an island nearby. Her thirst for water and rescue resulted in the discovery of a Utopian space. The fabled coral island was visible in front of her. The island is a hallucinatory island just as the air-borne dagger in Macbeth.

Q. Give an example of dramatic irony from Thirst.

    “Nothing but a red sea and a red sky” – this is an example of dramatic irony as well as expressionist speech.

Q. “I cannot see it any more. Yet I must see it. I will see it!” – who said this and why?

    The dancer is the speaker here. Her vision of the island disappeared tantalizing her infinitely. She envisioned a green island and a clear stream running into the sea. Needless to say, the thirst for water resulted in her vision. It was a mirage  and life. Water is an emblem of life. Her reference of water running over the stones reminds one of the following lines:

“And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock”

– T.S.Eliot, The Wasteland

Water symbolizes salvation as well like the red rock in The Wasteland. The dancer’s resolution to see the island again forms the locus of her existence. In the Godless world life can sustain life with hope. The dancer’s speech hints at her growing delirium.

Q. “He may have. He may have.” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman was not sure that the Mulatto sailor had some water hidden. He launched imaginary charges against the sailor of stealing and hiding water. Evidently the gentleman was led by his racial prejudices to believe that the sailor had some water hidden. He called him a pig. Extreme crisis and suffering removed the mask of civility. The gentleman became vindictive racially.

    He said this in reply to the dancer’s query whether the sailor had some water hidden.

Q. “We will kill him then. He deserves to be killed.” – who said this and why?

    The dancer said this under the feet of delirious frenzy. The information that the sailor must have some water hidden triggered a vindictive desire in her. She wanted to kill the sailor for the imaginary water he was supposed to be hiding. Morality ceases to operate at the time of crisis. The dancer’s speech is self-contradictory. She called the sailor a murderer for stealing water and pushing them towards sure death. But her charge was imaginary. Her vindictive desire for killing the sailor surely proves her murderous intent. It is her racial prejudice that appropriates the killability of the sailor.

Q. “He would laugh at me” – who would laugh at whom?

    The gentleman told the dancer that the Mulatto sailor would laugh at him if he would try to kill the sailor.

    The sailor would laugh at the gentleman because the gentleman had no physical strength even to stand up. As a result, his attempt to kill the sailor would be laughable.

Q. What do you mean by ‘savage’?

    In the colonial world-view the colonized is often called ‘savage’ i.e. uncivilized and barbarous person. Orientalist ideologies attacked civilization, light with the west and savagery, darkness with east. At the time of crisis the wild self of both the dancer and the gentleman gets exposed.

Q. “Do you think I am a fool?” – who said this and why?

    The dancer asked the rhetorical question quoted above to imply that she was not a fool to part with her necklace for a sip of water. As the gentleman advised her to sell her diamond necklace for a drink of water from the sailor, the dancer expressed her reluctance to do so. Her love for the petty mundane possessions is exposed here. The diamond necklace represents the material world, the world of mundane attachment. She was blinded by the sparkle of the necklace and did not realize that the the necklace was not more valuable than her life. The dancer’s fondness for the necklace undermines the gentleman’s claim that the sailor and “his people are very fond of such things”.

Q. “For my part, I would sell my soul for a drop of water” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman is the speaker here. He suggested that the dancer should sell her necklace to the sailor in exchange for a drink of water. When the dancer declined to do so, the gentleman passed the comment. He suggested that he was ready sell his soul for a drink of water.

    The gentleman’s speech reminds us Marvell’s Doc. Faustus is which Faustus sold his soul to the devil for 20 years for absolute happiness. But in O’Neill’s play the gentleman’s speech does not presuppose any tragic outcome because the gentleman is already facing the tragedy of life. The absurdity of human fate is such that man can suffer without any reason. The Pythonesque aspect of human life surpasses mere diabolism.

Q. “Think of the water he has got. Offer it to him.” – who said this and in which context?

    The gentleman advised the dancer to offer the diamond necklace to the Mulatto sailor. The gentleman’s suggestion to do so exposes his philosophical nature to realize that water is more important than diamond necklace.

Q. “The pig! The pig! The black dog!” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman called the Mulatto sailor names after the sailor failed to give water to the dancer. The gentleman’s words are verbal outcome of his racial prejudice. It is the crisis that uncorked at the core. From the very beginning both the gentleman and the dancer called the sailor by various animal names. The different animal names imply that the sailor was animalistic. Such allegation is replete with racial prejudices.

Q. “Dance! Dance, Salome! I will be the orchestra. He will be the gallery.” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman taunted the dancer by encouraging her sarcastically to dance. Incidentally, Salome figures in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew in the Bible. Salome was the daughter of Herodias, whom Herod married. Originally Herodias was the wife of Philip, the brother of Herod. John the Baptist strongly opposed the immoral union. Once Salome had pleased Herod with her dance. Now she demanded the head of John the Baptist in reward for her dance performance, decreed to behead John the Baptist. The gentleman in Thitst seemed to echo Herod’s speech in Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. The Biblical allusion to Salome has a metaphorical parallel to the context of the gentleman’s speech. The gentleman mistook the dancer to be getting ready to please the sailor just as Salome pleased Herod. The dancer’s reward would be water just as Salome’s was the head of John. The allusion has an ironic twist as well. Salome’s dance brought death, where as the dancer’s would life (water).

Q. “I still have one chance. It has never failed me yet.” – who is the speaker? What is the ‘one chance’ referred to here?

    The dancer in O’Neill’s Thirst is the speaker here.

    By ‘one chance’ she meant the chance of obtaining water from the sailor by offering her body to him.

    She resolved to seduce the sailor and thus to persuade him to give her a little share of water. The temptation of the flesh was ever fruitful for the dancer. It had never failed her.

    But the dancer’s ‘one chance’ of getting water by seducing the sailor failed because the sailor had no water. O’Neill seems to undermine the moral that money and women cannot but everything. The hunger and thirst of the stomach are stronger than sexual hunger:

“…I felt the hunger there,
The other one, the fish slithering, turning inside”

Jayanta Mahapatra, “Hunger”

Q. “You look terrible! You are hideous!” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman passed the comment disgusted with the dancer’s looks – the caricature of a formerly beautiful woman. The gentleman implied that the dancer looked appalling. Her mad attempt to look beautiful in misery failed terribly.

    The gentleman’s speech undermines narcissism.

Q. “Give it to me! Give it to me!” – who said this and why?

    The dancer demanded water to the sailor in a feet of fury and desperation. She became furious after her attempt to seduce the sailor had failed. The sailor said with measured emphasis that he had no water. The dancer’s hollow faith and prejudice that the sailor was defying her despite having water, made her delirious and paranoiac.

Q. “They were just beyond my reach” – who said this and why?

    The gentleman dreamed of great tumblers full of ice water but those tumblers were beyond his reach. H tried in vein to get one of them.

    The gentleman’s dream echoes the predicament of Tantalus who was cursed to stay ever thirsty. As he moved towards water, the water receded.

Q. How did the dancer die?

    The dancer’s death in O’Neill’s Thirst involves grotesque and bizarre (strange) breakdown. Minutes before her death her brain was unhinged for extreme starvation and prolonged suffering. Her paranoia leading to a grotesque dance (danza grotesca) on the drifting raft was horrible. In her delirium, she mistook the raft for a stage and danced like a marionette pulled by invisible strings. The tempo of her movement increased and went beyond her control. Her bodice hung down in back and she became almost naked to the waist. Her breasts were withered and shrunken by starvation. She kicked frenziedly in the air as if she were defying her last hope in Eternal providence. She fell back on the raft. A shudder ran over her whole boddy. A crimson foam appear on her lips. Her eyed glazed. Finally the wild stare left her eyes. Evidently, she was dead.

    The dancer’s death is preceded by her grotesque dance. Evidently she had lost her reason. Like a schizophrenic patient, she re-enacted an episode from the dead past. O’Neill fused elements of the grotesque to make her death gruesome. The dancer’s death is obviously not a poetic justice nor the catastrophe of a tragic hero. O’Neill has significantly deviated from the Aristotelian theatre. The dancer’s predicament and final death borders on the theatre of the absurd reminding us of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern’s insignificant death. We are also reminded of Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking: “Out out damned spot!”

Q. “My God! She is dead! Poor girl! Poor girl!” – how did the gentleman react after the death of the dancer?

    Initially, the gentleman did not realize that the dancer was dead. He was mistaken to think that she had fainted. After examining her heart he was shocked to see that the dancer was dead. The gentleman expressed deep sympathy and despair over her death.

Q. “We shall eat. We shall drink.” – explain.

   The sailor said the words in a fit of cannibalistic frenzy. The sailor implied that he and the gentleman would survive on the dead body of the dancer. From the very beginning of the play the sailor was indifferent to the happening around him. He resorted to some superstitious Negro song under the fixed belief that it would keep the sharks away. Shark or no shark, death came all the same. The dancer’s death seemed to revive the sailor and renewed his thirst for life. He unsheathed a sharp knife and grinned monstrously. He wanted to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the dancer.

    Any allegation of racism against O’Neill is supercilious because the momentary flare of cannibalistic desire in the Negro sailor is an outcome of extreme suffering, starvation, and thirst. O’Neill underlines that hunger and thirst can drive man to strange extremes. The gentleman is incapable of such cruel desire because he is more disciplined and restrained with the ethics of civility. Besides, he is not as strong as the sailor. The sailor’s apparent cruelty is but a momentary fit. His calm resignation is evident in the following speech: ‘one of us had to die’. The portrayal of the sailor’s character is more realistic than that of the other two because, natural behaviour is not contaminated with ethics of civility.

Q. Describe the death of the gentleman and the sailor.

After the gentleman had pushed the body of the dancer into the water to escape the sailor’s cannibalistic cruelty, the Mulatto in ‘disappointed rage’ drove his knife into his breast. The gentleman rose to his feet with a shriek of agony. As he fell backward into the sea he clutched the neck of the sailor’s jersey. The gentleman fell into the sea followed by the sailor.

Q. Comment on the diamond necklace.

    The diamond necklace is an important stage prop. in Thirst. The dancer was fond of it because it was gifted to her by an old duke. The dancer’s greed for mundane possessions was crystallized into the diamond necklace as she hesitated to offer it to the sailor for a drink of water. At the end of the play, the necklace was left glittering on the raft in the blazing sunshine. After all these passengers on the raft had died and gone. O’Neill universalizes the absurdity of man’s existence on earth. The inevitability of death and the meaninglessness of human life are also underlined. Evidently the necklace represents man’s emotional bond with the mundane, the temporary but glittering world.