Character of the Dancer in O’Neill’s Thirst

O Neill‘s Thirst centers on the struggle of three shipwreck victims to survive on a small white raft adrift on a “glassy” sea. The play opens with three passengers, the Gentleman, the Dancer, and a Mulatto sailor, stranded on the sea and drifting aimlessly on a life raft (ironically the forbearer of death) after ship crash. The Dancer represents the upper class white world, and the world of art. She is materialistic, having been more concerned with saving her worldly goods – a diamond necklace – than with her own survival.

    In the play the Dancer is perhaps the most pathetic character. Her suffering is the worst. Appalled by the hopeless perpetual drifting encircled with sharks, she turns to God: “My God, this is horrible to wait and wait for something that never comes.” But she cannot escape the curse that hovers over O’ Neill’s imaginary world. Suffering as a secular equivalent to the idea of Original Sin, the inevitable outcome of the human condition.She is afraid of silence: “Oh, this silence! I cannot bear this silence. Talk to me about anything you please but, for God’s sake, talk to me! I must not think! I must not think!”

    The dancer is a dreamer – a born romantic. She was of greater hope for a successful life after a struggling career. She wanted to marry a duke because he was wealthy and she would thereby become a duchess. But her romantic longing for ordering her life fell to pieces the moment her ship wrecked. She offered the Mulatto her necklace for the sake of water. Like Salome, she danced as she has danced for the nobleman millionaire and all degrees of gentlemen. She even proclaims, “I have not loved any of them as I will love you”.In order to quench her thirst she is cheapening her honor. However, her attempts fail and she dies a pathetic death.

    In Thirst the Dancer anticipates both Nina Leeds and the existential despair of Harry Hope’s universe: “My God, this is horrible to wait and wait for something that never comes”. In a sense, she demands a sort of rhetorical masking of her hopelessness, begging for a life-lie that exists only in the articulation of it.

    In fact, the Dancer’s first words are “My God! My God! The silence is driving me mad!” She continues to cry out and invoke her Christian God’s name throughout her ordeal, doing so six more times before insanity and dehydration claim her. The Dancer’s shrieks are telling, for in them she is calling upon the power of language to block out the reality that us slowly driving her mad. Water might be kept hidden by the Mulatto the other two accused off. The Dancer who is of greater hope for a better life next in store, dreams of a success after struggling career. She is with the hope of a catastrophic somersault from death to life. She is offering the Mulatto the necklace for the sake of water. She is most probably offering her flesh to the Mulatto. Like Salome, she dances as she had danced for the noblemen millionaire and all degrees of gentlemen. She even proclaims, “I have never loved any of them as I will love you”. In order to quench her thirst she is cheapening her honour.  However, her attempts fail and she dies a pathetic death.

    For a greater symbolic stance it can be said that we are in the love with the Dancer’s finery and beauty; After the Dancer’s death, the transformation of the West Indian Mulatto to cannibalism is justifiable as after the death of finery and socialism each human being turns savage. In the greatest psychologically traumatized a situation our transformation to savagery is a stunning truth. Oscillating and vacillating in her thought the Dancer most probably becomes a psychic explanation of a person better hypnotized smuggled to the ray of life denied. Here is the life of agony, of thirst, of lifelessness, of hopelessness, of metamorphosis from life to death.The same is true for other two characters.