The Straw

The Straw by Eugene O'Neill is a play which chronicles the relationship of Eileen Carmody and Stephen Murray; two patients in a sanatorium who are undergoing treatment for tuberculosis.

A meditation on the nature of love and human companionship, the drama begins with a doctor's grim pronouncement that Eileen has fallen ill with tuberculosis and must be kept as an inpatient within the Hill Farm Sanatorium. Eileen is engaged to a local man named Fred Nicholls, who sympathizes with her plight but refuses to kiss her on the lips.

The latter stages of the play are set almost entirely within the Hill Farm Sanatorium. By stages, Eileen grows closer to Stephen Murray - a young writer also afflicted with tuberculosis - and their bond of friendship grows. Eileen soon begins to harbor feelings of love for the sensitive Murray, and a conflict ensues between her betrothed who suspects her heart is with another man.

Considered semi-autobiographical by those who followed Eugene O'Neill's life, The Straw has been variously praised for its message and an ending graced with profound epiphany, but criticized for its difficult stage directions. It is a quintessential specimen of the novelistic form which O'Neill favored in his plays. In the years since its publication in 1922, various scholars have pondered The Straw's philosophical overtones, in particular the conflicts between the determinism of the characters and the physical realities of their ailments.