Summary
Act Nine
The scene is set a few months later on the terrace of the Evanses’ Long Island estate. Madeline and Gordon are there, grieving the death of Evans. Gordon is very handsome, boyish, and likeable, but possessive of a smugness. Madeline is the same as prior, if not a touch more maternal.
Gordon is blaming his mother for not doing a better job of taking care of his father in his illness. He can’t stop himself from claiming that maybe she cared too much for Darrell instead. Madeline is surprised. He wonders if the two of them will get married now, and assumes his father would want him to wish them well. Madeline encourages him to be supportive, as people cannot help whom they love.
Marsden arrives, looking younger and fresher than he has in a long time. He sees the young lovers embracing and condemns them in his mind, then shifts to wondering what Sam meant to Darrell’s son. Finally he lands on thoughts of Nina, which give him joy.
Marsden goes back inside, having come out to pick roses for Nina, and then Madeline goes inside as well. Alone, Gordon wonders if it is wrong to be happy with Madeline after his father has died. He tries to come to terms with his mother, who clearly loved Darrell more but devoted her life to Sam.
Nina and Darrell come outside. She looks worse than ever and Darrell also is much aged. Gordon is cool to them both. Nina thinks of how Sam was perfectly happy and sane and peaceful at the end. She decides she will live in Father’s old home and Charlie will visit her and talk about the old days.
Darrell is annoyed at how rude Gordon is being to his mother, and wants to jolt him out of his “stupid self-complacency!...if he knew the facts about himself, he wouldn’t be sobbing sentimentally about Sam…” (215).
Gordon mentions that Sam’s will left Darrell’s Station a half-million for research. Astonished, Darrell wants to refuse the money. Gordon sneers that he ought to take it, and Nina chastises him. He replies that he has more to say, Darrell asks him to share, Nina laughs, and Gordon slaps Darrell across the face when he gets up to protect Nina. Nina cannot help herself from screaming that he is hurting his father, and Gordon misunderstands and says he is sorry, as he knows his father would be upset with him and hitting Darrell is like hitting Sam.
Gordon is penitent and confesses he’s always suspected the two of them loved each other but has decided it is okay because that is what happens sometimes, and he knows his mother was a true wife to his father and Darrell was a true friend. He hopes they will be happy together.
This seems to be the moment to say something, but neither Nina nor Darrell do. Gordon says goodbye to them and leaves. Darrell tells her that he is leaving her to Charlie now; she ought to marry him if she wants peace. But he will ask her to marry him first and she will refuse, and they can feel good about that. She agrees.
Marsden enters and sits with her. She tells him she thinks she loves him and he smiles that he has been waiting for her his whole life. They decide to get married, and Marsden dreamily starts planning the wedding and their life. They bid Darrell goodbye.
Before he leaves, they hear Gordon taking off in his small plane. Nina worries he will not look back at her but he does circle back and wave, which thrills her. Darrell is sad because that is his son too, which he screams out into the din and then tells himself he has done his duty.
Nina slumps down, claiming her eyes are growing dim and everyone is lost and gone. She does not know where Father and Charlie are, and thinks Gordon her son is “dead” in his new life the way Gordon Shaw was dead.
Marsden holds her and counsels her to forget her life with the Gordons, to treat it as a mere interlude. She dreamily agrees, calling it a strange interlude. They talk about how lovely their life will be. When Nina calls him “Father” he instinctively winces, but then sees her peaceful face and decides he is okay with it.
Analysis
The play comes to an end with a modicum of happiness for all involved, but that happiness is based on, among other things, death, ignorance, and resignation. Sam dies happy, albeit too young and convinced that material success is all one needed in life. Darrell gives up on Gordon ever knowing he is really the young man’s father and gives up on Nina for real. Gordon is also happy, but it is a facile ignorant happiness that stems from not having to think too deeply about anything in life. Nina gives up on her son and on Darrell and settles for a peaceful but passionless life with Marsden. Marsden comes off best of all, winning Nina and a sexless marriage, but it has taken him decades to do so.
What do critics make of this ending? Donald Heiney sees it as mostly positive, writing that Nina “concludes that the middle years of life, the years of passion, frustration, and bitterness, are only a ‘strange interlude’ between the happiness of childhood and the serenity of old age.”
Bette Mandl sees it as especially positive for Marsden: “All passion spent, [the characters] are beyond the intensities that dominated their lives. Marsden, clearly still reflecting on his rivals, knows he has triumphed over them in his way and so can rest now.”
Thierry Dubost also believes “the ending of the play shows some first steps toward happiness.” He explains the difference between contentment, which is what Evans had, and actual happiness, and concludes that “if O'Neill's project were to call attention to the fact that the pursuit of happiness could not be reached when people understood this quest only in personal and selfish terms, he also pointed out that once selfish desires were abandoned and unity with one's partner or with the world as a whole was reached, there was room for a more optimistic vision of life. Showing his characters deprived of greed, he gives the audience a hint: there is indeed a way to happiness, but it can only be found once one has renounced selfish urges, which lead first to delusion and eventually to disillusion.”
And finally, Tamsen Wolff considers the ineffectualness and impotence of the final “revelation” of Gordon’s true parentage, writing “O'Neill completely undermines the conventionally climactic revelation of paternity, that hallmark of nineteenth-century melodrama. When in the final moments of the play Nina bursts forth with the twenty-year-old guilty secret that Darrell is Gordon's father, Gordon understands her literal identification only as a figure of speech. The declaration, shunted off into the final moment of the play, has no impact on the action and reveals nothing. Here, O'Neill both relies on the appearance of traditional dramatic suspense and makes a mockery of it.” We’ve been waiting for the big reveal the entire play and while we do get it, it is a complete dud. Perhaps O’Neill was trying to say that such moments don’t need to happen; after all, this is a play where every single second seems fraught with drama due to the presence of the character’s thoughts.
