Rob's eloquence, however, is subverted by its characteristic dependence on elusive abstractions such words as beauty, mystery and secret intimate the essentially vaporous nature of his dream and undermine Rob's articulateness by implying the ultimate unknowableness of human motivation and of life in general. A similarly worded assertion understandably causes Ruth Atkins to exclaim, "You tell things so beautifully" (III, 90).
SCHEICK of the freedom of great wide spaces, the joy of wandering on and onin quest of the secret which is hidden over there, beyond the horizon" (III, 85). In the first act Rob may wrestle with the vague impulse behind his dream - "There's something calling me"- and protest that he cannot explain it,' but in fact he does speak of it exuberantly and eloquently: "it's just Beauty that's calling me, the beauty of the far otT and unknown, the mystery and spell of the East which lures me in the books I've read, the need 293 294 WILLIAM J. The difference between Rob's initial articulateness when speaking of his dream and the truncated nature of his last remarks should be an important consideration when assessing the final scene.
#Last horizon ending how to
Specifically, Rob's waning capacity to articulate his dream,' read in the light of that dream's origin and of the death motif in the play, not only anticipates the conclusion but also informs the audience how to respond to it. Chief among the problems is the ending of the play, which Emil Roy typically describes as burdened with "unresolved tensions," with "a cluster of irreconcilable impressions.'" Doris Falk objects to the explicitness of the final scene as well as to the way its "tragic affirmation lacks convincing logical steps"' and Frederic Carpenter similarly complains of the play's uncertain and confusing conclusion, remarking that this defect probably derived from O'Neill's vacillating attitude toward Robert Mayo'> Such observations, among others of identical nature, indicate that in some sense Beyond the Horizon is indeed marred but I would like to suggest that however unsatisfying the final scene may be, it does in fact follow from what has preceded it in the play. SCHEICK IN GENERAL, CRITICS of Eugene O'Neill's plays agree that in spite of its importance in 1920, Beyond the Horizon is a flawed work.
The Ending of O'Neill's Beyond the Horizon WILLIAM J. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
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