The Straw

About

O'Neill wrote The Straw in 1919 drawing on his own experience recovering from tuberculosis at a Connecticut sanatorium. The play follows Eileen Carmody, a young woman from an indifferent family, who finds love with a fellow patient — a newspaper reporter with literary ambitions — only to face abandonment as he recovers and she worsens. O'Neill's early naturalism is at full strength here: the institutional settings are rendered with documentary precision, and the emotional trajectory is merciless. The play was not produced until 1921, to mixed reception; it has since been valued as one of O'Neill's more affecting early works and an unusually candid autobiographical statement.