“HOPING AGAINST HOPE”: A MARXIST STUDY OF CAPITALIST FATALISM IN EUGENE O’NEILL’S WARNINGS

Abstract

‘"Hoping against Hope”: A Marxist Study of Capitalist Fatalism in Eugene O’Neill’s Warnings’ presents the problem of a lower-class family, the Knapps, who suffer under the fatalistic capitalist system. The Knapps, as a part of the society, and the society as a whole, become potential victims of the capitalists and the bourgeoisie who work only for their own interests even if on the account of the poor. In such a socio-economic system, human beings are viewed as productive machines and possible consumers. Once they become old or disabled, they will be dismissed and replaced by younger ones. The paper, therefore, aims to analyse and interpret the above-mentioned themes in O’Neill’s Warnings in light of Marxist criticism and class conflicts between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It is concluded that as long as capitalism is solely based on material benefits and is negligent of humanitarian concerns, disasters befalling the proletariat in particular and the whole society in general will be an inevitable fate. Witnessing the calamities that inflict the lower-class people in the play could alert readers/audience, including the capitalists and the bourgeoisie, to the detrimental consequences of embracing a purely materialistic worldview.