Скачать или смотреть Anna Christie by Eugene O’Neill | Characters, Summary, Analysis

Anna Christie was a drama by the American playwright Eugene O’Neill that won him his second Pulitzer Prize for Drama in the year 1922. It is a four-act play that was first performed in 1920. Unlike his previous play (Beyond The Horizon) which had a tragic ending, Anna Christie ends on a promising happy note. Yet, the titular character and the protagonist of the play represent the marginalized weak section of society.

Characters:

Anna Christopherson (Anna Christie) is a young girl who was abandoned by her father at the age of five. She decides to meet her father who is a sea Captain. Chris C. Christopherson (Old Chris) is her father. Mat is a young man who is among the rescued people from a shipwreck. He comes close to Anna. Johnny the Priest is the barkeeper in whose bar, Anna reunites with her estranged father after many years. Marthy is a grown-up woman, the current girlfriend of Chris. She shares a barge with Chris.

Summary of Anna Christie

The play begins as Anna Christie, a young girl knocks on the door of a bar. Chris is a barge captain who is having some drinks in the same bar. He is well known to the barkeeper Johnny the Priest and shows him a letter that he recently got. He says that this letter is from his estranged daughter whom he hadn’t seen since she was five years old. He says that since he used to be on the sea most of the time, his wife decided to live on a farm in Minnesota with her family members, and Chris never visited them there. He discusses the matter of the letter with Johnny the Priest. His daughter Anna is coming to New York City to meet him. Chris is a bit nervous about it as he hadn’t seen his daughter for years and he doesn’t know how to react. He is also worried that he isn’t leading a settled life. As Chris leaves the bar, Anna enters in. She is a confident girl who reveals herself as a tough cynical prostitute. She meets Mathy at the bar and soon the two become friendly with each other. Marthy is the girlfriend of Old Chris but Anna doesn’t know that. She reveals her reason to visit New York City to Marthy. She informs that the brothel she was working for in Saint Paul was arrested. She was given a choice of freedom if she leaves the town. She was feeling a bit ill so she decided to take a leave and visited New York City where her father lives. She is planning to stay and rest with her father for a while. She further reveals her past to Marthy and says that she doesn’t expect much from her father because she hasn't seen him since she was five. She informs her how her mother took her to a farm to live with her family where one of Christie’s cousins raped her. To save herself from further exploitation, she chose to run away to Saint Paul. She got some help in the new town and got a job as a nanny. However, she did not like caring for children and became a prostitute instead.
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