Meet Thomas Perkins, second engineer on the SS San Francisco. Perkins is a meek widower who, in spite of his engineering ability and good work, has never been promoted by his exploitative employer, the Ocean Steamship Company. Thomas is totally devoted to the company, and loves the ship’s engines more than life itself.
Meet Tom Perkins, Thomas’s son. Tom is a true believer in the anarchist group, The International Workers Union. Due to his rather privileged background and one year of college, Tom is determined to prove to the other IWU members that he is just as committed as they are and is willing to do dirty violent deeds to demonstrate his mettle. Tom’s other motivation toward violence is his love of a fair young lass; he wants to prove to her that he has guts. Tom hates his father, regardless of the fact that Thomas gave him everything and genuinely loves him. Tom tells his girlfriend that Thomas “represents everything I hate,” and rejects any thought that his father could have paternal feelings for him because “he’s scared of me.” Tom had worked for the Ocean Steamship Company as a cashier but was fired for distributing leaflets that encouraged the workers to strike. He’s proud of his firing, probably because he knows it will upset his dad when he finds out.
Meet Olga Tarnoff, Tom’s comrade in arms and lover. Olga is a dyed in the wool anarchist and will not even consider marriage or any other bourgeois trapping, in spite of Tom’s entreaties that they should be wed. Nonetheless, Olga loves Tom and is committed to him.
Tom, Olga, and the other members of the IWU want to stage a waterfront strike in Liverpool, but with war imminent, they are afraid that the workers will not be willing to participate, as patriotic fever is sweeping the countries of Europe. They decide that a demonstration of solidarity, blowing up the engines of the SS San Francisco, will light a fire under the workers. Tom is willing to do the deed, but only on the condition that the terrorist act occur when his father is on shore leave.
Two weeks before the planned destruction, Tom and Perkins have a brief chat at Perkins’s house. Tom is very mean to his father; berates him for being weak-willed and proclaims that he would blow up Perkins’s beloved engines if the IWU told him to. Perkins is horrified. Tom also tells his father about Olga and announces that the couple are living together and have no plans to marry, This upsets Perkins even more. The final blow is landed when Tom proudly tells his father that he lost his job and has no plans to seek reinstatement. Perkins is crushed, and Tom storms out of the house.
The fated day arrives, with Tom and the workers on the forecastle of the ship. The workers are in no mood to strike. Many are drunk and ornery. Two of them get in a fistfight. Tom tells them that they won’t get the benefits of a strike against the company if they fight among themselves, but the workers are unmoved. Olga arrives and Tom senses “something different” about her, but is blind to the obvious – she is pregnant with Tom’s child. She begs Tom to let a fellow IWU member, Whitely, dynamite the engines, as he has experience with explosives, and she doesn’t want Tom to get hurt. Tom insists on doing the deed anyway. Whitely shows up and announces that the dynamite is unavailable, so Tom suggests smashing the engines instead.
Whitely gives a rousing speech to the workers, who charge toward the engine room, hell bent on destruction. Perkins, doing some maintenance in the engine room, gets wind of the mutiny and retrieves a revolver from a uniform coat pocket. Perkins doesn’t know how to use the gun, but he manages to hold off the motely crew by threatening them with it. Tom bursts in and smashes one of the engine’s glass gauge faces. Perkins aims the gun in Tom’s general direction and accidently shoots Tom in the head.
The play concludes in a Liverpool hospital room a few weeks later. Tom is in a semi-vegetative state. The attending doctor and nurse discuss the mutinous event and its aftermath: Perkins publicly denied that Tom is his son and got a promotion for quelling the melee. Olga arrives and is heartbroken to see Tom in his miserable state. Perkins arrives soon thereafter and argues with Olga over who is responsible for Tom’s wretched condition, and who will care for him. The two compromise by agreeing that Tom and Olga will live in Perkins’s house and she will care for Tom and the baby. Perkins rushes out to tell the doctor of the decision, and Whitely enters with the news that the Germans have bombed an orphanage and that he will be joining the armed forces to fight for the Allies. Olga is disgusted with him and pledges allegiance to the workers’ cause. Tom, with effort, robotically speaks: “Long - live - the Revolution!” Olga puts her hands over her face in despair.
This play was written in 1915 but was not performed until 2000. The performance was panned by the critics. The work is not held in high regard by O’Neill scholars, as it skews heavily toward melodrama and poor character development. A glaring omission is any mention of Tom’s mother; Tom’s hatred for his father is not adequately explained. The general opinion is that the characters are rather cartoonish, and the plot is predictable and unsatisfying.
Nonetheless, The Personal Equation is interesting as a precursor to The Hairy Ape and Dynamo, with a pinch of The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night. The Tom character is said to be based on O’Neill himself, who dabbled in leftist politics as a youth and had serious issues with his own father, who in O'Neill's mind, Perkins resembles in certain ways.
In spite of the play’s shortcomings, it is well worth discussing. As theater critic Maida Castellun wrote in 1928, “Whether he writes a good or bad play, Eugene O’Neill never sinks into pleasant mediocrity.” Amen!
Join us on July 23 at 8:00 pm EDT for a discussion of this informative early work. I have been unable to find the text online, but the play is printed in the Library of America volume: O’Neill, Complete Plays 1913-1920.
