American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His plays are among the first to introduce into American drama the techniques of realism, associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, engaging in depraved behavior, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. Nearly all of his plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
Notable award(s): Nobel Prize in Literature (1936)&Pulitzer Prize for Drama (1920, 1922, 1928, 1957)
The First Man- Following the deaths of their two children, a couple swears never to have more. The husband, an anthropologist, buries himself in work; the wife is his assistant. Just before departing for a 5 year long expedition to China, the wife reveals she's pregnant.
The Hairy Ape (1922)
It is about a brutish, unthinking laborer known as Yank as he searches for a sense of belonging in a world controlled by the rich. At first Yank feels secure as he stokes the engines of an oceanliner, and is highly confident in his physical power over the ship's engines.
However, when the weak but rich daughter of an industrialist in the steel business refers to him as a "filthy beast," Yank undergoes a crisis of identity. He leaves the ship and wanders into Manhattan, only to find he does not belong anywhere—neither with the socialites on Fifth Avenue, nor with the labor organizers on the waterfront. Finally he is reduced to seeking a kindred being with the gorilla in the zoo and dies in the animal's embrace.
Anna Christie (1921) is the story of a former prostitute who falls in love, but runs into difficulty in turning her life around.
There isn't a lot of depth of character. The husband is monomaniacal, the wife is tired, the relatives are all petty and backbiting. The dialog is reasonable, given their characters.
