How we cite our quotes: (Name of Play, Act #)
Quote #1
SETH: I believe anything you tell me to believe. I ain't been with the Mannons for sixty years without learning that. Ain't you noticed this Brant reminds you of someone in looks?
LAVINIA: Yes. I have--ever since I first saw him--but I've never been able to place who--Who do you mean?
SETH: Your Paw, ain't it, Vinnie?
LAVINIA: Father? No! It can't be! Yes! He does--something about his face--that must be why I've had the strange feeling I've known him before--why I've felt Oh! I won't believe it! You must be mistaken, Seth! That would be too--! (Homecoming, Act 1)
That strange feeling…Lavinia's starting to feel fate creeping up on her in the person of Adam Brant aka Adam Mannon. It's our first hint that something's rotten with this family's history. O'Neill writes this sequence in a way that lets us know that it's really important information that's going to have serious repercussions.
Quote #2
BRANT: You're so like your mother in some ways. Your face is the dead image of hers. And look at your hair. You won't meet hair like yours and hers again in a month of Sundays. I only know of one other woman who had it. You'll think it strange when I tell you. It was my mother. (Homecoming, Act 1)
You can almost hear the crash of the organ music. Act 1 of Homecoming does a great job of setting up the foreshadowing and sense of inevitability that something weird is destined to go down in this family.
Quote #3
BRANT: I thought, by God, I'll take her from him and that'll be part of my revenge! And out of that hatred my love came. It's damned queer isn't it? (Homecoming, Act 2)
No, Adam, it isn't queer at all. It might seem queer because you didn't understand how it could happen. That's because you didn't realize that it was fated to happen.
Quote #4
BRANT: I felt there was something wrong the moment I saw her. I tried my damndest to put her off the course by giving her some softsoap--as you'd told me to do to blind her. That was a mistake, Christine. It made her pay too much attention to me--and opened her eyes!
CHRISTINE: Oh, I know I've made one blunder after another. It's as if love drove me on to do everything I shouldn't. I never should have brought you to this house. Seeing you in New York should have been enough for me. But I loved you too much. I wanted you every possible moment we could steal! And I simply couldn't believe that he ever would come home. I prayed that he should be killed in the war so intensely that I finally believed it would surely happen! Oh, if he were only dead! (Homecoming, Act 2)
Christine felt driven by a force outside her control that made her act foolishly. She thinks it might be love, but we know better. It's like the script was written for her and she had no choice but to follow it.
Quote #5
CHRISTINE: […] She is in a state of tense, exultant excitement. Then, as if an idea had suddenly come to her, she speaks to his retreating figure with a strange sinister air of elation. You'll never dare leave me now, Adam—for your ships or your sea or your naked Island girls—when I grow old and ugly. (Homecoming, Act 2)
Having roped him in to being her accomplice in murdering her husband, Christine seals Adam's fate to hers. He can't leave her now. This is almost the exact same threat that Orin makes to Lavinia in The Haunted about their mutual guilt after the murder of Brant. Orin uses it as an attempt to control his sister forever. The repetition of these similar events is one way that the playwright suggests that some tragic fate is being played out over and over.
Quote #6
MANNON: It isn't my heart. It's something uneasy troubling my mind—as if something in me was listening, watching, waiting for something to happen. (Homecoming, Act 4)
Whenever a character's feeling something mysterious that they can't quite put their finger on, you can bet that some hugely fated event is about to be played out. In this case, Ezra's about to be murdered. Just the next step in this predestined family drama.
Quote #7
BORDEN: I couldn't believe the news. Who'd ever suspect--It's queer. It's like fate.
MRS. HILLS: Maybe it is fate. You remember, Everett, you've always said about the Mannons that pride goeth before a fall and that some day God would humble them in their sinful pride.
HILLS: I don't remember ever saying—(The Hunted, Act 1)
Just in case we missed the point, the playwright lets his Greek chorus clue us in that fate's in control of this story.
Quote #8
CHRISTINE: I was like you once—long ago—before—If I could only have stayed as I was then! Why can't all of us remain innocent and loving and trusting? But God won't leave us alone. He twists and wrings and tortures our lives with others' lives until—we poison each other to death! (The Hunted, Act 1)
Christine's feeling completely out of control of her life. All this tragedy is God's doing. The Calvinist idea of predestination —that our fate's determined before we're born—would have been a belief of many Puritans of her time.
Quote #9
LAVINIA: It was Brant who got you this--medicine to make you sleep--wasn't it?
CHRISTINE: No! No! No!
LAVINIA: You're telling me it was. I knew it--but I wanted to make sure.
CHRISTINE: Ezra! Don't let her harm Adam! I am the only guilty one! Don't let Orin--! (Then, as if she read some answer in the dead man's face, she stops in terror and, her eyes still fixed on his face, backs to the door and rushes out.) (The Hunted, Act 3)
Here's a great example of how you just can't escape fate. Christine, realizing that Lavinia's on to Brant's involvement in Ezra's murder, rushes out of the house to warn Brant. But in doing that, all she does is lead Orin and Lavinia right to him.
Quote #10
CHRISTINE: I fainted before I could hide [the poison]! And I had planned it all so carefully. But how could I foresee that she would come in just at that moment? And how could I know he would talk to me the way he did? He drove me crazy! He kept talking of death! He was torturing me! I only wanted him to die and leave me alone!
BRANT: He knew before he died whose son I was, you said? By God, I'll bet that maddened him!
CHRISTINE: I'd planned it so carefully--but something made things happen! (The Hunted, Act 4)
C'mon Christine. You know what that "something" was.
Quote #11
ORIN: By God, he does look like Father!
LAVINIA: No! Come along!
ORIN: This is like my dream. I've killed him before--over and over.
LAVINIA: Orin!
ORIN: Do you remember me telling you how the faces of the men I killed came back and changed to Father's face and finally became my own? He looks like me, too! Maybe I've committed suicide! (The Hunted, Act 4)
This passage, loaded with (spoiler alert) foreshadowing, shows us Orin's feeling that his act of murdering Brant is somehow part of a larger pattern he can't quite understand, like some horrible fate he's forced to repeat "over and over."
Quote #12
LAVINIA: What kind of history do you mean?
ORIN: A true history of all the family crimes, beginning with Grandfather Abe's--all of the crimes, including ours, do you understand?
LAVINIA: Do you mean to tell me you've actually written--
ORIN: Yes! I've tried to trace to its secret hiding place in the Mannon past the evil destiny behind our lives! I thought if I could see it clearly in the past I might be able to foretell what fate is in store for us, Vinnie--but I haven't dared predict that--not yet--although I can guess--
LAVINIA: Orin! (The Haunted, Act 2)
By this point, Orin's a psychological wreck. He knows he's been tortured by generations of a Mannon family saga he doesn't quite understand, so he's writing it all down trying to find the curse that started it all and maybe unload his guilt. He feels they've all been driven to whatever actions they've taken by some evil force hidden in the family's sorry past. His suicide is his final acknowledgment that he's powerless over his tragic Mannon family destiny.