How we cite our quotes: (Name of Play, Act #)
Quote #1
MINNIE: My sakes! What a purty house!
SETH: Wal, I promised Amos I'd help show ye the sights when you came to visit him. 'Tain't everyone can git to see the Mannon place close to. They're strict about trespassin'.
MINNIE: My! They must be rich! How'd they make their money?
SETH: Ezra's made a pile, and before him, his father, Abe Mannon, he inherited some and made a pile more in shippin'. Started one of the first Western Ocean packet lines.
MINNIE: Ezra's the General, ain't he?
SETH: Ayeh. The best fighter in the hull of Grant's Army!
MINNIE: What kind is he?
SETH: He's able, Ezra is! Folks think he's cold-blooded and uppish, 'cause he's never got much to say to 'em. But that's only the Mannon's way. They've been top dog around here for near on two hundred years and don't let folks fergit it. […] Oh, he's able, Ezra is!
AMES: Ayeh. This town's real proud of Ezra.
LOUISA: Which is more than you can say for his wife. […]
SETH: Never mind her. We ain't talkin' bout her. Wal, I've got to see Vinnie. I'm goin' round by the kitchen. You wait here. […]
LOUISA: Seth is so proud of his durned old Mannons! I couldn't help givin' him a dig about Ezra's wife.
AMES: Wal, don't matter much. He's allus hated her. (Homecoming, Act 1)
We don't know—hate might be strong word—but can you really blame Seth for not being Christine's biggest fan? Either way, we get a real glimpse into just how powerful Ezra is, and how much that makes people both admire and hate him.
Quote #2
She ain't the Mannon kind. French and Dutch descended, she is. Furrin' lookin' and queer. Her father's a doctor in New York, but he can't be much of one 'cause she didn't bring no money when Ezra married her. (Homecoming, Act 1)
Seth continues to set up the basic social class arrangement for us. Christine's not upper-class like her husband. We'll soon be hearing about two other people outside the Mannon's social class: Adam Brant and his mother, who was a nursemaid. One thing we see throughout the play is that middle and working-class people are the ones with feelings; they're more sexual and expressive, they sing and laugh and are generally more uninhibited.
Quote #3
SETH: That durned n***** cook is allus askin' me to fetch wood fur her! You'd think I was her slave! That's what we get fur freein' em! (Homecoming, Act 1)
Just in case we think that Seth and his friends are the lowest social status here, O'Neill throws in a reminder of who's really on the bottom of the social scale—the freed blacks. Everybody needs someone to look down on to make themselves feel important, we guess. Free or not, black Americans found that emancipation didn't solve the problem of racial hatred.
Quote #4
LAVINIA: Don't you touch me! Don't you dare--! You liar! You--! But I suppose it would be foolish to expect anything but cheap romantic lies from the son of a low Canuck nurse girl!
BRANT: What's that? Belay, damn you!--or I'll forget you're a woman--no Mannon can insult her while I--
LAVINIA: So--it is true--You are her son! Oh!
BRANT: And what if I am? I'm proud to be! My only shame is my dirty Mannon blood! So that's why you couldn't stand my touching you just now, is it? You're too good for the son of a servant, eh? By God, you were glad enough before--!
Lavinia shows her elitist colors here, but Brant knows that social class and virtue don't always go together. He's more ashamed of his Mannon side.
Quote #5
LAVINIA: Well? What is it about Captain Brant you wanted to warn me against? I want to know all I can about him because—he seems to be calling to court me.
SETH: Ayeh.
LAVINIA: You say that as if you don't believe me.
SETH: I believe anything you tell me to believe. I ain't been with the Mannons for sixty years without learning that. (Homecoming, Act 1)
Short and to the point—but you can't get around just what is being implied here. If you want to keep in the Mannons' good graces, don't do or say anything to contradict them or otherwise tick them off. It's kind of sad that after working for them for 60 years Seth still has to play these kinds of games.
Quote #6
BRANT: But when I take you off, the laugh will be on him! You can come on the "Flying Trades!"
CHRISTINE: I don't think you'd propose that, Adam, if you stopped thinking of your revenge for a moment and thought of me! Don't you realize he would never divorce me, out of spite? What would I be in the world's eyes? My life would be ruined and I would ruin yours! You'd grow to hate me!
BRANT: Don't talk like that! It's a lie and you know it!
CHRISTINE: If I could only believe that, Adam! But I'll grow old so soon! And I'm afraid of time! As for my sailing on your ship, you'll find that you won't have a ship! He'll see to it you lose this command and get you blacklisted so you'll have no chance of getting another.
BRANT: Aye! He can do that if he sets about it. There are twice as many skippers as ships these days. (Homecoming, Act 2)
Brant can't compete with Ezra's influence and social standing. This is why Christine knows she'll have to resort to something more evil than just running off with Brant.
Quote #7
ORIN: I saw she'd changed a lot. She seemed strange.
But—CHRISTINE: And her craziness all works out in hatred for me! Take this Captain Brant affair, for example—
ORIN: Ah!
CHRISTINE: A stupid ship captain I happened to meet at your grandfather's who took it into his silly head to call here a few times without being asked. Vinnie thought he was coming to court her. I honestly believe she fell in love with him, Orin. But she soon discovered that he wasn't after her at all!
ORIN: Who was he after—you?
CHRISTINE: Orin! I'd be very angry with you if it weren't so ridiculous! You don't seem to realize I'm an old married woman with two grown-up children! No, all he was after was to insinuate himself as a family friend and use your father when he came home to get him a better ship! I soon saw through his little scheme and he'll never call here again, I promise you that! And that's the whole of the great Captain Brant scandal! Are you satisfied now, you jealous goose, you?
There's just no getting away from that Oedipal weirdness—Orin acting like a jealous boyfriend and Christine being cool with it. But look at how Christine uses class and class bias to throw Orin off the trail: nothing to see here, son—Brant is just another low-class idiot trying to use your father's influence to make things easier for himself. Right. But it works, for now.
Quote #8
CHRISTINE: Vinnie! Come here, please. I don't want to shout across the room. Well, you can go ahead now and tell Orin anything you wish! I've already told him—so you might as well save yourself the trouble. He said you must be insane! I told him you lied about my trips to New York—for revenge!—because you loved Adam yourself! So hadn't you better leave Orin out of it? You can't get him to go to the police for you. Even if you convinced him I poisoned your father, you couldn't! He doesn't want—anymore than you do, or your father, or any of the Mannon dead—such a public disgrace as a murder trial would be! For it would all come out! Everything! Who Adam is and my adultery and your knowledge of it—and your love for Adam! Oh, believe me, I'll see to it that it comes out if anything ever goes to trial! I'll show you to the world as a daughter who desired her mother's lover and then tried to get her mother hanged out of jealousy! (The Hunted, Act 2)
Which is exactly why Lavinia hatches the plan that she does. Here, O'Neill shows us how worried about public image the wealthy and powerful have to be, and Christine tries to exploit it like a weakness. In a way, Christine was right—Lavinia makes sure none of this gets to trial.
Quote #9
ORIN: Who are you? Another corpse! You and I have seen fields and hillsides sown with them—and they meant nothing—nothing but a dirty joke life plays on life! Death sits so naturally on you! Death becomes the Mannons! You were always like the statue of an eminent dead man—sitting on a chair in a park or straddling a horse in a town square—looking over the head of life without a sign of recognition—cutting it dead for the impropriety of living! You never cared to know me in life—but I really think we might be friends now you are dead! (The Hunted, Act 3)
Yep—more death. But check out what Orin is doing here. Statues are always built of wealthy or famous people, and he's saying that's all Ezra looks like now that he's croaked. This is O'Neill's not-too subtle way of saying that all the wealth and power in the world didn't save Ezra's life, and maybe even that all that wealth and power made Ezra dead on the inside a long time ago.
Quote #10
LAVINIA: I can't marry you, Peter. You mustn't ever see me again. GO home. Make it up with your mother and Hazel. Marry someone else. Love isn't permitted to me. The dead are too strong.
PETER: Vinnie! You can't—! You've gone crazy! What's changed you like this? Is it—what Orin wrote? What was it? I've got a right to know, haven't I? He acted so queer about—what happened to you on the Islands. Was it something there—something to do with that native—
LAVINIA: Peter! Don't you dare! All right! Yes, if you must know! I won't lie anymore! Orin suspected I'd lusted with him, and I had!
PETER: Vinnie! You've gone crazy! I don't believe—You—you couldn't!
LAVINIA: Why shouldn't I? I wanted him! I wanted to learn love from him—love that wasn't a sin! And I did, I tell you! He had me! I was his fancy woman!
PETER: Then—Mother and Hazel were right about you—you are bad at heart—no wonder Orin killed himself—God, I—I hope you'll be punished—I—!
LAVINIA: Peter! It's a lie! I didn't—! Good-bye, Peter.
Peter's whole problem is that Lavinia behaved in a way that a high-class lady shouldn't. Lavinia knew this would make him break it off. We guess even somebody as all-around nice and wholesome as Peter has his issues too, huh?