All God's Chillun Got Wings (play)
**Overview of "All God's Chillun Got Wings"**
"All God's Chillun Got Wings" is a play by Eugene O'Neill that explores the complexities of interracial relationships in 1920s America. The narrative centers on Jim Harris, an African American man, and Ella Downey, a Caucasian woman, navigating the challenges posed by societal racial tensions. The play opens at a children’s game in New York City, where Jim and Ella express their desire to transcend their racial boundaries. However, as they mature, the pressures of their relationship grow, leading to conflict and personal turmoil.
Set against a backdrop of racial division, the couple’s struggles culminate in a move to France in search of a more accepting society, only for them to return to New York amidst escalating tensions. The play is noted for its intense emotional landscape, showcasing Ella's descent into madness and Jim's disillusionment with societal expectations. While it faced criticism upon its release, some critics regard it as a significant work of expressionism, effectively using sound and music to reflect the racial unrest of the time. This multifaceted play invites audiences to reflect on the enduring implications of race relations in America.
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Subject Terms
All God's Chillun Got Wings (play)
Identification: A play about interracial marriage
Author: Eugene O’Neill
Date: 1924
Despite lackluster reviews when it opened, Eugene O’Neill’s play All God’s Chillun Got Wings sparked intense controversy, since it depicted a marriage between a white woman and a black man and highlighted the marked racial tension in American society during the 1920s.
Following the success of his play The Emperor Jones (1920), O’Neill revisited the subject of racial division in All God’s Chillun Got Wings. With a title drawn from the lyrics of a popular spiritual, the play details the tumultuous relationship between African American Jim Harris and Caucasian American Ella Downey. The couple interacts with members of both races, with the resulting tensions ultimately leading to career failure and insanity.
The play opens at an intersection in lower New York City; residents of one street are white, while those of the other are African American. Jim and Ella are among a group of children playing marbles. After Jim and Ella each express a desire to become part of the other’s race, the scene closes with Ella agreeing to be Jim’s girl. At their high school graduation nine years later, however, Ella has grown distant from Jim, whose companions accuse him of trying “to buy white” and of “forgetting [his] place.” Five years later, Jim and Ella decide to get married and leave for France, where they hope to find a culture more tolerant toward interracial relationships.
Act 2 returns the couple to New York. Jim informs his disapproving mother and sister that while the French were initially accepting, Ella became increasingly frail and unstable. Jim insists that he will be able to care for his wife as well as pass the bar exam and fulfill his aspirations of becoming a lawyer. Six months pass, revealing Ella’s continued descent into madness. At one point, she threatens Jim with a knife while he is studying, and he narrowly avoids her attack.
A ranting Ella opens the final scene, set a year after the beginning of act 2. She states that Jim is forgetting his place and getting “a swelled head.” Returning from the mailbox, Jim discovers that he has again failed the exam. He begins laughing hysterically, noting that the idea of a black man entering the legal profession was a ludicrous proposition from the start. Overjoyed, Ella suggests that “the devil’s dead,” meaning that Jim no longer aspires to inappropriate goals and that she and Jim can return to the way they were both meant to live.
Impact
While the play is generally associated with the controversy surrounding its opening, some consider it a masterpiece of expressionism for its use of sounds, especially laughter and musical styles distinct to each of the two races, to express the sometimes violent racial unrest of the period. Similar techniques would be used in later dramas, such as Elmer Rice’s The Adding Machine and Clifford Odets’s Waiting for Lefty.
Bibliography
Dowling, Robert M. Critical Companion to Eugene O’Neill. New York: Facts on File, 2009.
Floyd, Virginia. The Plays of Eugene O’Neill: A New Assessment. New York: Ungar, 1987.