How we cite our quotes: (Name of Play, Act #)
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.