The Family Reunion

Following WWII, Eliot published two plays, The Family Reunion and The Cocktail Party, both of which make for interesting reading and insightful commentary on contemporary culture, though they do not rival his earlier works in my judgment. In The Family Reunion, an aristocratic family gathers to welcome home Harry, Lord Monchensey, rather recently widowed when his wife was mysteriously lost at sea. Harry is expected to follow his mother's wishes and take over management of the family estate. Amy, a manipulative, domineering woman, had restructured heir plans (which had been earlier foiled when Harry married a woman Amy disliked) and hoped the family reunion would consummate them. Harry, however, refuses to fall into his mother's scheme. His experiences have quickened his thirst for something more than the comfort and ease of an aristocratic manor, with its lands and income. So he departs as abruptly as he arrived--to become a missionary! Exactly where he headed and what "missionary" activity he embraced we don't discover, but it's obvious Harry took a radical turn away from his mother's plan and followed an inner hunger in quest of something more real. The Family Reunion describes the petty, vain world of comfortable people with little to live for. It also reveals an inner spiritual world where those who seek find, those who knock have doors opened for them.

T. S. Eliot's second play is loosely based on Aeschylus' "Eumenides," though set in modern times. The integration of classical elements is only partly successful: the Greek chorus of meddlesome relatives is oddly effective, but the several appearances of the Furies are forced and strange (as Eliot himself came to conclude). Furthermore, the play is awfully talky -- lots of setup without much payoff in dramatic action.But what talk it is! "The Family Reunion" was written in the interregnum between the first and second of "Four Quartets," and the play develops and amplifies many of the same themes as the poems. We return to the "Alice in Wonderland" rose garden of "Burnt Norton" (the first Quartet) -- "I only looked through the little door / When the sun was shining on the rose-garden: / And heard in the distance tiny voices" -- while looking forward to key passages from later poems: "Or the distant waterfall in the forest, / Inaccessible, half-heard. / And I hear your voice as in the silence / Between two storms ...."Though "The Family Reunion" may be justly criticized for its dramatic problems and weak conclusion, the writing is vintage Eliot and will prove both enjoyable and enlightening for devotees of his poetry.

T. S. Eliot masters the craft of play-writing, and his verse adds to this powerful and imaginative tragedy. He manages to keep his many characters separate and portray every one of them with acute individuality. Reading this book leaves the reader without any doubts as to why Eliot was awarded the Nobel Prize.