Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “A Moon for the Misbegotten” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

A Moon for the Misbegotten

Eugene O'Neill,

Stephen A. Black (Introduction)

4.03 · Rating details · 3,473 ratings · 66 reviews

A new, affordable paperback edition of one O’Neill’s late masterpieces

Eugene O’Neill’s last completed play, A Moon for the Misbegotten is a sequel to his autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, asJim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at lov ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 149 pages

Published August 28th 2006 by Yale University Press (first published 1947)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about A Moon for the Misbegotten, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

Best Plays Ever

783 books — 1,165 voters

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

Best American Plays

242 books — 454 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.03 ·

Rating details

· 3,473 ratings · 66 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of A Moon for the Misbegotten

May 12, 2018 Kenny rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: oneill, classics, favorites, theatre, scripts

“There is no present or future-only the past, happening over and over again-now.”
― Eugene O'Neill, A Moon for the Misbegotten

In the cannon of Eugene O'Neill's plays, A Moon for the Misbegotten is uniquely funny and poignant.

In A Moon for the Misbegotten we revisit James Tyrone, Jr., the son from Long Day's Journey Into Night. Tyrone visits the home of his tenant farmer, Phil Hogan. There he encounters Hogan’s magnetic daughter, Josie. It’s been years since the two have seen each other. During o ...more

flag 52 likes · Like · see review

Feb 03, 2014 jeremy rated it really liked it

Shelves: drama

though written around the same time (1941-43), long day's journey into night was first performed upon the stage some nine years after its sequel, a moon for the misbegotten. the former, eugene o'neill's autobiographical masterpiece, takes place about a decade prior to moon's drama.

jim (or "jamie" in journey - both based on o'neill's real-life older brother), now older, cynical, and nearly beaten by life, has all but succumbed to his alcoholism. still plagued (emotionally, that is) by the death though written around the same time (1941-43), long day's journey into night was first performed upon the stage some nine years after its sequel, a moon for the misbegotten. the former, eugene o'neill's autobiographical masterpiece, takes place about a decade prior to moon's drama.

jim (or "jamie" in journey - both based on o'neill's real-life older brother), now older, cynical, and nearly beaten by life, has all but succumbed to his alcoholism. still plagued (emotionally, that is) by the death of his mother, jim is consumed by guilt and shame. as a fitting and imperfect (if unrequited) complement to jim's character, josie - the tall, well-built, and tough-talking 28-year old irishwoman - is the daughter of phil hogan, jim's lessee. while much of the story revolves around hogan and josie's farm, and the threat of it being sold by jim - the unspoken love between josie and jim (and their myriad conflicting feelings) provides for the play's real upheaval.

while perhaps not as arresting as its predecessor, a moon for the misbegotten is still an accomplished and affecting work of theater. o'neill was quite adept at parsing the nuances of human relationships - often exposing the many ways things forever left unsaid, unacknowledged, or otherwise unaccounted for erode the individual and all those around them (via addiction, indifference, pipe dreams, or emotional unavailability). in o'neill's nobel prize citation, the swedish academy notes "the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." over six decades since his passing, o'neill remains one of the finest playwrights of any generation.

you can take the truth, josie - from me. because you and i belong to the same club. we can kid the world but we can't fool ourselves, like most people, no matter what we do - nor escape ourselves no matter where we run away. whether it's the bottom of a bottle, or a south sea island, we'd find our own ghosts there waiting to greet us - "sleepless with pale commemorative eyes," as rossetti wrote.

...more

flag 4 likes · Like · see review

Feb 20, 2010 Michael P. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I once found this to be a profoundly moving and sensitive play. My consciousness has been raised, for it now seems wrongly male-centric. The story is all about Jamie and his needs, not Josie and hers, which are just as valid. I judge it from a perspective alien to the time when the work was written and so can be generous with the star parts, but this now seems a male fantasy in which this women is used just like the whores James has always used, only chastely, for forgiveness. Unlike the whores, ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

Nov 30, 2018 Illiterate rated it it was ok

O’Neill’s plot is hackneyed male fantasy: broken man finds peace in arms of virgin. In telling it, he strikes some pleasing notes of pathos and acceptance.

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 03, 2011 Marija rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-classics, favorites, drama

In some ways, I do prefer this sequel to Long Day's Journey into Night. A Moon for the Misbegotten takes place approximately ten years after the events of the former play, focusing on the final days of James Tyrone, Jr, who’s drowned himself in alcohol to help ward off those personal demons that haunted and tormented his memories for all these years. Throughout these years, he’s looked for purity and innocence—a love that he could truly cherish, and seems to have finally found it in the form of ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 13, 2013 Zöe Zöe rated it liked it

Shelves: american

I read this book because I was looking for a quote. There is a source saying the quote I was looking for is from this book. I don't know whether I should trust my eyes or the book, anyway I didn't find it.

Eugene O'Neill is the grandpa for American serious drama, but this one I really don't like it. It has too much burden back the scene, too much social and other background. I prefer plot with more dramatic change like Shakespears etc. This one, I read it as if it is a play of Schiller's. But it ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Jan 02, 2021 Thebooksoftiti rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2021

3/5

I really liked the Josie's character and the fact that it does not have a happy ending. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Apr 06, 2020 Raimo Wirkkala rated it really liked it

The great American playwright here brings to a fitting conclusion the story of the family Tyrone that began with "A Long Day's Journey Into Night". The Jim Tyrone of this play is the logical extension of the Jamie of the other. For anyone familiar with the history of this material it is impossible to read Tyrone's lines without hearing the voice of Jason Robards in your head. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 14, 2018 Nathan Albright rated it it was amazing

Shelves: challenge-2018

Although this is not the author's best-known play, and although it has a lot of very cringeworthy elements (more about this anon), there is a lot about this play to appreciate. Without having any particularly sympathetic characters, a characteristic problem of the author's plays, there is nonetheless a lot of very poignant material here that relates to the author's own life and his own approach to the theater. With a small cast and a very narrow setting, this is a play that allows the author t Although this is not the author's best-known play, and although it has a lot of very cringeworthy elements (more about this anon), there is a lot about this play to appreciate. Without having any particularly sympathetic characters, a characteristic problem of the author's plays, there is nonetheless a lot of very poignant material here that relates to the author's own life and his own approach to the theater. With a small cast and a very narrow setting, this is a play that allows the author to explore the interior life and contradictions of the various characters and their ineffectual attempts at reaching out beyond their experience in order to build intimacy. Without sharing in the characteristic vices of the main characters of the play, there is a lot in this play I am able to relate to as both an observer of the suffering of others and the unhappiness of experiencing the tension between fear and longing when it comes to expanding beyond life as we have experienced it. This play is a poignant reminder that those who have become accustomed to a particular sort of experience have a hard time moving beyond it and overcoming it, something we ought to keep in mind when it comes to judging others and the way they live their lives.

The play itself is about 100 pages and is divided into four acts. In the first act we see Josie help her brother escape and make his own way in the world, while not viewing his current state very highly, and then charming with her irate father and dealing with their landlord Jim Tyrone and someone who wants to buy the property. In the second act we see Josie talk with her drunk father while she is waiting (so far in vain) for Jim to show up and cuddle with her. In the third act Tyrone shows up and there is a long conversation in which both of them struggle to go beyond their decadence and seek a genuine relationship with the other that is not sexual in nature, but something that might be recognized by themselves and others as a form of love. The fourth act shows the characters returned as before, only without a great deal of hope that anything will improve, or that there will be intimacy for each other to move beyond the phony relationships and playacting that they have known in their dealings with others.

Indeed, the center of this play is the emotionally incestuous relationship between Phil and Josie Hogan. Father and daughter share a love of tricking others and a lot of hostile but loving verbal banter. Josie is portrayed as a bit of a slattern and a slut, and Phil is one of those alcoholic ne'er-do-wells. Meanwhile, Jim Tyrone is hostile to his father and sees in Josie something pure despite her highly sexual and provocative behavior. Josie hopes for love but lacks the faith that anyone could love her, so she does not act necessarily very lovable. Both her and Jim are truly misbegotten in that their troubling relationships with their fathers prevents them from having intimate and warm relationships with others or being able to truly move on from the past. There is a lot of insight here in the way that people can idealize the relationships that others have with parents and the subtle ways in which parents can greatly harm their children through emotionally complicated relationships which hinder children from forming their own ties with someone as a potential spouse. One wonders how much the author's own experience with his family gave him insight to the harm that alcoholism and related emotional struggles cause to children growing up in such families. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 20, 2018 Brandon Pytel rated it it was amazing

In O'Neill's sequel to Long Day's Journey into Night, Jim is eleven years older, more dependent on the bottle than ever before, and back from the big lights of Broadway for one last chance at love under the moonlight. The potential lover is Josie Hogan, a big Irish girl who has a loose reputation and an alcoholic swindler of a father. When things start to look south for the Hogans, they try to mend the situation by tricking Jim into marrying Josie. After the score is settled, we see the raw Jim, ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jul 07, 2009 Renee rated it it was ok

I read "Moon for the Misbegotten" for an online literature course. It's a short play, written by Eugene O'Neill in the 1940s about a large, in-control, basically good-willed and good-humored woman named Josie who works beside her father on their farm, though she's actually much stronger than he is. Her younger brothers have all run off (with her help) because they can't stand working under their ill-tempered and often drunk father. Josie, who proudly (and to my amusement) proclaims herself a slu ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 05, 2008 Kelly rated it really liked it

I wasn't sure what to expect from this play, but was pleasantly surprised. I had to read it over the weekend for a class. The assignment was to pick an American Realist author and perform a scene from one of his/her plays. I thought the realist period ended in the late 1800s, but apparently it continued on past the moderns and almost into the contemporaries. I'd heard of O'Neill's plays, but never read any and was especially apprehensive to read this considering I hadn't read its prequel, A Long ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 18, 2011 04SalenaM rated it it was amazing

What struck me the most about this play was Josie; the oldest daughter was very big and broad and yet still described and beautiful. She was an Irish woman and very rough. She didn’t take much crap from nobody. She even knew how to put her daddy in place. I liked that she didn’t let anybody step on her just because her family didn’t have a lot of money. She did what she wanted to do and she wasn’t a wild a child she was very smart and knew right from wrong. After I got through reading over the v ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jul 23, 2011 Kurt rated it liked it

This play is a touching and unconventional love story. It is far too long - O'Neill could have condensed Act Two into two lines of dialogue ("I have discovered X at the bar, and we should respond by doing Y." "OK.") and merged it into Act Three. Instead, Act Two is an interminable dialogue in which one character repeatedly makes reference to something he doesn't want to say, then his daughter pries it out of him, when it was obvious to the reader all along. It showcases a little of the relations ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 11, 2015 Maddy rated it liked it

This one stuck with me (I read it in high school) for some reason. Maybe it's because it's a pretty decent portrait of a high spirited but yet pretty anxious woman stuck in a patriarchal and gossipy small town. O'Neill reads as pretty melodramatic to me now, but it was pretty innovative to show characters unable to get out of their miserable circumstances and succumbing to despair. Compare to 1940s Hollywood where even the most dramatic scripts have relatively happy endings. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 30, 2017 David Jay rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

People just don't write plays like this anymore.

A sequel of sorts to "Long Day's Journey," this play focuses on the tenant farmer of the Tyrone family. His daughter, Josie, is one of the all time great roles. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 22, 2011 Leigh rated it it was ok

Shelves: genre-drama, 1950-1974

I love Jamie Tyrone in Long Day's Journey into Night, and was really excited when I discovered he got another a play!

...yeah, no. Just stick with Long Day's Journey. ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

May 16, 2013 Aiden Xiang rated it it was amazing

the moon offers no comfort for the troubled soul...may he die in sleep !

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 09, 2018 Nick Jones rated it liked it · review of another edition

We always come to a book with preconceptions. I came to A Moon for the Misbegotten with hope. For all his ponderousness I like Eugene O’Neill and A Moon for the Misbegotten is usually placed with Long Day’s Journey Into Night and The Iceman Cometh as one of his last three major works – and I like the other two plays with their detailed naturalism. And when I started reading A Moon for the Misbegotten and found it a slightly stodgy thing I remembered the warning that O’Neill always performs bette We always come to a book with preconceptions. I came to A Moon for the Misbegotten with hope. For all his ponderousness I like Eugene O’Neill and A Moon for the Misbegotten is usually placed with Long Day’s Journey Into Night and The Iceman Cometh as one of his last three major works – and I like the other two plays with their detailed naturalism. And when I started reading A Moon for the Misbegotten and found it a slightly stodgy thing I remembered the warning that O’Neill always performs better on the stage than he reads on the page. But I still had problems. There is a lot of slightly clumsy plot exposition at the beginning of the play, but maybe a strong production can disguise that. A lot of the first act is built around Hogan and his daughter Josie, then Hogan and Tyrone, but Hogan seems too close to the comic/charming rascal stage Irishman to really convince, other than as an amusing theatrical turn. The comic scene with the wealthy neighbour seems a little obvious and heavy in its jokiness. But maybe Hogan can gain a greater life in the playing. The real centre of the play, however, is the relationship between Josie and James Tyrone. For me the strongest part of the play is from Tyrone’s reappearance towards the end of Act 2 through the beginning of Act 3. Josie and Tyrone have deep feelings for each other, but there are manoeuvrings. Tyrone is their landlord and Josie thinks he has agreed to sell their farm to the wealthy neighbour (this is on her father’s say so), so she is plotting revenge, although with confused motivations and emotions. Tyrone seems to have an idealized and delusional sense of Josie: despite her denials he thinks of her as virginal. But then things are cleared up: Tyrone is not double crossing them by selling the farm and it turns out he was right about Josie’s virginity. I’m then not sure what the play is doing. And there is something very puritanical about all this. Josie is contrasted to the ‘tarts’ Tyrone has spent time with and talks of with disgust. This could be seen as Tyrone trying to transfer his self-disgust onto the women, but the play itself seems to validate the contrast between Josie and the ‘tarts’, not least by valuing Josie’s virginity as a sign of purity. If I did not know O’Neill’s other work I would probably think A Moon for the Misbegotten was a bizarre and stolid thing, maybe a sort of psychodrama that expressed aspects of O’Neill’s personality in a strangely undigested way – as it is I will accept the possibility that I am failing to respond in a useful way. And I am aware its reputation was as an oddity until the 1970s Broadway production with Colleen Dewhurst and Jason Robards, so maybe it just works much better in a sympathetic production. ...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 25, 2017 Shaked Barkay rated it really liked it

While it doesn't live up to Long Day's Journey Iito Night, it is a good play that is able to evoke both humor and a great deal of emotion even if it veers in melodrama at points. A Moon for the Misbegotten evokes a wonderfully playful and warm Irish banter between father and daughter that is a joy to read. In addition the other character of the play, Tyrone's interactions with Josie manage to be both somber and sensual as only O'Neill can evoke. However, the dialogue does not quite live up to it ...more

flag Like · see review

Nov 24, 2017 Jessica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: thoughts, mental-health, more-theatre, hello-darkness

Absolutely amazing. It's incredible that this was technically a sequel for Long Day's Journey Into Night, but that it came out first because O'Neill didn't want LDJiN to be published until decades after his death. I recommend reading Long Day's Journey first and then this, because it really provides a great background for the character of Jim Tyrone.

Also, Josie is now one of my favorite fictional characters and she would definitely identify as a sex-positive feminist who could murder any man sh ...more

flag Like · see review

Feb 20, 2018 Paul LaFontaine rated it liked it

A drunken farmer and his daughter are threatened when their landlord, who loves the daughter, appears to be preparing to sell the farm out from under them. The daughter plays the landlord and the father plays the daughter. No one wins.

Another Eugene O'Neill work where the main players are alcoholic, the relationships are toxic and the play just ends. The interaction between the daughter and her suitor lanlord have some hope for redemption. But both are so broken by life that it ends without res ...more

flag Like · see review

May 29, 2020 Juliet rated it really liked it

I enjoyed it, I don't think it translates great to modern age but I really enjoyed the strength and vulnerability of the leading female character. Stage directions are surprisingly specific which would be interesting for character building and makes it easier to map out the thoughts of the characters. I also liked the pacing of the dialogue especially in the scene with Josie and her dad. She is also in every single scene so what a role that is, but does not have a single monologue... ugh. Her ch ...more

flag Like · see review

Apr 11, 2018 Cat rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-2018

A pretty interesting, if of course tragic and bittersweet, follow up to LDJIN and the tangential world of the Tyrones, and again, I was slightly surprised by how much I enjoyed O'Neill's female character, all things considered. (The play is Josie's more than it is Jim's, really, though Jim is the emotional catalyst.) It doesn't all click together quite as thoroughly and naturally as LDJIN does but it's still an excellent example of drama in terms of both craft and emotional heft. ...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 01, 2017 Jim Cullison rated it really liked it

A powerful sequel to O'Neill's powerhouse, "Long Day's Journey Into Night" that head fakes the reader/viewer with broad comedy before stealthily pivoting to wrenching emotional drama. Great work that is worth a read and/or viewing. ...more

flag Like · see review

Dec 29, 2018 margaret t. smith rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Great play

I read "Mourning becomes Electra" and realized how how addiction in families never change and neither do their secrets and sorrows. Very relatable. Liked the father and daughter's relationship sad but true how things happen esp. With alcoholism. ...more

flag Like · see review

Nov 27, 2019 Pete Castleton rated it really liked it

Saw performed with Kevin Spacey and Cherry Jones, which was good but not as good as the book itself. Still waiting for the ideal performance. O'Neil could wrench a frozen heart into the land of living from this play written at his Tao House above the orchards of Walnut Creek. ...more

flag Like · see review

May 13, 2017 Andy Plonka rated it it was amazing

Shelves: src

would that there were more books like this. A lot said in just a few words with plenty of ideas to think about afterward.

flag Like · see review

Oct 26, 2017 Zuzka Jakubkova rated it liked it

Small tragedy of three people. I need to catch-up on O'Neill's writing more. As a total novice to his work, this was not that catchy for me. ...more

flag Like · see review

Dec 08, 2019 Bobby Sullivan rated it it was ok

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

flag Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Goodreads Librari...: Please correct page count - ISBN 9780300118155	2	13	Apr 10, 2016 11:52AM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Plays

180 users

Drama

54 users

Plays > Theatre

39 users

Classics

20 users

Fiction

19 users

Literature > American

7 users

Romance

4 users

Academic > School

3 users

Literature > 20th Century

3 users

Nobel Prize

2 users

See top shelves…

About Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O'Neill

648 followers

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright who won the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced American drama to the dramatic realism pioneered by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwr ...more