From Under the Shadow of Eugene O'Neill's Elms: Halldor Laxness's Independent People and the Encompassing Hardness

Halldor Laxness's Independent People, one of the magisterial novels of the twentieth century, is a cunning weave that draws oil history, legend and such prior fictions as Knut Hamsun's Growth of the Soil. One unrecognized but illuminating Source is apparently Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms. A telling series of parallels drawn from the play reverberates through and enriches Independent People. Although there exists no record that the two Nobel Laureates ever met and Laxness left no serious commentary on the playwright, his 1929-30 visit to California notwithstanding, the connections and echoes are sufficiently substantial to imply that they were deliberate and conscious. Most obviously, the two works inhabit the same pervasively hard, stony, punishing milieu. Ephraim Cabot and Bjartur of Summerhouses are both determined to live independent, private lives, and their efforts are equally futile, even self-destructive. The works further share a scathing view of family life, of repressiveness and skewed sexuality, and of a greedy capitalism. The parallels Include a wealth of ancillary details. Never obtrusive nor obvious with his appropriations, Laxness adapts these images and situations with ease and rich artistry, molding them into his somber epic vision.