China and the West

O'Neill, Eugene. Marco millions : a play [ID D28771].
Quelle : Polo, Marco. The book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian. Transl. and ed. by Henry Yule [ID D5467].
Bai Niu : In Marco millions, O'Neill utilizes the myth of Chinese characters to negate Western values. But since the motivation of the myth is the advocacy of change within the West, we find that O'Neill is reluctant to mythify the East to the extent of perpetuating the status quo of the West. As a result, here and there the real history of the Chinese characters breaks through the mythical confines. In this way, the use of myth helps create a complicated vision instead of a naïve contrast between the East and West.
O'Neill approached the Marco Polo story with an initial intention to satirize and criticize greedy American businessmen. In talking about his plans about Marco millions in his Selected Letters, O'Neill writes : 'The child will be either a surprising satiric Beauty – or a most gawdawful monster'.
O'Neill found the mythologization of Chinese elements an effective way to conduct his criticism, since myth by definition could conceal his motivation in such a way that his attack on American materialism could appear to be unquestionable and thus more powerful. All the central Chinese characters are apparently mythologized, representing values, Oriental wisdom, mysticism, and spirituality, opposed to the Polos' stupidity, superficiality, and materialism. In mythologizing the Chinese figures, O'Neill does offer some dynamics to the characterization of Marco Polo. The Chinese characters highlight Marco's material greed, insensitivity, ignorance, and triteness from three perspectives : Kublai's increasing mockery and criticism, Chu-Yin's disenchanted probe into his potential to change, and Kukachin's gradually intensified sense of disappointment, embarrassment, and despair. Between Kublai and Marco is a conflict between soul and flesh. As the emblem of Taoist doctrines, Chu-Yin is detached and only an observer of Marco. Kukachin's nor a non-conflict like Chu-Yin's ; it is a process passing from eager erotic involvement to total disengagement.
Marco is totally unaware of Kublai's cynicism and criticism. His rather consistent cocksureness reveals his ignorance of anything spiritual. He is so blinded by his single-minded pursuit of material wealth that he interprets other people's remarks strictly along material lines. Instead of making direct confrontations with Marco, Chu-Yin observes him from a distance. He advises Kublai to let Marco develop naturally by himself. He wants to probe this representative of the West and find out whether Marco can change so as to realize his potential for wisdom and to achieve harmony with Tao.
What Chu-Yin finally finds in Marco is all the qualities opposed to his Taoist doctrines. Serving as a foil, Marco's failure strengthens the validity and wisdom of Taoist thoughts. Another point of contrast illustrated through Chu-Yin is the distinction between humility and arrogance. Chu-Yin embraces the idea of humility.
Marco's world is entirely controlled by money. So far as he is concerned, one can measure love only with gold and view beauty only with a mirror made of pearls and silver.
Kukachin is another emblem of Oriental spiritual values, she contrasts Marco's triteness and insensitivity through her poetic nature and sensitivity. O'Neill accentuates the correlation between the quality of language and spirituality through the contrast between Kukachin and Marco, which is, first of all, an opposition between the poetic and prosaic. Kukachin's world is a poetic realm. She simply speaks poetry, while Marco is incapable of using any poetic diction, and even his 'poem' is imbued with monetary terms. For Kukachin, life is meaningless without love. If one realizes the spiritual value of love, for him or her, the difference between life and death is not that significant, if it exists at all. Kukachin is the only Chinese character who once had a positive impression of Marco. According to her own account, she had observed all Marco's instinctive, mostly unconscious, kind behaviors and innocent remarks and interpreted them as spiritual manifestations. In actuality, it was love that drove her to Marco's defence. She still believed in Marco's soul, and it was only two years later when the journey came to its end that she painfully realized that Marco was incorrigibly acquisitive, and to him, spirituality and sensitivity were incomprehensible foreign qualities.
Bayan, Kublai's general is basically a warmonger and cannot live in peace for an extended period of time. He becomes restless and helpless because 'everywhere in the East there is peace'. The only thing which would occupy him is war.
O'Neill's mythologization of the East has created a total negation of the West. Although this total negation fulfills O'Neill's intention to criticize the materialism of the West, it would rule out any possibility for reform, since the total negation is the real myth.
Lee Sang-kyong : The Taoist idea of a dualistic world becomes the essential characteristic of Marco millions. The dualism of all earthly phenomena finds its expression not only in the antithesis of male and female, life and death, to be or not to be. The Yin-Yang-principle of Taoism is also expressed in the Western and Eastern life styles such as the modest cheerfulness of the Eastern people and the rough pragmatic life struggle of the Western people. Through his occupation with the Orient, O'Neill was more and more convinced, that Oriental wisdom could offer a hopeful alternative to the Western world's materialistic society.
Marco Polo is the personification of the Western dream of materialistic success, and the Chinese empror Kublai Khan is very disappointed of Marco's materialistic attitude. The emperor seed in Marco – who is the representative of Christianity – the spiritual abnormity of the West, as O'Neill repeatedly discloses in the course of the plot. In a romantic romance with Kukachin, the granddaughter of Kublai Khan, Marco feels the magnetic power of the East. For him, wealth and power are more important than feeling. Even the Taoist wisdom of Chu-yin, the emperor's counselor, does mean anything to him. For him, the Orient's wisdom and beauty, embodied by Kublai Khan and Kukachin, are ridiculous and inconsistent. But Kublai, interested in the spiritual development of man, intends to initiate a dialogue about the existence of soul between one hundred wise men of the West and wise men of Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Marco is only deeply impressed by the 'millions upon millions of worms' of the silk industry which could produce 'millions upon millions of capital'. O'Neill shows with irony the contrast between the Western materialism and ancient China's aestheticism during Marco Polo's time, pointing out the antithesis of the Westerners' materialistic greed and the mystic wisdom and splendor of Kublai Khan's court. He wants to show the fundamental difference between the Taoist East and the superficial and pragmatic Western civilization. The two opposite world views are represented by two characters : Marco Polo stands for materialism, rationalism, pragmatism, and Princess Kukachin is the living example of idealism and intuitive mysticism. Chu-yin, the counsellor is the only character who is untouched by all the events and remains in harmony with the teaching of Laozi and Zhuangzi.
Horst Frenz : O'Neill's interest in the East is most evident in Marco millions. The presentation of a mercantile Marco sent and sanctioned by the Pope as a wise man to represent the wisdom of the West to the East is full of irony. Marco is beyond redemption ; he is totally untouched by the spiritual beauty of Kukachin, the the Taoist wisdom of Chu-yin never reaches his philistine mine. The short exchange of remarks between Chu-yin, the subtle sage of China and Marco, the rash philistine emissary from Venice, sums up the difficulty of an understanding between East and West. The shallowness of the action-oriented West prevents Marco from comprehending the subtleties of the East whose wisdom lies in a quiet observance of the true course of nature, in an attitude of wise passiveness so characteristically Taoist. The scenes, in which Marco establishes a new tax system, introduces printed money, and discovers that gunpowder, up to now used by the Chinese only for fireworks, can be employed for destructive purposes, are filled with biting satire. In a remarkably subtle manner, O'Neill manages in various ways to point out the basically irreconcilable differences between Taoist wisdom and the superficiality of Western civilization.
James A. Robinson : Marco millions follows the lines of conventional Western tragedy, which assumes a dualistic universe of irreconcilable conflict – though here, rather than God or nature defeating man, it is West destroying East. Underlying the East-West conflict of the action is a similar conflict within O'Neill, whereby Western dualism ultimately triumphs over the harmonic view of the universe O'Neill discovered in Taoist thought. The play's Eastern elements represent the dramatist's suspicion that at the deepest level, man and world and cosmos were integrated and serene ; but his pessimistic modern-Western side seems reluctantly convinc4ed that man and universe are in hopeless conflict, a conflict reflected in the irreconcilable opposition of Oriental and Occidental cultures. The similar stage groupings and character types symbolize the profound identity between different cultures that makes understanding possible. The response of Marco emphasizes cross-cultural conflict. The farther he journey East – through lands whose mystical creed preach tolerance and renunciation – the more intolerant, ethnocentric and materialistic he becomes. As a prime 'example of virtuous Western manhood', Marco learns nothing from fifteen years in China, pointing up an apparently unbridgeable gap between East and West. His materialism intensifies. The relationship between Kukachin and Marco dramatizes the polarity of the conflict between East and West. Marco exudes intolerance, while Kukachin radiates the supreme tolerance of one who loves a totally different person. Marco loves the treasures of this world, while Kukachin transcends them. Kukachin, who is feminine, passive, and spiritual, corresponds to the 'yin' principle in Chinese thought. The Occidental Marco corresponds to 'yang', the masculine, rational and active principle. The monistic Taoist influence on the play extends to O'Neill's portrait of Kublai Kahn. The Emperor, called 'Son of heaven, Lord of the earth', harmonizes the masculine rationality and aggressiveness of the West, and the feminine intuition and passivity of the East. Khan's Taoist harmony is upset by Marco and his effect upon Kukachin. Only one Chinese character remains unperturbed, and consistently maintains the detachment of the Oriental sage : Chu Yin, Khan's advisor. His advice accords with the teaching of Laozi and Zhuangzi.
James S. Moy : O'Neill sought to contrast the obsessive materialism of a Babbitt-like character with a positive representation of a romanticized historical China. Despite the clear comic intent of the piece, one could assume that the Chinese world at least receive a 'positive', if not 'realistic', portrayal within this framework. O'Neill was successful in his satirical portrayal of the Venetian trading family, his use of the Orient proves problematic. His characterizations of the Chinese are intended to show subtle differences. In designing his imaginary marginality called China, O'Neill fell into the trap of stereotyping the Orient, thereby displacing/erasing the reality while China disintegrated into representation.
Li Gang : The Taoist influence in Marco millions has been studied by quit a few critics in both the East and the West. They all seem to agree that the Taoist influence permeates almost every aspect of the play : theme, structure, characterization, dialogue, and setting.