Desire Under the Elms

In the play Desire Under the Elms, the aspect of an open ending could not be more obvious.

SHERIFF–Open in the name o’ the law! (They start.)

CABOT–They’ve come fur ye. (He goes to the rear door.) Come in, Jim! (The three men enter. Cabot meets them in doorway.) Jest a minit, Jim. I got ‘em safe here. (The sheriff nods. He and his companions remain in the doorway.)

EBEN–(suddenly calls) I lied this mornin’, Jim. I helped her do it. Ye kin take me, too.

ABBIE–(brokenly) No!

CABOT–Take ‘em both. (He comes forward–stares at Eben with a trace of grudging admiration.) Putty good–fur yew! Waal, I got t’ round up the stock. Good-by.

EBEN–Good-by.

ABBIE–Good-by. (Cabot turns and strides past the men–comes out and around the corner of the house, his shoulders squared, his face stony, and stalks grimly toward the barn. In the meantime the sheriff and men have come into the room.)

SHERIFF–(embarrassedly) Waal–we’d best start.

ABBIE–Wait, (turns to Eben) I love ye, Eben.

EBEN–I love ye, Abbie. (They kiss. The three men grin and shuffle embarrassedly. Eben takes Abbie’s hand. They go out the door in rear, the men following, and come from the house, walking hand in hand to the gate. Eben stops there and points to the sunrise sky.) Sun’s a-rizin’. Purty, hain’t it?

ABBIE–Ay-eh. (They both stand for a moment looking up raptly in attitudes strangely aloof and devout.)

SHERIFF–(looking around at the farm enviously–to his companion) It’s a jim-dandy farm, no denyin’. Wished I owned it!

For all we know, the sheriff could now be in the fight for the farm with this ending. Although it is pretty clear that Cabot got away with Eben’s mothers farm, the fate of him and Abbie is completely unknown. Did they get arrested? Let go? The death sentence? And how is Cabot going to handle the whole farm by himself?

Also, psychology is a huge aspect in this play. The tension between Cabot and Eben grows as the play goes on. “Ye needn’t heed Eben. Eben’s a dumb fool – like his Maw, soft an’ simple!”. It is obvious throughout the entire play that Cabot is hateful towards Eben, and Eben is the same way as he sneakingly tries to take back what belongs to him through his mother. Eben used his knowledge of his stop brothers’ desires to get them off his hands as Cabot brought another wife home, threatening, once again, Eben’s chance of getting his mother’s land back. Both Cabot and Eben were smart in their ideas of getting back at the other, but Cabot, it seems, was unfortunately the successful one in the end.