The impact of the European theatre of the absurd on American drama seems largely to have been at the level of style rather than philosophy. The bleak metaphysics of Beckett sat uneasily with American positivism while his ironies differed from those of American writers. His ‘Let's go. (They do not move)’ may have been echoed by O'Neill's characters in The Iceman Cometh, repeatedly announcing their imminent departure while staying resolutely rooted to the spot, as his desperate conversationalists, filling a threatening void, found their counterpart in that same author's Hughie, but O'Neill gave birth to his own despair. In Europe the absurd had its historical correlative in a war which saw hope denied as a simple and implacable fact of daily life. George Steiner has spoken of the terrible hope carried to the door of gas chambers whose very existence seemed to confirm something more than the fears of a persecuted people. We do, indeed, give birth astride the grave.

In America such history exists to be transcended. It is a country peopled by escapees from determinism and if even here death cannot be defeated its force can with luck be dissipated. Plastic surgeons conspire to relieve their clients of symptoms of its approach and believers in cryogenics, no less than a plethora of religious sects, look for the life eternal. Here, the war was, ultimately, seen as a triumph of the human spirit, a victory over the deeper ironies.