Is O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms a tragedy of passion?

Whether a tragedy or not , Eugene O'Neill's play ,
Desire Under the Elms , is surely a drama of passions , dealing
with love , hate , revenge , working out quite controversially the themes of incest ,
infanticide and intense possessiveness.

Ephraim's bid to
dispossess his son , Eben , from the inheritence of his mother's land , Eben's mother
being overworked to death , Eben's clever alluring modus to drive his two half-brothers
from their father's farmland , the love-hate tumult between Eben and his father's young
wife Abbie , the smothering of the incest-born child of Eben and Abbie, the catastrophic
isolation of old Ephraim--all suggest the reduction of human beings to the level of
promordial savagery and passions.

The play may not be
called a true tragedy though O'Neill has borrowed motifs and structure from ancient
Greek tragedies. Characters are all passion-driven, and may be said to lack tragic
depths and heights. The conclusion seems more pathetic than truly
tragic.