A brief reading of "Desire under the Elms" by Eugene O'Neill illustrates how a conventional Oedipal reading of the playscript opens up spaces within the text for deconstructive free-play. In this case, a tension is identified and foregrounded between this conventional application of the Oedipal complex and Freud's interpretation of the Oedipal complex, based upon a literal reading of Freud. The key play of difference is found in the opposition between pleasure and perfection, desire and structure. Hence the pleasurable becomes different from itself; it is deferred, delayed, and scattered. It is given movement by proto-writing--by the reader's inability to say what she/he means, or mean what she/he says. Because proto-writing is forever operable, new spaces are opened up with each"new" interpretation; the chain of substitution is virtually endless. (RAE)