Mourning Becomes Electra - Eugene O’Neill

Mourning Becomes Electra

-        Eugene O’Neill

           Eugene O’Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate. He was among those first writers who introduced realism in American drama techniques. O’Neill’s characters used to struggle a lot and maintain hopes but ultimately slide into illusion and despair.

      “Mourning Becomes Electra” is a play cycle published in 1931. The story of this play is adopted from “Oresteia” by Aeschylus. “Orestia” is a Greek tragedy and the characters of the tragedy are driven by the fate. O’Neill has presented the tragedy by including psychological fate in it. The play includes two major psychological terms Electra complex and Oedipus complex.

       If we compare Greek and American tragedies, there are several similarities and difference in characters and situations

Greek	American
Oresteia	Mourning Becomes Electra
Aeschylus	Eugene O’Neill
1 Agamemnon	1 Home Coming
2 The Libation Bearers	2 The Hunted
3 The Eumenides	3 The Haunted
Agamemnon	Ezra Pound
Clytemnestra	Christine
Orestes	Orin
Electra	Lavinia
Adam Brant	Aegisthus
Trojan War	American Civil War

 

         Here I would like to share O’Neill’s view when he was writing the play. O’Neill asked himself – 

“Is it possible to get modern psychological approximation of Greek sense of fate into a play, which an intelligent audience of today, who has no belief in Gods or supernatural retribution” three years later he founded an answer, he used “Psychological fate”.

       The play includes themes like family, lies and deceit, sex and lust, death, justice and judgement and society and class. Electra complex is displayed by Lavinia,

Lavinia – I can’t marry anyone, father needs me.

Peter – He’s got your mother.

Lavinia – He needs me more.

Orin displays Oedipus complex by loving is mother,

“The breaking of the waves was your voice, the sky was the same colour as your eyes, the warm send was like your skin, and the whole island was you.”