Mourning Becomes Electra

The House of Mannon Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra is a play of revenge, sacrifice, and murder conveyed through visible references to Aeschylus’ House of Atreus. O’Neill alludes to The House of Atreus in order to ground the play; attaching the plot to well-known aspects of history. As well, it brings a certain significance that otherwise would be neglected if their underlying manifestations went unnoticed. The most prominent of these allusions is that to Aeschylus’ House of Atreus. O’Neill

and romanticism. But he is not averse to using melodrama in his plays colorless and monotonous. So in Mourning Becomes Electra, he shows Orin shooting Brant, Christine shooting herself, Orin shooting himself out of guilt-complex and Lavinia dramatically entering the haunted house and the life of life-long seclusion. These melodramatic situations add color to the drab realities which might become uninteresting. The most significant element of O'Neil's

crime, violence, and guilt . . . [it’s] dialogue is enveloped by deception, scheming and back-biting” (Manheim 88). This paper sheds light on how war, jealousy, hatred and oppression can all be strong catalysts of anger in Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) by the employment of foreshadowing, symbolism and interior monologue, and how the outcome of the journey of revenge throughout the play results in nothing but guilt and

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill is one of the greatest American playwrights, he is known for plays such as “Long Day's Journey into Night” ,”Beyond the Horizon” (1920), “Anna Christie” (1922), “Strange Interlude” (1928), “Mourning Becomes Electra”(1931)and The Iceman Cometh (1946). His plays probe the American Dream, race relations, class conflicts, sexuality, human aspirations and psychoanalysis. He often became immersed in the modernist movements of his time as he primarily sought to create “modern

years ago. Orestes then recalls that Agamemnon had a daughter name Electra, so he asks Zeus what her take on this whole ordeal is. Zeus then explains that Agamemnon also had a son named Orestes. The audience of the play quickly realizes that Orestes is undercover in his journey to reach Aegisthus. Orestes is able to enter the palace and finds out the reality of what is happening inside. Here he comes into contact with Electra. Electra is known

ordinary people in an extraordinary circumstance. Apparently, was so unique among many writers of ancient Athens because of his abundant sympathy that he demonstrated towards the victims of society, most especially being women. Agamemnon, Orestes and Electra were the main characters in the plays. The play revolves around the leader of Greek forces, Agamemnon, and his deadly decision to sacrifice his first daughter Iphigenia, to preserve his honor by doing battle against

can be beneficial. Comparing the concepts in Sophocles' Electra to Gilligan's Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic of Justice and the reasons behind it unfold. Understanding the concepts of justice and punishment, shame and honor, death of self, the death sentence, love, language and violence, gender-based violence, and how they affect killers may give insight into why violent actions are committed. Sophocles' dramatic tragedy Electra dives into revenge and the ancient Greek "blood for blood"

can be beneficial. Comparing the concepts in Sophocles' Electra to Gilligan's Violence: Reflections on a National Epidemic of Justice and the reasons behind it unfold. Understanding the concepts of justice and punishment, shame and honor, death of self, the death sentence, love, language and violence, gender-based violence, and how they affect killers may give insight into why violent actions are committed. Sophocles' dramatic tragedy Electra dives into revenge and the ancient Greek "blood for blood"

go and invents long philosophical, religious and ethical reasons why it was not the right time to kill him. That’s why as the sense of duty towards his dead father grows, fed partly by his father’s ghost, partly by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, he becomes abnormally fierce and frustrated. However he is not delaying Claudius’s murder because of the madness which is fake as Eliot calls it "a simple ruse, and to the end, we may assume, understood as a ruse to the audience". He defers the action because

The Libation Bearers and Hamlet Many of Shakespeare’s plays draw from classical Greek themes, plot and metaphors. The tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides and Homer have themes like royal murders, assassinations by near relatives, the supernatural, ghostly visits, and vengeful spirits of the dead- themes which reappear in Shakespeare’s tragedies with a difference. Shakespeare’s tragic hero Hamlet and Aeschylus’s Orestes have a great deal in common. Both the plays are set in a time when