Themes, Motifs, and Symbols Mourning Becomes Electra Essay Sample free essay sample

Although O’Neill purportedly derived Mourning Becomes Electra from theOresteia. the myth that really structures the play’s action is overpowering that of Oedipus. Oedipus was the Theban male monarch who inadvertently killed his male parent and murdered his female parent. conveying ruin to the land. Famously Freud elaborated this myth into his Oedipus composite. the construction through which kids are conventionally introduced into the societal order and normative sexual dealingss. At the centre of this composite in what Freud defined as its positive signifier is the child’s incestuous desire for the parent of the opposite sex. a desire perchance surmounted in the class of the child’s development or else capable to repression. Its development is starkly differentiated for male childs and misss. Both begin with a primary love object. the female parent. The male child kid merely moves from the female parent upon the menace of emasculation posed by his challenger. the male parent. In other words. the male child fears that the male parent would cut his phallus off if he continues to cleaving to the female parent who truly belongs to her hubby. By forbiding incest and establishing the proper dealingss of desire within the family. the Father becomes a figure of the jurisprudence. In overcoming his Oedipal desires. the male child would so abandon his female parent as a love object and place himself with his male parent. In contrast. the miss abandons the female parent upon recognizing both the mother’s emasculation and her ain. To her discouragement. neither she nor her female parent have a phallus. She so turns to the male parent in hopes of bearing a kid by him that would replace for her missing phallus ; the miss would go a female parent in her mother’s topographic point. Therefore. whereas emasculation ends the Oedipus composite for the male child. it begins it for the miss. The Oedipal play in its many substitutions determines the class of the trilogy. Lavinia. for illustration. yearns to replace Christine as married woman to her male parent and female parent to her brother. Christine clings to Orin as that the â€Å"flesh and blood. † wholly her ain. that would do good on her emasculation. Brant. in bend. is but a replacement for her cherished boy. Orin yearns to re- set up his incestuous bond with his female parent. But the war. where he would eventually presume the Mannon name. forces him from their pre-Oedipal embracing in the first topographic point. Though titled after Electra. the prevailing brace of lovers in Mourning is the Mother-Son. Put bluffly. the male Mannons in some manner or another take their female love objects as Mother substitutes. and the adult females pose them as their boies. The Fathers of the drama. Ezra and otherwise. figure as the challenger who would interrupt this bond of love. As we will see. what is chiefly being mourned here is the loss of this love relation. this â€Å"lost island† where Mother and Son can be together. Fate. Repetition. and Substitution As Travis Bogard notes. O’Neill wrote Mourning to convert modern audiences of the continuity of Fate. Consequently. throughout the trilogy. the participants will note upon a unusual bureau driving them into their illicit love personal businesss. slayings. and treacheries. What O’Neill footings destiny is the repeat of a mythic construction of desire across the coevalss. the Oedipal play. As Orin will note to Lavinia in â€Å"The Haunted. † the Mannons have no pick but to presume the functions of Mother-Son that organize their household history. The participants continually become replacements for these two figures. a permutation made most expressed in Lavinia and Orin’s reincarnation as Christine and Ezra. In this peculiar instance. Lavinia traces the classical Oedipal flight. in which the girl. horrified by her emasculation. yearns to go the female parent and bear a kid by her male parent that would deliver her deficiency. Orin at one time figures as this kid every bit good as the hubby she would go forth to be with her boy. The Double/the Rival The assorted permutations among the participants as structured by the Oedipal play make the participants each other’s doubles. The two-base hit is besides the challenger. the participant who believes himself dispossessed convinced that his dual bases in his proper topographic point. Therefore. for illustration. Lavinia considers Christine the married woman and female parent she should be. To take another illustration. Mourning’s male participants universally vie for the desire of Mother. The Civil War. by and large remembered as a war between brothers. comes to typify this battle. The men’s competitions are murderously childish. runing harmonizing to a covetous logic of â€Å"either you go or I go. † Because in these competitions the other appears as that which stands in the self’s rightful topographic point within the Oedipal trigon. the challengers appear as doubles of each other every bit good. Orin’s incubus of his slayings in the fog allegorizes this battle. Orin repeatedly killing the same adult male. himself. and his male parent. This compulsive series of slayings demonstrates the impossibleness of the lover of all time submiting to his â€Å"rightful place† within the Oedipal triangle—Mother will ever desire another. bring forthing yet another challenger. The Law of the Father In the Oedipal myth. what tears the boy off from his incestuous embracing with the female parent is the infliction of the father’s jurisprudence. Mourning’s chief male parent. Ezra. serves as figure for this paternal jurisprudence. though more in his symbolic signifier than in his ain individual. Ezra’s symbolic signifier includes his name. the portrayal in which he wears his judge’s robes. and his ventriloquist voice. Indeed. his symbolic signifier about usurps his individual. Note how Ezra. in fearing that he has become asleep to himself. Muses that he has become the statue of a great adult male. a memorial in the town square. Ezra’s decease makes the importance of his symbolic map even more evident. With the decease of his individual. he exercises the jurisprudence with all the more force. stalking the life in his assorted symbolic signifiers. Therefore. for illustration. Christine will flinch before his portrayal. Lavinia will raise his voice and name to command Orin to attending. Motifs The Blessed Islands The phantasy of the Blessed Island recurs among the major participants as the lost Mother-Son couple disrupted by the Oedipal play. It. instead than any of their deceases. is the trilogy’s chief object of bereavement. Orin offers the most extended vision of the Blessed Island to Christine in Act II of â€Å"The Hunted. † A sanctuary from the war. the Island is a warm. peaceable. and unafraid Eden composed of the mother’s organic structure. Therefore Orin can conceive of himself with Christine without her being at that place. In footings of the trilogy’s sexual play. the Blessed Island is the kingdom of the pre-Oedipal. the clip of plenty and integrity shared by female parent and kid. However. Orin goes to war to make his responsibility as a Mannon. The Natives The Blessed Islands are besides populated. in the players’ imaginativenesss. by indigens. which entwine their phantasies of sex with those of race. By and large the native appears through two divergent images: the sexual inexperienced person and the sexually depraved. Thus. for illustration. Lavinia will remember the islands as the place of dateless kids. dancing naked on the beach and loving without wickedness. This island is the perfect place for a prelapsarian love matter. For Orin. nevertheless. the indigens display an about beastly sexual art. depriving his sister with their lewd regards. The native assumes these proportions when imagined as challengers. the art and pleasance they would apparently supply the lover going objects of enviousness. Symbols Though Mourning is prevailing with symbolism. the symbol that dominates the playing infinite is surely the Mannon house. The house is built in the manner of a Grecian temple. with white columned portico covering its grey walls. As Christine ailments in Act I of â€Å"Homecoming. † the house is the Mannons’ â€Å"whited sepulcher. † It functions non merely as crypt to the family’s dead but besides to its secrets. Its laminitis. Abe Mannon. designs it as a memorial of repression. constructing it to cover over the shame that sets this retaliation rhythm in gesture. What symbolizes this repression in bend is the house’s separating characteristic. the â€Å"incongruous white mask† of a portico concealing its ugliness. This mask doubles those of its occupants. arousing the â€Å"life-like masks† the Mannons wear as their faces.