Mourning Becomes Electra Analysis

MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA

By: Eugene O’neill

1.      SUMMARY

It is late spring afternoon in front of the Mannon house. The master of the house, Brigadier-General Ezra Mannon, is soon to return from war.

Lavinia, Ezra's severe daughter, has just come, like her mother Christine, from a trip to New York. Seth, the gardener, takes the anguished girl aside. He needs to warn her against her would-be beau, Captain Brant. Before Seth can continue, however, Lavinia's suitor Peter and his sister Hazel, arrive. Lavinia stiffens. If Peter is proposing to her again, he must realize that she cannot marry anyone because Father needs her.

Lavinia asks Seth to resume his story. Seth asks if she has not noticed that Brant looks just like her all the other male Mannons. He believes that Brant is the child of David Mannon and Marie Brantôme, a Canuck nurse, a couple expelled from the house for fear of public disgrace.

Suddenly Brant himself enters from the drive. Calculatingly Lavinia derides the memory of Brant's mother. Brant explodes and reveals his heritage. Lavinia's grandfather loved his mother and jealously cast his brother out of the family. Brant has sworn vengeance.

A moment later, Lavinia appears inside her father's study. Christine enters indignantly, wondering why Lavinia has summoned her. Lavinia reveals that she followed her to New York and saw her kissing Brant. Christine defiantly tells Lavinia that she has long hated Ezra and that Lavinia was born of her disgust. She loves her brother Orin because he always seemed hers alone.

Lavinia coldly explains that she intends to keep her mother's secret for Ezra's sake. Christine must only promise to never see Brant again. Laughingly Christine accuses her daughter of wanting Brant herself. Lavinia has always schemed to steal her place. Christine agrees to Lavinia's terms. Later she proposes to Brant that they poison Ezra and attribute his death to his heart trouble.

One week later, Lavinia stands stiffly at the top of the front stairs with Christine. Suddenly Ezra enters and stops stiffly before his house. Lavinia rushes forward and embraces him.

Once she and Ezra alone, Christine assures her that he has nothing to suspect with regards to Brant. Ezra impulsively kisses her hand. The war has made him realize that they must overcome the wall between them. Calculatingly Christine assures him that all is well. They kiss.

Toward daybreak in Ezra's bedroom, Christine slips out from the bed. Mannon's bitterly rebukes her. He knows the house is not his and that Christine awaits his death to be free. Christine deliberately taunts that she has indeed become Brant's mistress. Mannon rises in fury, threatening her murder, and then falls back in agony, begging for his medicine. Christine retrieves a box from her room and gives him the poison.

Mannon realizes her treachery and calls Lavinia for help. Lavinia rushes to her father. With his dying effort, Ezra indicts his wife: "She's guilty—not medicine!" he gasps and then dies. Her strength gone, Christine collapses in a faint.

The Hunted

Peter, Lavinia, and Orin arrive at the house. Orin disappointedly complains of Christine's absence. He jealously asks Lavinia about what she wrote him regarding Brant. Lavinia warns him against believing Christine's lies.

Suddenly Christine hurries out, reproaching Peter for leaving Orin alone. Mother and son embrace jubilantly. Suspiciously Orin asks Christine about Brant. Christine explains that Lavinia has gone mad and begun to accuse her of the impossible. Orin sits at Christine's feet and recounts his wonderful dreams about her and the South Sea Islands. The Islands represented all the war was not: peace, warmth, and security, or Christina herself. Lavinia reappears and coldly calls Orin to see their father's body.

In the study, Orin tells Lavinia that Christine has already warned him of her madness. Calculatingly Lavinia insists that Orin certainly cannot let their mother's paramour escape. She proposes that they watch Christine until she goes to meet Brant herself. Orin agrees.

The night after Ezra's funeral, Brant's clipper ship appears at a wharf in East Boston. Christine meets Brant on the deck, and they retire to the cabin to speak in private. Lavinia and an enraged Orin listen from the deck. The lovers decide to flee east and seek out their Blessed Islands. Fearing the hour, they painffully bid each other farewell. When Brant returns, Orin shoots him and ransacks the room to make it seem that Brant has been robbed.

The following night Christine paces the drive before the Mannon house. Orin and Lavinia appear, revealing that they killed Brant. Christine collapses. Orin knees beside her pleadingly, promising that he will make her happy, that they can leave Lavinia at home and go abroad together. Lavinia orders Orin into the house. He obeys.

Christine glares at her daughter with savage hatred and marches into the house. Lavinia determinedly turns her back on the house, standing like a sentinel. A shot is heard from Ezra's study. Lavinia stammers: "It is justice!"

The Haunted

A year later, Lavinia and Orin return from their trip East. Lavinia's body has lost its military stiffness and she resembles her mother perfectly. Orin has grown dreadfully thin and bears the statue-like attitude of his father.

In the sitting room, Orin grimly remarks that Lavinia's has stolen Christine's soul. Death has set her free to become her. Peter enters from the rear and gasps, thinking he has seen Christine's ghost. Lavinia approaches him eagerly. Orin jealously mocks his sister, accusing her of becoming a true romantic during their time in the Islands.

A month later, Orin works intently at a manuscript in the Mannon study. Lavinia knocks sharply at the locked door. With forced casualness, she asks Peter what he is doing. Orin insists that they must atone for Mother's death. As the last male Mannon, he has written a history of the family crimes, from Abe's onward. Lavinia is the most interesting criminal of all. She only became pretty like Mother on Brant's Islands, with the natives staring at her with desire.

When Orin accuses her of sleeping with one of them, she assumes Christine's taunting voice. Reacting like Ezra, Orin grasps his sister's throat, threatening her murder. He has taken Father's place and she Mother's.

A moment later, Hazel and Peter appear in the sitting room. Orin enters, insisting that he see Hazel alone. He gives her a sealed envelope, enjoining her to keep it safe from his sister. She should only open it if something happens to him or if Lavinia tries to marry Peter. Lavinia enters from the hall. Hazel moves to leave, trying to keep Orin's envelope hidden behind her back. Rushing to Orin, Lavinia beseeches him to make her surrender it. Orin complies.

Orin tells his sister she can never see Peter again. A "distorted look of desire" comes into his face. Lavinia stares at him in horror, saying, "For God's sake—! No! You're insane! You can't mean—!" Lavinia wishes his death. Startled, Orin realizes that his death would be another act of justice. Mother is speaking through Lavinia.

Peter appears in the doorway. Unnaturally casual, Orin remarks that he was about to go clean his pistol and exits. Lavinia throws herself into Peter's arms. A muffled shot is heard.

Three days later, Lavinia appears dressed in deep mourning. A resolute Hazel arrives and insists that Lavinia not marry Peter. The Mannon secrets will prevent their happiness. She already has told Peter of Orin's envelope.

Peter arrives, and the pair pledges their love anew. Started by the bitterness in his voice, Lavinia desperately flings herself into his arms crying, "Take me, Adam!" Horrified, Lavinia orders Peter home.

Lavinia cackles that she is bound to the Mannon dead. Since there is no one left to punish her, she must punish herself—she must entomb herself in the house with the ancestors.

2.      THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS

1. Lavinia Mannon: She is beautiful but she is not a feminine girl.  She is the Mannon's daughter. She is 23 years old, and looked elder than her age. Her body is not interesting, and she always wears uninteresting clothes too. She’s looked bossy and talkative.
2. Christine Mannon: A striking woman of forty with a fine, voluptuous figure, flowing animal grace, and a mass of beautiful copper hair. She wears green, which symbolizes her envy. Her pale face is also a life-like mask, a mask that represents both her duplicity and her almost super-human efforts at repression. Having long abhorred her husband Ezra, Christine plots his murder with her lover Brant upon his return from the Civil War.
3. Orin Mannon: The Mannon son returned from war. Orin bears a striking resemblance to his father and Captain Brant, though he appears as a weakened, refined, and oversensitive version of each. He possesses a boyish charm that invites the maternal favors of women. He loves his mother incestuously, flying into a jealous rage upon the discovery of her love affair that leads to Christine and Brant's deaths. Orin will then force he and his sister to judgment for their crimes in an attempt to rejoin his mother in death.
4. Brigadier-General Ezra Mannon: The great Union general. Ezra is a spare, big-boned man of exact and wooden movements. His mannerisms suggest the statue-like poses of military heroes. His brusque and authoritative voice has a hollow and repressed quality. As his near- homophonic name suggests, he is Agamemnon's counterpart, the general returned from war to be murdered by his wife and her lover. He continues to exert his influence in symbolic form. His various images, and his portrait in particular, call his family to judgment from beyond the grave.
5. Captain Adam Brant: A powerful, romantic sea captain. Brant has a swarthy complexion, sensual mouth, and long, coal-black hair. He also of course bares a striking resemblance to the other Mannon men, sharing their same, mask-like faces. The child of the illegitimate Mannon line, he returns to wreak vengeance on Ezra's household. He steals Ezra's wife, a woman he imagines in the image of his mother, and seduces Lavinia to conceal their affair.
6. Hazel Niles: A longtime friend of the Mannon children. Hazel is a pretty, healthy, dark- haired girl of nineteen. O'Neill describes her character as frank, innocent, amiable, and good. She functions as Orin's would-be sweetheart, and both Christine and Lavinia attempting to pass Orin off onto her so they can flee with their suitors. Hazel also haplessly attempts to rescue Orin from his fate.
7. Captain Peter Niles: An artillery captain for the Union. Peter resembles his sister in character. He is straightforward, guileless, and good-natured, failing to apprehend the machinations afoot in the Mannon house until the very end of the trilogy. He functions as the suitor Lavinia first rejects and later takes up as a substitute for Captain Brant.
8. Seth Beckwith: The Mannons' aged gardener. Seth is stoop-shoulded and raw-boned but still strong. Like his employers, his gaunt face gives the impression of a life-like mask. In his time with the Mannons, he has learned most of the family's secrets and colluded in keeping them. A watchman figure of sorts, he is repeatedly seen wandering the grounds and singing the sea chanty "Shenandoah."

3.      THE SETTING (PLACE AND TIME)

1. The place is at The Mannon house in New England, a harbor in East Boston.
2. The time is in the summer, 1865–1866.

4.      THE MOST IMPRESSING PART AND THE REASON

The most impressing part in my opinion is the Oedipus that Brant felt. It is uncommon condition, and only some people meet this condition. And because of this condition, Mannon’s family damage and it cause the murder of Erza that has done by Christine and Brant.

5.      THE THEME

1. Oedipus, it is tendency of the man who falls in love with a woman older than him, obsessed his mother character. Possibility since the man has little emotional closeness of a mother figure. The story showed this condition when Adam Brant fell in love to Christine Mannon and he is Christine’s lover, because Christine is Orin’s mother and she is elder than Brant.

b.      Revenge, it serves as a primary motivation for the play's actions. Seeking to revenge the death of his mother, Marie Brantome, Adam hopes to destroy the Mannon family, especially Ezra. The Mannon family is a complex web of revenge scenarios: Christine wants revenge on her husband for her unhappy marriage; Lavinia wants revenge on her mother for killing her father; Orin wants revenge on Brant for sleeping with his mother.

3. The Rival and Double, Orin became her mother’s rival because her mother has been sleeping with her husband, Brant, and because her mother also fell in love with Brant. In this condition Brant is double.

6.      THE MORAL VELUES

• Do not hurt our family.
• We should keep a good relation with our family.
• We should be patient when we face a problem.
• Do not be easy to vengeance to someone who hurt us.
• Do not betrayed our family.

7.      COMMENT

The story of this drama has a good lesson for us in our life. It shows us some problem in a family. And I thing the author want we to do not do what Mannon’s family did. And if we face the same problem, first we should be patient and we should try anything to solve the problem but in good solution.

Oliver Twist Analysis

OLIVER TWIST

By: Charles Dickens

1.      SUMMARY

Oliver Twist is born in a workhouse in a provincial town. His mother has been found very sick in the street, and she gives birth to Oliver just before she dies and he is sent to an orphanage. Oliver is raised under the care of Mrs. Mann and the beadle Mr. Bumble in the workhouse. Around the time of Oliver's ninth birthday, Mr. Bumble, a parish beadle, removes Oliver from the baby farm and puts him to work picking oakum at the main workhouse. Oliver, who toils with very little food, remains in the workhouse for six months. When it falls to Oliver’s lot to ask for more food on behalf of all the starving children in the workhouse, he is trashed, and then apprenticed to an undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry. However, Mr. Sowerberry is in an unhappy marriage, and his wife takes an immediate dislike to Oliver primarily because her husband seems to like him and loses few opportunities to underfeed and mistreat him. Another apprentice of Mr. Sowerberry’s, Noah Claypole insults Oliver’s dead mother and the small and frail Oliver attacks him.

However, Oliver is punished severely, and he runs away to London. Here he is picked up by Jack Dawkins or the Artful Dodger as he is called. The Artful Dodger is a member of the Jew Fagin’s gang of boys. Fagin has trained the boys to become pickpockets. The Artful Dodger takes Oliver to Fagin’s den in the London slums, and Oliver, who innocently does not understand that he is among criminals, becomes one of Fagin’s boys. When Oliver is sent out with The Artful Dodger and another boy on a pickpocket expedition Oliver is so shocked when he realizes what is going on that he and not the two other boys are caught. Fortunately, the victim of the thieves, the old benevolent gentleman, Mr. Brownlow rescues Oliver from arrest and brings him to his house, where the housekeeper, Mrs. Bedwin nurses him back to life after he had fallen sick, and for the first time in his life he is happy.

However, with the help of the brutal murderer Bill Sikes and the prostitute Nancy Fagin kidnaps Oliver. Fagin is prompted to do this by the mysterious Mr. Monks. Oliver is taken along on a burglary expedition in the country. The thieves are discovered in the house of Mrs. Maylie and her adopted niece, Rose, and Oliver is shot and wounded. Sikes escapes. Rose and Mrs. Maylie nurse the wounded Oliver. When he tells them his story they believe him, and he settles with them. While living with Rose and Mrs. Maylie Oliver one day sees Fagin and Monks looking at him in through a window. Nancy discovers that Monks is plotting against Oliver for some reason, bribing Fagin to corrupt his innocence.

Nancy also learns that there is some kind of connection between Rose and Oliver; but after having told Rose’s adviser and friend Dr. Losberne about it on the steps of London Bridge, she is discovered by Noah Claypole, who in the meantime has become a member of Fagin’s gang, and Sykes murders her. On his frantic flight away from the crime Sykes accidentally and dramatically hangs himself. Fagin and the rest of the gang are arrested. Fagin is executed after Oliver has visited him in the condemned cell in Newgate Prison. The Artful Dodger is transported after a court scene in which he eloquently defends himself and his class.

Monks’ plot against Oliver is disclosed by Mr. Brownlow. Monks is Oliver’s half-brother seeking all of the inheritance for himself. Oliver’s father’s will states that he will leave money to Oliver on the condition that his reputation is clean. Oliver’s dead mother and Rose were sisters. Monks receives his share of the inheritance and goes away to America. He dies in prison there, and Oliver is adopted by Mr. Brownlow. On the eve of his hanging, in an emotional scene, Oliver, accompanied by Mr. Brownlow, goes to visit the old reprobate in Newgate Gaol, where Fagin's terror at being hanged has caused him to come down with fever. As Mr. Brownlow and Oliver leave the prison, Fagin screams in terror and despair as a crowd gathers to see his hanging.

On a happier note, Rose Maylie turns out to be the long-lost sister of Agnes; she is therefore Oliver's aunt. She marries her long-time sweetheart Harry, and Oliver lives happily with his saviour, Mr. Brownlow. Noah becomes a paid, semi-professional informer to the police. The Bumbles lose their jobs and are reduced to great poverty, eventually ending up in the same workhouse where they originally had lorded it over Oliver and the other boys; and Charley Bates, horrified by Sikes's murder of Nancy, becomes an honest citizen, moves to the country, and works his way up to prosperity.

2.      THE CHARACTERS AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS

1. Oliver Twist: He is the main character, and a protagonist. A dear, grateful, gentle child, innocent and a strong child. Although he did a crime but he was a kind person, patient, and never give up face his hard life.
2. Mrs. Mann: She has charge of the infant Oliver, is not the most motherly of women.
3. Mr. Bumble: He despite his impressive sense of his own dignity. She keeps for herself most of the money allotted by the parish for the care of the orphans, and neglects them rather steadily.
4. Mrs. Sowerberry: She is perpetual scowl and a cruel woman who has a strong dislike for Oliver, and treats him accordingly.
5. Mr. Sowerberry: His profession as an undertaker and he is very kind to Oliver.
6. Monks: He is a sickly, vicious young man, prone to violent fits and teeming with inexplicable hatred. With Fagin, he schemes to give Oliver a bad reputation.
7. Mr. Brownlow: He is a well-off, erudite gentleman who serves as Oliver’s first benefactor. He behaves with compassion and common sense and emerges as a natural leader. He takes a liking to Oliver even after suspecting him of stealing his handkerchief, and takes him in, doing everything he can to help him.
8. Nancy: She display much ambivalence. she is a full-fledged criminal, she retains enough empathy to repent her role in Oliver's kidnapping, and to take steps to try to atone. She is a kind girl.
9. Bill Sikes: He is a brutal professional burglar brought up in Fagin’s gang. Sikes is Nancy's pimp and lover.
10. Fagin: He is a conniving career criminal. Fagin takes in homeless children and trains them to pick pockets for him. He is also a buyer of other people’s stolen goods.
11. Rose Maylie: She is Mrs. Maylie’s niece, a beautiful seventeen-year-old woman, who is both intelligent and perfectly kind. She is an orphan.

3.      THE SETTING (PLACE AND TIME)

1. Dickens sets Oliver Twist in early nineteenth-century England, a time when long-held ideas and beliefs came under serious scrutiny. Profound changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution, religious uncertainty, scientific advancement, and political and social upheaval caused many Victorians to reexamine many aspects of their society and culture.
2. London is a country where Oliver ran away from Sowerberry’s family and a place which used to spent his life after ran away from Sowerberry’s family.

4.      THE MOST IMPRESSING PART AND THE REASON

In my opinion the most impressing part is when Oliver never give up to face his hard life in his childhood and he was a strong child. It is interesting for me because in this 21^st century there are many spoiled children and they do not want work hard to get what they want. They always complain if they meet something hard and they always complain before they try to do, so many of them become pessimistic child. Different with Oliver who should do many things to keep alive and never give up, and he must be strong to face his hard life, so that he can escape of it. It is an important lesson for children in this 21^st century. Not only for children but also for all people, this is an important lesson that we should not be give up to face our hard life, but we should try anything to solve our problem whatever that is a serious problem.

5.      THE THEME

1. Society and Class, it is one of the central themes of most of Dickens’s novels. In Oliver Twist, Dickens often shows how superficial class structures really are – at the core, everyone’s really the same, regardless of the social class into which they’re born. Dickens also exposes how callous and uncaring Victorian society was – folks just ignored the plight of the less fortunate because they were so self-satisfied, and so convinced that the systems they had in place to take care of the poor were the best and most humane systems possible.
2. Criminality, Crime was a huge problem in London in the 1830s, when Dickens was writing, just as it is now. He wanted to show how criminals really lived, in order to discourage poor people from turning to crime. Dickens also wanted to show how external influences created criminal behavior as much or more than natural criminal urges.
3. Contrasting regions, London  itself is condemned, almost as much as the institutions of religion and justice, for helping to create criminals and oppress the poor. Because of this, the city gets personified numerous times – it’s always easier to blame a person than an inanimate city.
4. Religion, Dickens was Anglican himself, but he felt like the Church was too impersonal and institutionalized, and didn’t do enough to take care of the poor and miserable folks who turned to the Church for help. The whole parish system was responsible for maintaining workhouses, orphanages, and baby farms, and Dickens thought that the whole system was inhumane and just stunk to high heaven.
5. Fate and Free Will, some characters in this novel are liberated and live happily ever after. Others aren’t able to escape the "labyrinth" that the city, their social class, and the systems of justice and religion seem to have created. Certain characters seem to give up their free will at certain points, and to abandon themselves to a kind of bizarre fatalism. Dickens wants to show how external influences turn people into criminals, the emphasis on fate in Oliver Twist seems to undermine that idea.

6.      THE MORAL VELUES

• We should be patient and do not give up when we face hard life.
• We should try anything to solve our problem and do not complain before we try.
• Do not be spoiled person.
• We should teach our child to be strong child, not spoiled child, and never give up.

7.      COMMENT

This is a good story for us. It shows us the strong child, a child can be patient and never give up when he face a hard life. He did anything to solve his problem. And he tried anything to made his life better. It is also good story and good lesson for children, because in this story shows that was a poor child but strong and not spoiled, he always patient with his bad condition since his childhood. Children in this 21^st century can learn a life lesson from Oliver, and do not always complain when they meet a problem or a bad condition in their life.