Mourning Becomes Electra Essay Questions

What is this story's message about the nature of war?

Mourning Becomes Electra might not be the first novel that comes to mind when one thinks of the Civil War, but O'Neill does an excellent job of probing the nature of the war itself. He engages which the senselessness of it through Orin's realization that it is "only a joke" (304). He reveals how the young men who fight in it are forever altered and find it immensely difficult to return to civilian life. Ezra calls it "brain fever" but Orin himself is far more eloquent about what plagues him. He claims "my mind is still full of ghosts" (288), ruminates on "the screams of the dying" (294), and believes "that war meant murdering the same man over and over again, and that at the end I would discover the man was myself!" (305). He tells Hazel "the Orin you loved was killed in the war" (364). Orin's tortured, traumatized psyche is mostly derived from the war; the death and destruction and senselessness of it all affected him in profound ways. Thus, O'Neill's play helps the audience understand what the war did to an entire generation of young men.

How does Seth contribute to the narrative and its themes?

Seth is a more important character than he initially may seem. While he does offer a bit of comic relief and does foreshadow some of the drama to come with his singing of "Shenandoah," he also plays a maieutic, prophetic function. This happens because Lavinia asks Seth to reveal the answer to a question—Brant's identity—and thus brings in crucial information to the play's first act. He prompts Lavinia to start thinking about the family history and Brant's motivations. He is an observer, analyst, and commentator. He is intimately aware of what the family is like but is not one of them. Critic Miriam Chirico notes, "Seth's familiarity with the family makes him the perfect character to relate to the audience how the family first erred and brought the curse upon themselves." His connection to the role of the prophet also emphasizes the essential "Greekness" of the drama.

Does Lavinia feel guilty for her role in the murders/suicides? Why or why not?

Lavinia urges Orin to kill Brant and himself, and she helps to create an untenable situation for Christine that also leads her to kill herself. Despite her connections to these horrible events Lavinia mostly seems to show no guilt. She believes she carried out "justice" with Brant and suppresses any twinges of her conscience. She firmly tells Orin that they have to forget about the past and its ghosts and live in the present, and that she has every right to love and happiness and a future. She refuses to engage in rumination or memory, preferring to take control of her own life. All of this would indicate a lack of guilt and a potential breakaway from the family curse, but, by the end of the text, it is clear the guilt has seeped in. Her former vibrancy and agency are suppressed and she is back to her mannish, dour appearance; furthermore, she decides to leave Peter and close herself in the Mannon house forever to bear out the curse. At the end of the play guilt wins out in the end, and Lavinia joins her brother in payment for their crimes.

Are the characters in the play insane? Provide evidence to support your answer.

Lavinia is obsessed with her father. Orin is obsessed with his mother. Orin and Lavinia murder Brant. Christine is infatuated with her son. Ezra is infatuated with his daughter. Christine murders Ezra and kills herself. Orin kills himself. All of these extreme fixations and behaviors may indicate insanity, but it is evident that O'Neill did not wish to convey that these people were insane. Rather, he plays with the heavy mental burdens of war, dogmatic religion, fate, and the sins of the father; these problems provoke the characters to their actions, not their addled brains. That is not to say that the characters do not tread a fine line, however; critic Stephen Black points to the "incestuous desires" of the characters and how only "Lavinia has escaped some of the suffering that has made Orin mad or nearly so and she knows instinctively where the border lies between madness and not-mad." O'Neill's official website explains, "no one, not even Orin as he comes to the point of suicide, is insane. All the actions are deliberate, the product of desire energized by ruthless purpose."

Why does Lavinia choose the fate she does?

For a moment it seems that Lavinia might get out -that she might leave the house and the curse, marry Peter, be truer to herself. However, she decides to remain to bear out the curse once Peter deflates her final hopes for normalcy by rejecting her plan for immediate marriage and by casting suspicions and aspersions on her time in the Blessed Isle. The weight of her deeds descends upon her and she realizes punishment is the only life for her. She will not kill herself, but she will live a hermetic, monastic existence among the family ghosts. She does not believe she deserves love or normalcy, and O'Neill's linkage of her to Marie and Christine via their hair and dispositions foreshadowed this eventual fate for her. As critic Susan Harris Smith writes, "when [Lavinia] accepts her Mannon fate, she encloses, isolates, and deprives her now-docile body in a protected place of disciplinary monotony, and the complete and austere prison of the house, under the panoptic gaze of the Mannon portraits."