Mourning Becomes Electra

by

Eugene O’Neill

Themes and Colors
Justice, Revenge, and Lasting Peace Theme Icon
Familial Love vs. Carnal Desire Theme Icon
History and Repetition Theme Icon
Wartime Horror vs. Domestic Discontent Theme Icon
Lineage, Biology, and Destiny Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mourning Becomes Electra, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History and Repetition Theme Icon

Ezra Mannon’s stately manor, the setting of Eugene O’Neill’s trilogy of plays Mourning Becomes Electra, is filled with portraits of Ezra’s ancestors, all of whom look nearly identical to each other. As the second play The Hunted explains, Mannons were central to every major event in American history: one grandfather was a general in George Washington’s army; another played a major part in the Salem Witch trials; and Ezra and his son Orin themselves held important roles in the Union army during The Civil War, which is just concluding when Electra begins. In each instance, the high-status Mannons cement their place in the American elite while also participating in violence, suggesting that the Mannon family history parallels the history of the United States as a whole—and that for both the family and the country, there is always bloodshed, always war. In other words, seen through the critical eyes of Mourning Becomes Electra, history looks less like a straight line than a vicious cycle, doomed to repeat the same brutality in the political sphere and in the domestic one. Or as Orin tells his sister Lavinia when he tries to “write the history” of the Mannon family, “can’t you see I’m now in Father’s place and you’re in Mother’s? That’s the evil destiny out of the past,” children becoming their parents in all the most “evil” ways.

And if O’Neill asserts the repetitiveness of history in his plot, his chosen form is even more telling. Mourning Becomes Electra is explicitly an adaptation of the ancient Greek trilogy the Oresteia, also about a family plunged into crisis after its patriarch triumphs in war; many of the characters even have similar-sounding names (Orestes becomes Orin, for example). By rewriting a play from the fourth century B.C.E. to fit the context of the American Civil War, O’Neill suggests that history has been grimly, violently repeating itself not just since the era of the Salem Witch trials, but since the era of Aeschylus.

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History and Repetition ThemeTracker

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History and Repetition Quotes in Mourning Becomes Electra

Below you will find the important quotes in Mourning Becomes Electra related to the theme of History and Repetition.
Homecoming: Act 1 Quotes

It is shortly before sunset and the soft light of the declining sun shines directly on the front of the house, shimmering in a luminous mist on the white portico and the gray stone wall behind, intensifying the whiteness of the columns, the somber grayness of the wall, the green of the open shutters, the green of the lawn and shrubbery, the black and green of the pine tree. The white columns cast black bars of shadow on the gray wall behind them. The windows of the lower floor reflect the sun's rays in a resentful glare. The temple portico is like an incongruous white mask fixed on the house to hide its somber gray ugliness.

Related Characters: Christine Mannon
Related Symbols: Masks
Page Number: 263
Explanation and Analysis:

LAVINIA—(in a dry, brittle tone) I remember your admiration for the naked native women. You said they had found the secret of happiness because they had never heard that love can be a sin.

BRANT—(surprised—sizing her up puzzledly) So you remember that, do you? (then romantically) Aye! And they live in as near the garden of paradise before sin was discovered as you'll find on this earth! Unless you've seen it, you can't picture the green beauty of their land set in the blue of the sea! The clouds like down on the mountain tops, the sun drowsing in your blood, and always the surf on the barrier reef singing a croon in your ears like a lullaby! The Blessed Isles, I call them! You can forget there all men's dirty dreams of greed and power!

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Adam Brant (speaker), Christine Mannon
Related Symbols: Islands
Page Number: 279
Explanation and Analysis:
Homecoming: Act 2 Quotes

CHRISTINE—I know you, Vinnie! I've watched you ever since you were little, trying to do exactly what you're doing now! You've tried to become the wife of your father and the mother of Orin! You've always schemed to steal my place!

LAVINIA—(wildly) No! It’s you who have stolen all love from me since the time I was born!

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Christine Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon , Ezra Mannon, Adam Brant
Page Number: 289
Explanation and Analysis:

BRANT—If I could catch him alone, where no one would interfere, and let the best man come out alive—as I’ve often seen it done in the West!

CHRISTINE—This isn’t the West.

BRANT—I could insult him on the street before everyone and make him fight me! I could let him shoot first and then kill him in self-defense!

CHRISTINE—(scornfully) Do you imagine you could force him to fight a duel with you? Don’t you know dueling is illegal? Oh, no! He’d simply feel bound to his duty as a former judge and have you arrested! (She adds calculatingly, seeing he is boiling inside) It would be a poor revenge for your mother’s death to let him make you a laughing stock!

Related Characters: Christine Mannon (speaker), Adam Brant (speaker), Ezra Mannon, Marie Brantôme
Page Number: 295 
Explanation and Analysis:
Homecoming: Act 3 Quotes

MANNON—Peace ought to be signed soon. The President's assassination is a frightful calamity. But it can't change the course of events.

LAVINIA—Poor man! It's dreadful he should die just at his moment of victory.

MANNON—Yes! (then after a pause—somberly) All victory ends in the defeat of death. That's sure. But does defeat end in the victory of death? That's what I wonder!

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Ezra Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon , Christine Mannon
Page Number: 303
Explanation and Analysis:
The Hunted: Act 1 Quotes

CHRISTINE—Why can't all of us remain innocent and loving and trusting? But God won't leave us alone. He twists and wrings and tortures our lives with others’ lives until—we poison each other to death! (seeing Hazel’s look, catches herself—quickly) Don't mind what I said! Let's go in, shall we? I would rather wait for Orin inside [...]

ORIN—(as they enter looks eagerly toward the house—then with bitter hurt, disappointment in his tone) Where’s Mother? I thought surely she’d be waiting for me […] God, how I’ve dreamed of coming home! I thought it would never end, that we’d go on murdering and being murdered until no one was left alive! […] But the house looks different. Or is it something in me? […] Did the house always look so ghostly and dead?

Related Characters: Orin Mannon (speaker), Christine Mannon (speaker), Ezra Mannon, Hazel Niles
Page Number: 326
Explanation and Analysis:
The Hunted: Act 2 Quotes

Portraits of ancestors hang on the walls. At the rear of the fireplace, on the right, is one of a grim visaged minister of the witch burning era. Between fireplace and front is another of Ezra Mannon's grandfather, in the uniform of an officer in Washington's army. Directly over the fireplace is the portrait of Ezra's father, Abe Mannon, done when he was sixty. Except for the difference in ages, his face looks exactly like Ezra's in the painting in the study.

Of the three portraits on the other walls, two are of women—Abe Mannon’s wife and the wife of Washington's officer. The third has the appearance of a prosperous ship owner of colonial days. All the faces in the portraits have the same mask quality of those of the living characters in the play.

Related Characters: Ezra Mannon
Related Symbols: Masks
Page Number: 332
Explanation and Analysis:

CHRISTINE—We’ve always been so close, you and I. I feel you are really—my flesh and blood! She isn’t! She’s your father’s! You’re a part of me!

ORIN—(with strange eagerness) Yes! I feel that too, Mother!

CHRISTINE— […] We had a secret little world of our own in the old days, didn’t we?—which no one but us knew about.

ORIN—(happily) You bet we did! No Mannons allowed was our password, remember!

CHRISTINE—And that’s why your father and Vinnie could never forgive us! But we’ll make that little world of our own again […] I want to make up to you for all the injustice you suffered at your father’s hands. It may seem a hard thing to say about the dead, but he was jealous of you. He hated you because he knew I loved you better than anything in the world!

Related Characters: Orin Mannon (speaker), Christine Mannon (speaker), Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon, Ezra Mannon
Page Number: 338
Explanation and Analysis:

ORIN—Finally those islands came to mean everything that wasn't war, everything that was peace and warmth and security. I used to dream I was there. […] There was no one there but you and me. And yet I never saw you, that's the funny part. I only felt you all around me. The breaking of the waves was your voice. The sky was the same color as your eyes. The warm sand was like your skin. The whole island was you. […]

You’ve still got the same beautiful hair, Mother. That hasn’t changed. (He reaches up and touches her hair caressingly. She gives a little shudder of repulsion and draws away from him but he is too happy to notice). Oh, Mother, it’s going to be wonderful from now on! We’ll get Vinnie to marry Peter and there will just be you and I!

Related Characters: Orin Mannon (speaker), Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon, Christine Mannon , Ezra Mannon, Adam Brant
Related Symbols: Islands
Page Number: 342
Explanation and Analysis:
The Hunted: Act 3 Quotes

ORIN—Before I had gotten back I had to kill another in the same way. It was like murdering the same man twice. I had a queer feeling that war meant murdering the same man over and over, and that in the end I would discover the man was myself! Their faces keep coming back in dreams—and they change to Father’s face—or to mine— What does that mean, Vinnie?

LAVINIA—I don’t know! I’ve got to talk to you! For heaven’s sake, forget the war! It’s over now!

ORIN—Not inside us who killed!

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon (speaker), Christine Mannon , Ezra Mannon, Adam Brant
Page Number: 347
Explanation and Analysis:

ORIN—Vinnie! Do you realize what it would mean—?

LAVINIA—I realize only too well. You and I, who are innocent, would suffer a worse punishment than the guilty—for we'd have to live on! It would mean that Father's memory and that of all the honorable Mannon dead would be dragged through the horror of a murder trial! But I'd rather suffer that than let the murder of our father go unpunished!

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon (speaker), Christine Mannon , Ezra Mannon, Adam Brant
Page Number: 348
Explanation and Analysis:
The Haunted: Act 1 Quotes

LAVINIA—I loved those Islands. They finished setting me free. There was something there mysterious and beautiful—a good spirit—of love—coming out of the land and sea. It made me forget death. There was no hereafter. There was only this world—the warm earth in the moonlight […] the natives dancing naked and innocent—without knowledge of sin!

[…] Oh, Peter, hold me close to you! I want to feel love! Love is all beautiful! I never used to know that! I was a fool! (She kisses him passionately. He returns it, aroused and at the same time a little shocked by her boldness. She goes on longingly.) We’ll be married soon, won’t we […] We’ll make an island for ourselves on the land, and we’ll have children and love them and teach them to love life so that they can never be possessed by hate and death!

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon , Adam Brant, Peter Niles, Avahanni
Related Symbols: Islands
Page Number: 394
Explanation and Analysis:
The Haunted: Act 2 Quotes

ORIN—I hate the daylight. It’s like an accusing eye! No, we’ve renounced the day, in which normal people live—or rather it has renounced us. Perpetual night—darkness of death in life—that’s the fitting habitat for guilt! You believe you can escape that, but I’m not so foolish!

[…] And I find artificial light more appropriate for my work—man’s light, not God’s—man’s feeble striving to understand himself, to exist for himself in the darkness! It’s a symbol of his life—a lamp burning out in a room of waiting shadows!

LAVINIA—(sharply) Your work? What work?

ORIN—(mockingly) Studying the law of crime and punishment, as you saw.

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon (speaker), Ezra Mannon
Page Number: 397
Explanation and Analysis:

LAVINIA—What kind of history do you mean?

ORIN—A true history of all the family crimes, beginning with Grandfather Abe’s—all of the crimes, including ours, do you understand?

LAVINIA—(aghast) Do you mean to tell me you’ve actually written—

ORIN—Yes! I’ve tried to trace to its secret hiding place in the Mannon past the evil destiny behind our lives! I thought if I could see it clearly in the past I might be able to foretell what fate is in store for us, Vinnie—but I haven’t dared predict that […]

So many strange hidden things out of the Mannon past combine in you! For one example, do you remember the first mate, Wilkins, on the voyage to Frisco? […] Adam Brant was a ship’s officer, too, wasn’t he?

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon (speaker), Christine Mannon , Ezra Mannon, Adam Brant
Page Number: 400
Explanation and Analysis:

ORIN—(with a quiet mad insistence) Can’t you see I’m now in Father’s place and you’re Mother? That’s the evil destiny out of the past I hadn’t dared predict! I’m the Mannon you’re chained to!

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon (speaker), Christine Mannon , Ezra Mannon, Adam Brant, Peter Niles
Page Number: 402
Explanation and Analysis:
The Haunted: Act 3 Quotes

HAZEL—You don’t want her to marry Peter?

ORIN—No! She can’t have happiness! She’s got to be punished! (suddenly taking her hand—excitedly) And listen, Hazel! You mustn’t love me any more. The only love I can know now is the love of guilt for guilt which breeds more guilt—until you get so deep at the bottom of hell there is no lower you can sink and you rest there in peace!

Related Characters: Orin Mannon (speaker), Hazel Niles (speaker), Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon, Peter Niles
Page Number: 407
Explanation and Analysis:

ORIN—I love you now with all the guilt in me—the guilt we share! Perhaps I love you too much, Vinnie!

LAVINIA—I don’t know what you’re saying!

ORIN—There are times now when you don’t seem to be my sister, not Mother, but some stranger with the same beautiful hair— (He touches her hair caressingly. She pulls violently away. He laughs wildly.) Perhaps you’re Marie Brantôme, eh? And you say there are no ghosts in this house?

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon (speaker), Christine Mannon , David Mannon, Marie Brantôme
Page Number: 411
Explanation and Analysis:
The Haunted: Act 4 Quotes

LAVINIA—Kiss me! Hold me close! Want me! Want me so much you’d murder anyone to have me! I did that—for you! Take me in this house of the dead and love me! Our love will drive the dead away! It will shame them back into death […] Take me, Adam! [She is brought back to herself with a start by this name escaping her—bewilderedly, laughing idiotically) Adam? Why did I call you Adam? I never even heard that name before—outside of the Bible! (then suddenly with a hopeless, dead finality) Always the dead between! […]

PETER—Vinnie! You’re talking crazy! […] What happened to you on the Islands. Was it something there? Something to do with that native?

LAVINIA—[…] I won’t lie anymore! Orin suspected I’d lusted with him! And I had! […] He had me! I was his fancy woman!

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Peter Niles (speaker), Christine Mannon , Adam Brant, Seth Beckwith, Marie Brantôme , Avahanni
Page Number: 422
Explanation and Analysis:

LAVINIA—I’m not going the way Mother and Orin went. That’s escaping punishment. And there’s no one left to punish me. I’m the last Mannon. I’ve got to punish myself! Living alone here with the dead is a worse act of justice than death or prison! I’ll never go out or see anyone! I’ll have the shutters nailed close so no sunlight can ever get in. I’ll live alone with the dead, and keep their secrets, and let them hound me, until the curse is paid out and the last Mannon is let die! […] It takes the Mannons to punish themselves for being born!

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon , Christine Mannon , Seth Beckwith
Related Symbols: Islands
Page Number: 423
Explanation and Analysis: