Mourning Becomes Electra

by

Eugene O’Neill

Wartime Horror vs. Domestic Discontent Theme Analysis

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.
Wartime Horror vs. Domestic Discontent Theme Icon

Mourning Becomes Electra, Eugene O’Neill’s three-play cycle about the troubled Mannon family, begins just as the Union soldiers are triumphing in the American Civil War. But when General Ezra Mannon and his son Orin return home to their prosperous New England home, they do not arrive to domestic bliss. Instead, the Mannon house merely functions as a smaller-scale recreation of the violence and betrayal (father against son, sister against brother) that defined the Civil War battlefields; just as the Civil War, turning countrymen against each other, was unusually intimate, intimate life in these three plays begins to emerge as unusually violent. And indeed, over the course of the trilogy, Orin will kill his cousin Adam Brant and (indirectly) his mother Christine, meaning that he murders just as many people at home as he did in the actual war—though this time, Orin is responsible for killing his own flesh and blood. 

As in the Oresteia, the ancient Greek dramatic trilogy that inspired O’Neill’s own plays, Mourning Becomes Electra asserts that the boundaries between wartime horror and domestic peace are far more porous than they seem. As Orin says, pleading with his sister Lavinia to erase any ideas she has of him as a military hero, “I can’t grasp anything but war […]—the war that would never end until I died. I can’t understand peace.” Because war eradicates trust, companionship, and any ideas about the sanctity of life, Electra seems to suggest, those who have been to battle cannot shed those patterns of violence when they return home. Instead, war repeats itself behind the closed doors of soldiers’ homes, taking its toll long after formal victory has been declared.

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Wartime Horror vs. Domestic Discontent ThemeTracker

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Wartime Horror vs. Domestic Discontent Quotes in Mourning Becomes Electra

Below you will find the important quotes in Mourning Becomes Electra related to the theme of Wartime Horror vs. Domestic Discontent.
Homecoming: Act 1 Quotes

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 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:

ORIN—My mind is still full of ghosts. I can’t grasp anything but war, in which he was so alive. [Ezra] was the war to me—the war that would never end until I died. I can’t understand peace […]

Oh, I know what you’re thinking! I used to be such a nice gentlemanly cuss, didn’t I?—and now— Well, you wanted me to be a hero in blue, so you better be resigned! Murdering doesn’t improve one’s manners!

Related Characters: Orin Mannon (speaker), Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon, Ezra Mannon
Page Number: 328
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:

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—God! To think I hoped home would be an escape from death! I should never have come back to life—from my island of peace! (then staring at his mother strangely) But that’s lost now! You’re my lost island, aren’t you, Mother?

Related Characters: Orin Mannon (speaker), Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon, Christine Mannon , Ezra Mannon
Page Number: 352
Explanation and Analysis:
The Hunted: Act 4 Quotes

ORIN—This is like my dream. I’ve killed him before—over and over!

LAVINIA—Orin!

ORIN—Do you remember me telling you how the faces of the men I killed came back and changed to Father’s face and finally became my own? (He smiles grimly.) He looks like me, too! Maybe I’ve committed suicide!

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon (speaker), Christine Mannon , Adam Brant
Page Number: 366
Explanation and Analysis:
The Hunted: Act 5 Quotes

ORIN—I heard you planning to go with him to the island I had told you about—our island—that was you and I! […] But you’ll forget him! I’ll make you forget him! I’ll make you happy! We’ll leave Vinnie here and go on a long voyage—to the South Seas […]

LAVINIA—(with bitter scorn) Orin! After all that’s happened, are you becoming her crybaby again? […] Leave her alone! Go in the house! (As he hesitates—more sharply) Do you hear me? March! […] He paid the just penalty for his crime. You know it was justice. It was the only way true justice could be done.

Related Characters: Lavinia “Vinnie” Mannon (speaker), Orin Mannon (speaker), Christine Mannon , Ezra Mannon, Adam Brant
Related Symbols: Islands
Page Number: 371
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:
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: