Convicts And Rebels Of Fate: An Analysis Of Characters In O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra From Perspectives Of Modern Psychology And Nietzschean Philosophy

Eugene O'Neill is one of the most outstanding American dramatists not only for his prolificacy in drama creation but for his accomplishment in bringing serious and profound drama to American theater. As a modern playwright, O'Neill is good at learning from both the artistic ancestors and his contemporaries. Therefore, many of his works have been endowed with the artistic quality of both primitiveness and modernity. The grand trilogy Mourning Becomes Electra among his middle plays is a good illustration to this unique unity.In this play, O'Neill adopts a parellel structure to that of the ancient drama Oresteia and tries to interpret the ancient and supernatural sense of fate in Greek tragedies from the perspective of modern psychology. Such an attempt provides the play and the characters with a realistic basis and arouses the attention from the present author, as well. How on earth does the psychological power trap the whole family throughout several generations? This is the question which needs to be answered in this paper. At the same time, O'Neill gives his heroine too much focus in his play, which is completely different from the Oresteia. Why does the playwright give his attention to his heroine? What does he want to convey to the audience through this character? These become another point which attracts the present author's attention. After some research work, it is not difficult to find O'Neill's motivation for his arrangement in this play, that is, to encourage people to live on bravely in this world with the spirit of Dionysus and superman advocated by Nietzsche. Therefore, modern psychology and Nietzschean philosophy will be the two aspects from which this paper is organized. In order to explain the above questions clearly enough, the present author decides to make a thorough analysis of the main characters in this play.Altogether, the paper can be divided into four parts. Part 1 serves as a brief introduction to the life of O'Neill and the play, Mourning Becomes Electra. At the same time, the contemporary criticism on O'Neill can also be found here.Part 2&3 are the main body of the paper. In part 2, the main characters in this play are analyzed from the perspective of modern psychology. By doing so, the overwhelming power of human's psychological impulses can be easily noticed. Psyche seems to have become the shackles restraining the family, turning each of them the convicts of "fate". In O'Neill's play, the controlling power of the Mannons' fate is the repressed "Complexes"; and the subsidiary power is the unharmonious structure of their minds. Besides, the playwright also employs the makeup of death-like face to stress the divided personality of the Mannons, which is also a cause for the family's tragedy.Part 3 focuses on two female characters in this play. Although they live in the prison of fate, they still make their attempts to rebel against it. Their courage comes from Dionysus, the god of wine in Greek mythology, whom Nietzsche speaks highly of. And Lavinia Mannon even possesses the spirit of Nietzschean superman—she finally faces up to her fate determinedly instead of escaping from it. Such positive attitude towards life and the outside world is what O'Neill tries to convey to his audience.Part 4 is the conclusion of the whole paper. In this play, O'Neill creates a family who have been haunted by their fate which is mainly psychological. But at the same time, he creates Lavinia who represents the hope to get rid of the fate, although at a great cost. The arrangement for this play displays O'Neill's sense of responsibility as a dramatist: the dissatisfactory existence of modern people is his concern but he also gives hope to his fellow people. He is a tragedian but by no means a pessimist.