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Roll No : 11.
Paper No : 10. American Literature.
Class : M.A. Sem - 3
Topic : symbolism of setting and Lighting in
Mourning Becomes Electra.
Enrolment No : 2069108420190045
College : Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English
Email ID : jeelvyas15@gmail.com
Submitted : Department of English
M. K. Bhavnagar University
Abstract :
The Play Mourning becomes Electra is written by Eugene O'Neill. The play is structure as trilogy. Three part of the play are The Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted. In this trilogy O'Neill symbolised the setting and even the use of lightning is also symbolised. Symbolism is originated in late 19th century France including Mallarme, Maeterlinck, Verlaine, Rimbund and Redom. Meaning of symbolism is, an artistic and poetic movement or style using symbolic images and indirect suggestion to express mystical ideas, emotions, and states of mind. We see that O'Neill has used this method very marvellous way. Here I will try to look at use of symbolism in setting and in light use by O'Neill in Morning Becomes Electra. Apart from symbolism we also find the use of music and song. His characterization seems real.
Basic information about author :
Eugene Gladstone O’Neill was born on October 16, 1888 in new York. He belongs to Irish Catholic family who immigrated to America. Their differing temperament resulted in a destructive material incompatible which formed the theme of O’Neill’s several important play like, All God's chillun Got Wings, Welded and Long Day’s journey Into Night.
Basic information about play and it’s summery :
This play is retelling of the tragic tale of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, Orestes and Electra; an almost contemporary rearrangement of the first two parts of the Aeschylean trilogy with a curiously modern Interpretation of the theme of The Furies Or The Eumenides. It is not an explication of Greek religious problem of fate, for O’Neill has reconceived the old doctoring of Nemesis in terms of the more or less modern biological and psychological doctrine of cause and effect : Here no mortal has offended a divinity; it is an American New Englander, a puritan, who had transgressed the moral code of his teachers and people and the son of his victim turns upon the living representative of his family for revenge. Captain Brant become the helpless instrument of his own passion and I stand of seeing through to the end of his bitter mission, he succumbs to the superior strength of his Mistress's daughter, Lavinia, who then drives her mother to suicide, her brother Orin first going mad, and then killing himself. For a moment it seems as though Lavinia might find peace, but here again the heritage of hate is too heavy for her, since Orin in dying had made it impossible for his sister to marry the Man she once loved. With that moral courage and single-mindedness that have sustained her throughout, she sees that death is too easy a solution for her, and with a esture of perfect beauty and tragic serenity she terms her back on the work and walks into the house, never to come out again.
Symbolic setting of the play :
1. Great Dramatic Achievement :
The mourning become Electra has symbolic setting and this is it’s great Dramatic Achievement. Which suggest the inherent conflict in Mammon Family and the attraction and repulsion regulating the lives of it’s members.
2. Symbolism of vegetation :
When we take in the special curtain at the beginning of the play. We also see the extensive Mammon estate which offers us background story of sorts and introduces it to the major conflict in the trilogy that between green paganism and puritanism. As seen from the street implies from the perspective of the town- dwellers, the estate with it’s extensive ground is most impressive. When we look similar thing from a distance it appears putty to us as it does to the town chorus.
3. Symbolism of colours :
When we look at the house is like : At front the driveway which leads up to the house from the two entrances on the street. Behind it driveway the white Grecian Temple portico with it’s six tell columns extends across the stage. There is also big pine tree is on right corner of the house. The window of the lower floor reflect the sun’s Ray in a resentful glare. After generations of nature trimming puritanism Abe Mannon, out of revenge on the love he was incapable of himself and which was therefore denied to him by Marie Brantom, tore down the old mansion and built his monstrous Temple of Hate and Death.
4. Monster like House :
The house is likes monster Swallowing it’s own breed. The play begins with open window and shutters, but when Ezra returns the window and shutters are closed; the house front becomes a death mask, expressive both of Ezra's life – denying puritanism and Christine’s evil spirit. The shutter remain closed also after Ezra's death, for which his corpse in it, the house is literally a tomb, and besides it is now Lavinia who rules the house.
5. The Mannon House :
In the last part The Haunted Lavinia's attitude has changed. Now Orin who locks himself up behind closed blinds on the study, hiding from the world with his guilt. Lavinia on the other hand, is firmly determined to drive the ghosts away. Orin has killed himself. Lavinia has enough strength to fight against situation. It is also due to her that the shutters are fastened back and that the window are open in the final act with Orin dead and escape from the Mannon imminent. At last she closed her eyes that is she dies. And without opening her eyes she says strangely as if to herself : “why can’t the dead die!” she order the shutter nailed tight and buries herself in the darkened house which seems to be her tomb.
6. Lavinia and the Pine Tree :
Lavinia is connected with the pine tree, her black costume in colour resembling the trunk of the tree. When we look at the very end of the play when Lavinia, like an ebony pillar - O'Neill's description of the Pine tree- woodenly passed between the white columns of the house on her way into it’s gloomy Darkness.
Symbolic lighting in Mourning Becomes Electra :
1. Psychological signification of lighting :
O’Neill employs lighting not merely to evoke a mood but to suggest an inner state of mind as we as a relationship between man and external fate.
2. Exterior and Interior Lighting :
Both the exterior and the interior lighting great attention in Morning Becomes Electra. When we see the part one it opens shortly before sunset and progresses towards twilight to moonlight and Dawn. Which may indicate that something bed is going to happen. Because in Archetypal Literature Night is symbolise of something bad has going to happen. The part 2 also consecutive moonlight nights. 3rd and last part opens shortly after sunset, progresses towards black night to sunlight late afternoon. We see that no act is set in broad daylight, that the Manning move from initial sunlight through a nocturnal period back to sunlight.
3. Orin and the light sequence :
The meaning of this light sequence is found in orin',s clairvoyant words : “ I hate the day light. It’s like am an accusing eye! No , we've renounced the day , in which normal people live- or rather it has renounced us. Prepetual night- deal essentialism of death in life- that’s the fitting habitat for guilt.”
4. Symbolism of sunlight :
“ A house drunk drunk with sun.” Is precisely what we are at the beginning of part 1. Where the glow of the setting sun fills Ezra's study. We see that as the action progresses this becomes brighter then turns to crimson, which Darkness to sombreness at the end. Although O'Neill does not indicate exactly when the light change occur, the subject matter of the act provided relatively safe indications.
5. Symbolism of Darkness :
Beginning to fall as Christine unwittingly succumbs to the evil Mannon spirit, the darkness grows into night, the fitting habitat of the Mannon, as Ezra returns home. Yet Ezra's life of the perpetual night is soon to be replaced by the light beyond death he died at daybreak.
6. Death in light :
Adam, too finds a death in light. Falling down by the Mannon pine table in the cabin of the Flying Trades, he dies directly below the skylight letting in the moonlight.
7. The Final sunlight :
The final sunlight act parallels and contrasts with the initial one. Christine’s struggle for light and air was precarious but not hopeless – until she decided to get what she waned through murder.
8. Symbolism of Lamp and candles :
Lamp and candles can be found in 3rd scene of part three. Behind Ezra's corpse laid out in his study, there are two stands of three, lighted candles at each end of the back marble chimneyypieces throwing their light above on the portrait and below on the dead man. The six White candles on the Black marble clearly correspond to six White Columns of the portico in front of the stone-gray house proper and thus again fatefully remind us of the six human lives to be extinguished by the evil Mannon spirit.
In this way we see that O'Neill has used the symbolism in setting as well in use of light. When we look at the setting we clearly can able to understand what can happen in this type of setting. His use of lighting can also gives is different effect and we can see that because it is tragic story he is not even using the daylight. And once he used the daylight but his own character don’t like this light that he speak also as I have mentioned above in point of Orin and light sequence.
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