Eugene O’neill and the the Rebirth of Tragedy a Comparative Survey on Mourning Becomes Electra and Oresteia

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill is one of the greatest American playwrights, he is known for plays such as “Long Day's Journey into Night” ,”Beyond the Horizon” (1920), “Anna Christie” (1922), “Strange Interlude” (1928), “Mourning Becomes Electra”(1931)and The Iceman Cometh (1946). His plays probe the American Dream, race relations, class conflicts, sexuality, human aspirations and psychoanalysis. He often became immersed in the modernist movements of his time as he primarily sought to create “modern American drama” that would rival the great works of European modernists such as Ibsen, Strindberg and G.B. Shaw. O’Neill was a great admirer of classical theatre and as a young man he had read Friedrich Nietzsche’s work about the origin of Greek tragedy, in consequence he was very familiar with the subject and the techniques of representation. The ideas of the German critique and philosopher guided his dramatic works, in which he manifested the ability to adapt the defining characteristics of the classical tragedy to a modern script and audience. Thus, it is not surprising that we encounter God Dionysus in “Lazarus Laughed” (1928) or an adaptation of Oedipus’ character in “Desire Under the Elms(1924). As for “Mourning Becomes Electra” (1931), O’Neill explores Greek tragedy, attempting to modernize it. The play is based on Aeschylus’s trilogy The Oresteia (though it is closer to Sophocles’ Electra than to Aeschylus’ plays). In a 1931 letter to drama critic Brooks Atkinson, O’Neill wrote, “Greek criticism is as remote from us as the art it criticizes. What we need is a definition of Modern and not Classical Tragedy by which to guide our judgments” (Letters 19886: 390). The play (a trilogy made up of three plays) examines a post-Civil War American family. The scene in “Mourning Becomes Electra” is laid on a carefully chosen setting- a city in New England, immediately after the Civil War. It is remarkable whatsoever that O’Neill set the plot against such a

Bibliography: - O’Neill, Eugene, Complete Plays 1921-1931, The Library of America, 1995 - Aeschylus, Oresteia, [EBook #1441] -Normand Merlin, Eugene O’Neill, London, Macmillan, 1982 -Thomas E [4] O’Neill, Eugene, Complete Plays 1921-1931, The Library of America, 1995 [5] [6] O’Neill, Eugene, Complete Plays 1921-1931, The Library of America, 1995 [7] [10] Normand Merlin, Eugene O’Neill, London, Macmillan, 1982, p.110.