Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O’Neill | Characters, Summary, Analysis

Mourning Becomes Electra was another drama written by Eugene O’Neill in which he imitated Greek tragedies in modern American settings. After Desire Under Elms (1924), he wrote Lazarus Laughed which was again based on Greek tragedies, and then in 1931, Mourning Becomes Electra was performed. As the title suggests, this play is based on the Ancient Greek Drama Oresteia by Aeschylus. The whole play is divided into three sections, Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunting. Homecoming mirrors Aeschylus’s Agamemnon while The Hunted depicts the story of The Libation Bearers. The Eumenides is described in the third section The Hunted. The title of the play suggests that mourning is natural for Electra as if it is her fate that she cannot avoid. Mourning Becomes Electra is a complex tragic play that not only depicts Greek mythology as wholly based on fate, but Eugene O’Neill also included psychological aspects of the characters from a Freudian perspective. One can find traces of Sigmund Freud’s idea of the Elect