Character Analysis
If you check out the list of characters, that's exactly what it says. O'Neill's including Mannon's formal military rank suggests how much importance Ezra places on formality and ritual. We also learn that he was one-time mayor and judge in the town in which the Mannons live.
He's based on the character of King Agamemnon, the guy who's murdered by his wife in The Oresteia. O'Neill couldn't make him a king, so he wanted to give Mannon all the different powers that a king can have: the power to make laws (as mayor), the power to enforce laws (as a judge), and military leadership (as a brigadier general). He's respected, and maybe a little feared, by the people in the town, who marvel at his wealth and accomplishments. Even General Grant thinks he's the greatest.
We get another outsider's perspective on Ezra from his nephew, Adam Brant. Apparently, when Adam's sick, starving mother wrote to Ezra (her brother-in-law) for financial help, he never answered her, and she died poor and alone.
Big Daddy Mannon is also head of the Mannon clan and his personal qualities are passed on to his children. You can see how his initial description is similar to the ones we get of Lavinia and Orin:
He is a tall, spare, big-boned man of fifty, dressed in the uniform of a Brigadier-General. One is immediately struck by the mask-like look of his face in repose, more pronounced n him than the others. He is exactly like the portrait in his study […] except that his face's more lined and lean and the hair and bread are grizzled. His movements are exact and wooden and he has a mannerism of standing and sitting in stiff, posed attitudes that suggest the statues of military heroes. When he speaks, his deep voice has a hollow repressed quality, as if he were continually withholding emotion from it. His air is brusque and authoritative. (Homecoming, Act 3)
It's not just Ezra's DNA that passes on these qualities. Even his wife has been affected by it:
AMES: Secret lookin'—'s if it was a mask she'd put on. That's the Mannon look. They all has it. They grow it on their wives. […]They don't want folks to guess their secrets. (Homecoming, Act 1)
Ames's statement hints at some serious marital issues even before we see Ezra and Christine together. What does that mean to "grow a mask" on your wife? We know that Christine's been described as sensual and beautiful; what did Ezra do to make her become so masked and repressed?
Ezra tells us himself in his first intimate moments with Christine:
MANNON: God, I want to talk to you, Christine! I've got to explain some things—inside me—to my wife—try to, anyway. Shut your eyes again! I can talk better. It has always been hard for me to talk—about feelings. I never could when you looked at me. Your eyes were always so—so full of silence! That is, since we've been married. Not before, when I was courting you. They used to speak then. They made me talk—because they answered. (Homecoming, Act 3)
But Ezra wants to change. Seeing all the death in war has made him want to embrace life.
MANNON: All right, then. I came home to surrender to you--what's inside me. I love you. I loved you then, and all the years between, and I love you now.
CHRISTINE: Ezra! Please!
MANNON: I want that said! Maybe you have forgotten it. I wouldn't blame you. I guess I haven't said it or showed it much--ever. Something queer in me keeps me mum about the things I'd like most to say--keeps me hiding the things I'd like to show. Something keeps me sitting numb in my own heart--like a statue of a dead man in a town square. I want to find what that wall is marriage put between us! You've got to help me smash it down! We have twenty good years still before us! I've been thinking of what we could do to get back to each other. I've a notion if we'd leave the children and go off on a voyage together--to the other side of the world--find some island where we could be alone a while. You'll find I have changed, Christine. I'm sick of death! I want life! Maybe you could love me now!
Get out your handkerchiefs. Here's Ezra, pouring his heart out for the first time in his life, practically begging his wife for a second chance. She destroys that heart even before she gives him the poison by totally shutting him down and telling him that he's just tired and needs to go to bed. The argument escalates the following morning until we get to the heart of the matter: s-e-x. Apparently, they'd been intimate the night before and that gave Ezra some hope.
CHRISTINE: Leave me alone! Stop nagging at me with your crazy suspicions! Not your wife! You acted as if I were your wife--your property--not so long ago!
MANNON: Your body? What are bodies to me? I've seen too many rotting in the sun to make grass greener! Ashes to ashes, dirt to dirt! Is that your notion of love? Do you think I married a body? You were lying to me tonight as you've always lied! You were only pretending love! You let me take you as if you were a n***** slave I'd bought at auction! You made me appear a lustful beast in my own eyes!--as you've always done since our first marriage night! I would feel cleaner now if I had gone to a brothel! I would feel more honor between myself and life!
CHRISTINE: Look out, Ezra! I won't stand--
MANNON: And I had hoped my homecoming would mark a new beginning--new love between us! I told you my secret feelings. I tore my insides out for you--thinking you'd understand! By God, I'm an old fool!
CHRISTINE: Did you think you could make me weak--make me forget all the years? Oh no, Ezra! It's too late! You want the truth? You've guessed it! You've used me, you've given me children, but I've never once been yours! I never could be! And whose fault is it? I loved you when I married you! I wanted to give myself! But you made me so I couldn't give! You filled me with disgust! (Homecoming, Act 4)
What's going on? A lot. Seems like Christine enjoyed Ezra until they got married, then was turned off by their sexual relationship. In turn, her coldness always made Ezra feel like he was forcing himself on her, like she was a slave. He felt like an animal lusting after her since she couldn't want sex in the same way. Christine hints that it was Ezra's coldness that turned her off. Unlike some other lover she is about to mention who can be tender and loving. Ezra's strict moral code makes her confession enrage him; he calls her a "whore", and has an attack of heart pain. Five minutes later, he's dead from the poison she substitutes for his heart medicine.
Shmoop finds it unbearably sad—give us a minute—that Ezra dies just after he decides to rededicate himself to a new way of living his emotional life. He had so much hope. That's why this play is a tragedy. He's Christine's murder victim, but ultimately he's a victim of his own personal flaw. A fatal flaw, to be sure.
My Girl
We've seen in Lavinia's character analysis how much she wanted Daddy to herself. We learn in Act 3 that Ezra was totally in on it, and we learn why.
MANNON: When I came back you had turned to your new baby, Orin. I was hardly alive for you anymore. I saw that. I tried not to hate Orin. I turned to Vinnie, but a daughter's not a wife. That's […] why I became a judge and a mayor and such vain truck, and why folks in town look on me as so able! Ha! Able for what? Not for what I wanted most in life! Not for your love!
Ezra looked for love and admiration from Lavinia and got it, but it wasn't enough to fill the empty space left by his wife's indifference to him. When Ezra gets home from the war, Lavinia's all over him with hugs and kisses, but he's looking a little embarrassed and uneasy about it in front of Christine. We know now that it's because he wants to put that love back where it belongs, with his wife, so all that affection from Lavinia starts seeming a little uncomfortable.
Ezra's gone before any other major character in the play, and yet he still manages to have huge power over others. His memory literally haunts everybody, whether he's actually there or not. In fact, he seems to affect people more strongly after he's dead. He looks down from his portrait in the library and knows all. And the family dynamics he created keep rolling right along.
Ezra Mannon's Timeline