Mourning Becomes Electra Themes

Mourning Becomes Electra is a family drama. And this is one seriously twisted family, locked in repetitive and compulsive patterns that bring down everyone named Mannon and some people who aren't....

Oh what a tangled web we weave—and almost every single major character in Mourning Becomes Electra is lying about something. There are lies about everything: parentage, love affairs, murder plots...

The "original sin" in this trilogy is one of lust: David Mannon's illicit affair with the family's French Canadian nurse. (You know those Canadians—no self control, right?) This affair haunts the...

Cashing in. Taking a dirt nap. Pushing up Daisies. We've got hundreds of different names for it, but they all mean the same thing: death. Death hangs over Mourning Becomes Electra like a black curt...

In The Oresteia of Aeschylus, there's no question that Orestes and Electra murder mommy dearest and her latest squeeze out of a sincere belief that knocking them off is the only way to make sure th...

Pop culture these days seems all about encouraging our fascination with the rich and famous. People Magazine, entire television channels that are like the CNN of celebrity gossip, movies about peop...

Since O'Neill's trilogy is based on a Greek tragedy, with all its kings and curses, we know that all the major characters are going to wind up dead; all we're waiting for is to find out how. Fate s...

Break out the s'mores and flashlights, because it's time to start talking about all of the spooky stuff that gets a mention in Mourning Becomes Electra. In a series of plays where death is literall...