Monday 2 November 2015

Mourning Becomes Electra (critical analysis)

Critical Analysis of ‘Mourning becomes Electra’  


Jasani Nidhi

Submitted to: M.K. Bhavnagar University, Department of English

Email id: nidhijasani15@gmail.com


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· Introduction

        ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’ is a play written by American play writer Eugene O’Neil, Published in 26th October 1931, in New York City. Eugene O’Neil was born on October 16, 1888, in New York City(O'Neill). He was the first American play writer who receive Nobel Prize for literature, for his play. He was one of the most admired playwrights of all in their time. His dramatically work are, Anna Christen (1922), his master piece is ‘Long Day’s Journey in to Night. His great plays, including Beyond the Horizon (1920), Strange Interlude (1928), Ah! Wilderness (1933), and the Iceman Cometh (1946).



    The play divided in to three parts, 1. Homecoming, 2.The Hunted and 3.The Haunted. The play is begun with the description of the house. The timing of the play is set at the end of the American civil war, an adaptation of the greatest of the Aeschylus’s trio logy. 
 
·      Critical Analysis

        The play begins with the description of the Mannon house, it was dark and grayish. It was spring time in the garden of the Mannon. Mannon family is the center of the play. In the play we found that, Brigadier general Ezra Mannon recently comes home from war. Christine Mannon is wife of Ezra, recently she comes from tour. Christine has lover, Adam Brant. He has similar face to Ezra. Their daughter Lavinia knows about her mother love affair with Adam. That’s why she fells jealousy. May be for this reason she hate her mother and think that her father needs her. In homecoming we found that mother and daughter rival for love of Ezra and Adam. In the play when Ezra come home from the war, Lavinia tries to latch his attention towards her, but Ezra first talk and give attention or priority to Christine, as he love her. (Guide)

          Christine cannot give attention to Ezra and only think about her lover. When Ezra has a heart attack, she gives him poison rather than medicine. At the end of the play we found that Orin kill his self with the gun.  Orin gives one envelop to Hazel. Then Lavinia board up the window and throw out all the flowers then she enters in dark library of her father, alone and shut the door. Entire Mannon family died.  Orin in envelop, he writes about the history of entire Mannon family. In which he says that Lavinia is the most interesting criminal of all. She only became pretty like their mother on Bran’s island, with the natives staring at her with desire. The name of Mannon family may be related with ‘Mammon’ and the family’s materialism. All three parts are contains four to five acts. That’s why ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’ is extraordinary lengthy for drama.

          O’Neil said that “By the title Mourning Becomes Electra I should to convey that Mourning befits Electra; it becomes Electra to Mourn; it is her fat; black is becoming to her and it is the color that becomes her destiny.”

          In all his play generally Eugene O’Neil’s play illustrates the struggle between the life and death. And in which human express natural sensual desires and love of other or even of the life is overcome by death. This all things are derives from the puritan religion, death in life connected with society’s values, isolation, war, and physical death. In the play we found all things are dark and grayish colored. Darkness connected with death, pervades the plays: Homecoming for instance, begins with the sunset, moves in to twilight and ends in the dark of night; the hunted takes place at night; the Hinted spans two evening and a late afternoon and dictates the inevitable coming of night, darkness and death as Lavinia retreats to rejoin the host of death Mannon. Here we found that the Mannon house itself seen by audience at the beginning of each play(Baraiya).

           The cure of this house stems from the effects of materialism, puritanism and alienation. From the perspective of material, Mannon are rich. They have all the things they have huge house, how many lives are there. Christine and other family member have material security. But they longing for emotional security. Nobody lives happily in house. When we look at Mannon house we found that there is garden, is barren without flowers. It cannot give pleasure. There is an old man with grey hair, he take care of garden. It shows Mannon house is very old. The house is lifeless, because there are many people living in house but not happily. The shape of the house is like pyramid, it is a kind of grave. Symbolically it shows that it is not house of Mannon but it is a grave of Mannon family. At the end of the play we found that enter Mannon family was died. The color of the house is gray; it symbolized the dullness of family member.

    First part of the play homecoming of General Ezra Mannon from the war. But in actual sense it is not homecoming, going far from the home. He is lucky who come alive from the war but his own family member became weapon for him. Ezra’s wife kills him to giving him poison. Why his wife kills him? She kills her husband because of her love affair with Adam. When Christine needs Ezra, he is not with her. He stays away from 10 year. May be that’s why she love Adam, but they cannot marry because Ezra is alive so she kills Ezra. If Ezra was died they can marry. We found that Adam wants to take revenge of death of her sister, so he developed good relation with Mannon family. We found kind of love triangle among Lavinia, Adam and Christine. One Rison for attraction is the face, face of Ezra and Adam are similar looking. Both mother and daughter want to marry with Adam. Peter love Lavinia but she cannot love him. Here one observation is, Lavinia may be not love him, but she dislike her mother and her mother likes Adam. She feels jealousy towards her mother that if she marries with him she becomes happy.

    Here we found one question that really Christine murder Ezra, giving him poison? May be Ezra becomes more happy looking that Christine taking care of him, and in state of overjoy he died. Suddenly he gets attention from his wife and he cannot bear it so he was died. It is question that who kill him love or poison? In one seen Orin and Lavinia both secretly follows their mother, Christine who goes to meet Adam in east Boston. They listen whole conversation of them. Then Orin shoots Adam, and he died. Orin kill Adam because Christine love Adam, she cannot give attention to him. Orin love his mother, here we found oedipal complex in this play. After all this Christine kills herself. Only two member of Mannon family was left.We found that Orin become Ezra, he looks like Ezra and Lavinia becomes Christine, she looks like Christine. After looking at Lavinia Peter thinks that she is the ghost of Christine. Here Eugene O’Neil put ghostly seen, someone sings a song near to the house, and also dark shadow of someone is shown on the wall of the house. The Mannon family is very famous and people feel proud on them because they are connected with army. Orin as last male member of Mannon family he writes criminal history of Mannon family. Orin also committed suicide after giving envelop to Hazel, she is also important character in the play. Orin told her, she should open it if: 1 something happened to him and 2 Lavinia tries to marry Peter.At the end of the play O’Neil trays to says that the story of Mannon family is going to darkness.


  ·     Conclusion

        In this play we found that he uses symbols frequently and effectively. This play is continuation of the Greek tradition. In this one play he uses two complex “Electra” and “Oedipal”.  Lavinia says that no one is remaining, I will give punishment to myself, and she locked herself in to his father’s library. Mannon house becomes the grave of Mannon family.   

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  • Works Cited

Baraiya, Saeyu. 'the Mourning Becomes Electera'. 4 November 2014. 2015 <http://www.baraiyasaryu1315.blogsport.in/2014/11/themourning-becomes-electra.html?m=1>.
Guide, Navigate Study. Mouring Becomes Electra Essay-Critical Eassay. n.d. 2015 <http://www.enotes.com/topics/mourning-becomes/critical-eassays>.
O'Neill, Eugene. Mourning Becomes Electra. New York City, 1931.


    



English language Satan or Saraswati. English is good or bad?



    

Topic: English language Satan or Saraswati.
English is good or bad?


Name: Jasani Nidhi 

Submitted to: M.K. Bhavnagar University, Department of English


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        Introduction

Everything in world has two sides. One coin has two part or sides. We found everything has two part god side and bad side. Same thing we found in ‘English Language’, some says it is god and some says it is bad especially in country like India. In India we found so many languages, each stat have their own language. We have one Gujarati idiom or proverb “Bar gave bolibadlai” it means after some distance orremoteness language of people is change. In India we found there is always conflict regarding doable face of English language, is English harmful or helpful?


·    Positive side of English language (English as Saraswati)

The rise of English has mainly taken place in India over the last two or three decades. In present time English become ‘global language’ because in world wild millions of people use it as their native (mother) language and millions of children used to learn English in their school. That is why English is famous language. English became status language among the Indian people. Indian person who know English and speak English is fell superior then other people. English makes us different from other people. English is language of status.
          English language is only medium to communicate with other country. English is international language; rather we can say language of global communication. English is helpful to establishing good relation and communist with other countries. Through English we deeply study and come to know about different background and culture of different country. Through internet we study culture of nay country, every country introduce their culture in English language.Mobile, laptop and any other electric devise we found English is there, without knowing English we can’t operate those devise. In social media we found lots of use of English language, even when we need help of Google or any kind of Google search we need English language. Even one can search in any other language like Hindi or Spanish they must give command to Google only in English though one search for their native language. Google understand only English and this is the biggest advantage of English language. Other advantage of English is, very helpful when we go outside of our native place or out of country. It happened with some of my friends. They go outside, suddenly they forgot their path and they lost in unknown place. They all are varied because on one knows English, and people surround them they only understand English. One of them know little English, with the use of English they reach right place. At that time we can says that English is proved as helper (Saraswati) for them.

          At some point English is became ‘LinguaFranca’. LinguaFranca is Latin word. Dictionary meaning of Linguafranca is ‘a common language consisting of Italian mixed with French, Spanish, and Greek and Arabic that was formally spoken in Mediterranean ports, other is something resembling a common language (- Merriam Webster). In very simple way linguafranca is language which is used as common among people, and English is linking language. The term linguafranca becomes so common that it continued to be used for any ‘universal’ language. English is became global linguafranca.

          English is thread language of communication in trade and business. Through English we do successful baseness outside of our country, and urn more and more money. English is the best helper for doing baseness in other country. During mid-twentieth century many colonies and country became independent, they take English as their official or semi-official language.  English is the language of all kind of field like, commerce, economy, politics, science and technology, and all kind of knowledge is available in English language. More than 80% people use English for academic and social purpose. English is the most spoken language, with use of this language one can communicate with people of any country. Now days we found that any kind of forms whether it is academic, official, governmental, banking and any kind of form are in English.Without knowing English how one can fill those forms, for filling the form we need English language.
          Why English is global language? Because it is the language we found everywhere, here and read every day, even in packaging of small chocolate. People used to send their children in English medium school. English is most spread over world wild and most spoken language.  Number of country in the even through Hindi, Chinese Spanish and many other have number of native speakers speaks in English language. There is so many advantage of English language.
·    Negative side of English language ( English as Satan)

        English language is good but we found there is bad side of English. First I would like to say that English is language of colonialism. We found bad impact on native speaker and native language also. At some point we found that class discrimination, a person who speaks in English language in regular life they feel that they are superior then non English speaker people. There is lack of appropriate word, how one can introduce their culture through English. There are linguistic gapes. Because there is some words only used in native language, there are not found in English. For example a word like “khichdi” is not found in English language, there are so many Indian words are not available in English. So how one can truly expresses and introduces their culture without knowing proper word of the cultural or native word, and how one can understand this kind of word without context or meaning of the word. Sometime person feel ‘poor’ when it comes to expresses their feeling, ideas and emotion in English language, they don’t know proper word in English for the word of their native language. When reading any kind of English writing sometimes one cannot understand or found appropriate meaning of the word, so it create lack of pleasure, sometime cannot rich to original meaning of the word and paragraph. That’s why one can’t get pleasure. When any little child (other language speaker) sends to study in English medium school, at that time child became confuse. Child has to give more attention and concentration on other language. Because of giving attention to that, sometime creativeness of the child is died. From this perspective English is killer of the creativity of children.
          English as global language is good but some question is raised up in my mind that which English is used as global language. There is American English and British English. We found spellings of some words are different and some pronunciation of word are different, for example spelling of “colour” is not right in American English, it is not accepted in computer also, for this the right spelling of the word is “color”, at this state one became confused that which one is right and which one is wrong. Because when we wright word “color” in exam paper is wrong, when we type “colour” is wrong, there are so many word like this word.We also found some grammatical errors or mistake and vocabulary difference(Wikipedia, English as global language).
 So it is big question that which English is correct English, that’s why it is difficult to accept English as global language (which English is original English? Which English is used as global language?).
          At some point we found English is assassination or destroyer language of other languages. English became popular among people, so native speaker used to speak in English, that’s why importance of native language is go down. English makes other language unnecessary, it make people unwilling or unable to learn other language. People think that they use English only so no need to learn other language. There is a different between death of language and murder of language, death of language means language itself is going to died (language is disappears naturally)  whereas killing of language means with the more use of one language and other language is not in much use that’s why gradually language is dead. For example in India ‘Sanskrit’ is going to death and with the use of English language much other Indian language is killed like Hindi, Gujarati and many other (almost died). Now days we found that native language is almost remove form the news, social media also from education system.
·      Conclusion

Here some good and some wicked part of English language. For sum-up we can says that it is very difficult task to find out negative side of English language, but there are bad part of English. At some level English is as global language is god but in some point English is not good. English is helpful to understand what American or foreign think about us. Through studying English Gandhi and other freedom fighter defeat British people, because one must defeat person through knowing their language. English became weapon to fight with British people(Wikipedia, English language British). It is useful to fill up any kind of forms and many other things.

Sometime people cannot understand word properly and create misunderstanding. People need other peoples help to feel up the forms, sometime they feel sham that’s why they cannot understand what is it and give wrong information. We found there lots of good side and bad side of English language. I found that there is good or positive side of English more than negative or bad side of English. In short English is helpful and useful language. 
         

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Works Cited

wikipedia. english as global languade. n.d. 2015 <(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language>.
—. English language Brithish. 2015. 2015 <(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_English 2005)>.