Abstract
In Eugene O’Neill there is a visible disillusionment with the
modern human conditions. The material progress that defines the contours
of American Dream finds a critical space in his plays. He considers the
American dream as a source of decadence. And unlike his contemporaries,
he does not find the source of this fall in the material conditions. For him,
the experiencing human soul is the seat of discontentment and unhappiness.
The present study positions O’Neill in psychoanalytical paradigm of critical
interpretation to trace how human soul is affected by modernity. The
characters in Mourning Becomes Electra find themselves in a state of
existence that they cannot find any escape from it. The more they try to get
free, the more they are trapped by existential human conditions. I have
applied Jacques Lacan argument to trace how the soul faces the split
between the real and imaginary when it becomes a part of the symbolic
order. On human’s entry into language, part of the self is completely lost
that can never be recovered. Such a loss creates fear and anxiety in human
sphere. The human beings then remain in search of the lost self that Lacan
terms as object a. It is the fate of modern human to remain in search of that
object and never to find it. Mannons represent human beings in the play.
And a permanent source of loss is the fate of modern man.
Dr Ali Raza Tahir, Khurshid Alam. (2017) LACAN AND SUBJECT FORMATION IN EUGENE O’NEILL’S MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA, Al-Hikmat: A Journal of Philosophy, Volume 37, Issue 1.
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