Analysis Of O 'Neill's Desire Under The Elms'

As described above, in Anna Christie and Desire under the Elms, O'Neill shows strong resistance to paternity based on Puritanism, and he writes a prostitute lady to break it. In the 1920s, he was a writer with a rebellious spirit that confronts existing religions and values based on it. However, we cannot find such a spirit from the works written in the 1940s. From the Iceman Comes that he says it is the most outstanding play in the past work and special one for him, we can find the foolishness of having a dream and hope. About this play, Mr. Barlow argues that O’Neill’s view of life can be seen that death is the only hope. That is the final thought of the great playwright O'Neill. It seems a pessimistic view rather than what resulted from

In addition, He argues that its not only a coincidence because they also have similarities in the way of behavior from an unsettled state of mind. However, O'Neill frequently used surrounding people and his family as a model of the play, and his mother Era who is the source of Mary is also shown many times as a model. That is to say, it is not unusual just to see similarity with Mary. However, as we spread this consideration from the viewpoint of similarity with other plays, we can see the singularity of Nina. For example, there is a similarity between Nina and Anna who appears in Anna Christie. Nina look back on the past when she was a war nurse and says “For giving my cool clean body to men which hot hands and greedy eyes which they called love! Ugh!” At this scene, she confesses shamelessly that she had sexual intercourse with an unspecified number of men. Her figure here strongly overlaps with Anna who declare her sexual past with

When Nina cheat on husband and notice that she loves Ned, she says “I’ve loved him ever since that first afternoon…then love came to me…in his arms…happiness!” From this description, it is clear that she realize love after having done sexual activity. Her figure here completely matches with Abbie who seduced Eben to gain sperm and result in loving him. Also, there is a strange match in terms of killing their own children. Looking more closely to the similarity with other heroines in other works, we can see similarity with Ella of All God’s children Got Wings in terms of suffering in marriage with unwanted husbands. Besides that, in terms of intense maternity, it can be pointed out that it is similar to Cibel in The Great God Brown, also it can be said that Nina is similar to Christine in Mourning Becomes Elektra in terms of murderous intent to her husband. In this way, Nina has a lot of features of the heroines of plays O'Neill. From this, we can consider Nina as a memorable female character that represent all heroines in O'Neill’s