Major Characters In Mourning Becomes Essay Example

his mind.

He lay awake in the nights thinking about his life and his wife's. In the middle of battle he thought he would be dead in . A minute. But his life ending just within a minute did not appear worth a thought one way or another.

Moreover, the idea of his being killed as the husband of Christine seemed to be queer and wrong, like something dying that had never lived. The idea that al the years they had been husband and wife would rise up in his mind and he would try to look back to those years.

But nothing was clear except that there had been some barrier between them--?a wall that was but he could never discover. A Typical Puritan His experience of death and life on the front shows that he is a typical puritan. When he saw death around him in the war he thought about the importance of emotional communication between husband and wife. It was seeing death all the time in this war got me to thinking these things", he says to his wife.

Death was so common there that it did not mean anything. That freed him to think of life, that is, death made him think of life. Before that life had only made him think of death He is quite explicit in tracing this trait in his personality. "That's always been the Manson' way of thinking', he says.

In other words, he has inherited this perverted way of looking at life from his puritan ancestors. He further says that the Manson went to the white meeting-house on Sabbath and meditated on death.

Life

Was a dying. Being born was starting to die. Death was being born.

But that white meeting-house stuck in his mind as a temple of death. However, in the war he saw many white walls splattered with blood that counted no more than dirty water. He saw dead men scattered about, no more important than rubbish to be got rid of. That made the white meeting-house seem meaningless--making so much fuss over death. The Other Ezra Mammon The above traits of Sera's personality are based on what he says to his wife about his past life.

But the Ezra we see in the play is a tall, spare, big-boned man of fifty, dressed in the uniform Of a Brigadier-General.

His movements are exact and wooden and lie has a mannerism of standing and Sitting in stiff, posed attitudes that suggests the statues of military heroes. When he speaks, his deep voice has a hollow repressed quality, as if he were continuously withholding emotion from it. He has a brusque and authoritative air. The Voice of Sera's Heart The first voice of Sera's heart that we hear after his arrival is his admiration of Christina's beauty that betokens his ever-burning flame of love for her.

He regrets that he has offended her feelings by referring to Adam Brand and kisses her hand impulsively.

He tells her that he has been dreaming of coining home and seeing Christine. He leans towards her though his voice trembles with desire and a feeling of strangeness and awe, add touches her hair with n awkward caress, and says: "You're beautiful. You kick more beautiful than ever. " He does so

in spite of the fact that he feels that she has grown "strange".

Sera's Jealousy He cannot allow his wife to love a man of her choice and that is why Christine says that he considers her as his property.

Though be dismisses the issue of Christina's relations with Adam after the latter convinces him, he still intuitively feels that Christine is not really his. "l shouldn't have bothered you with that foolishness about Brand tonight", he says, and forces a strained smile. Then he says, "I was jealous a mite, to tell you the truth. He leans over her awkwardly, as if to kiss her, then is stopped by some strangeness he feels about her still face. He feels that he cannot get used to home because it is too lonely.

In the army camps he felt protected in the midst of thousand men but here when Christine has closed her eyes fie feels utterly lonely. He wants to bare his heart before her, to explain something inside him--it is no doubt his distrust that has made him so uneasy. But something queer in him keeps him mum about the things he would like to show, something keeps him sitting numb in his own heart--like a statue of a dead man in a town square. He eels that his house is not his house, his bed is not his bed--?they are empty, waiting for someone to move in.

His wife does not seem to be his wife; she seems to be waiting for something, for his death. And when Christine tells him that she loves Adam, he is seized with fury and threatens to

kill her, but he becomes a victim of his own jealousy--he has a fit of his heart trouble.

One may presume that even if Christine had not poisoned him, his ordinary heart trouble would have turned into a severe heart attack. (2) CHRISTINE MAMMON Her physical Features Christine, the wife of Ezra Mammon, is a tall striking-looking woman of forty UT she appears younger. She has a fine, voluptuous figure and she moves with a flowing animal grace. She wears a. Rene satin, smartly cut and expensive, which brings out the peculiar color of her thick curly hair, partly a copper brown, partly a.

Bronze gold, each shade distinct and yet blending with the other. Her face is unusual, handsome rather than beautiful. One is struck at once by the strange impression it gives in repose of being not living flesh but a wonderfully life-like pale mask, in which only the deep-set eyes, of a dark violet blue, are alive. Her black eyebrows meet in a pronounced trait line above her strong nose.

Her chin is heavy, her mouth large and sensual, the lower lip full, the upper a thin bow, shadowed by a line of hair.

People have queer notions about her. Louisa says that people hate her, that she is not 'the Mammon kind', that she is foreign-looking and queer. Ames says that she is secret looking, characteristic of the Manson who do not want people to guess their secrets. An Enemy of Puritanism Christine is the anti-thesis of Puritanism. She hates puritans so much that when she finds Laving on the steps of the house on a moonlit night, she says sarcastically:

"What are you minimizing at ? Puritan maidens shouldn't peer too inquisitively into spring.

Isn't beauty an abomination and love a vile thing? She is so much in love with life that seeks beauty in things associated with death. She wants to 'brighten' the tomb-like Mammon house which appears to her more like a sepulcher. She again takes an opportunity of attacking Puritanism: "Every time I come back after being away it (the house) appears more like a sepulcher! The "white" one of the Bible--pagan temple front stuck like a mask on Puritan gray ugliness. " A Frustrated Wife The greatest agony in Christina's life is that she is the wife of a man she dates. She narrates to Laving her tragic tale of romance and married life.

She says that she loved Ezra before they were married.

Then he was "handsome in his lieutenant uniform" ; he was silent and mysterious and romantic. But marriage soon turned his romance into disgust. Thus though they have lived as husband and wife for over twenty years, their relationship, she says, has no meaning "between them". She has been only giving her body to her husband--this is what she has experienced as a wife. Her Longing For Love When Orin was born, Christine thought he was her child and so she loved IM. But Ezra and Laving insisted on Orin's joining the army.

And when Orin's love was also snatched from her, Christine had nothing in her life except hate and desire to be revenged, and a longing to be loved. It was then that she met. , Adam and she felt that he loved her. She

reciprocated his love knowing his parentage and his evil design.

Murder for Love When Ezra comes home and puts direct questions to Christine about Adam she lies to him and says that the Captain has been coming for Laving. She poses to love her husband but her gestures and behavior show her hatred of her husband. When Ezra caresses her hair and admires it, she starts with repulsion and shrinks from him.

Then as he turns away, she pretends to be feeling nervous. When Ezra tells her the agonizing tale of his woeful life as he experienced on the front, she says that she does not understand what he is talking about. At a stage Ezra expresses his apprehension that she is waiting for his death ; then she bursts out with anger and hatred in her vice, "You acted as if I were your wife-?your property-?not so long ago.

" But Ezra goes on nagging her and ultimately Christine confesses that she loves Adam whom he finds gentle and tender-?-everything Ezra has, never been. He is everything what she has longed for all these years with Ezra--a lover.

For Ezra this is a bolt from the blue, a naked truth which he cannot bear. He has a fit of heart trouble and Christine, who knows that this trouble is not so serious as to take his life, administers the poisonous pellet on him sent by Adam for this purpose.

For the sake of her love she can obliterate all scruples from her conscience. No Moral Scruples Christine has no consideration, for the respect and dignity of the Manson : when Laving says hat she

will tell her father the whole story of Christina's affairs with Adam, she says that in that case she will go away with her lover : "Suppose I go off openly with Adam.

Where will you and your father and the family name be after that scandal? And what if I were disgraced myself? I'd have the man love, at least! " She does not feel any moral scruples in making her own daughter flirt with Adam, as she says, so that Laving may not grow suspicious of her mother's relations with the Captain. She tells Adam that she has made one blunder after another. "Its as if love drove me on to do everything shouldn't she says.

Yet she cannot endanger Dam's life for her sake.

Adam intends to kill Ezra in a duel but she tells him that he cannot force Ezra to fight a duel with him and points out that dueling being illegal, Ezra would have Adam arrested. She does not care for the future of her own son and daughter and is ready to desert them and join Adam in matrimony and take her share of the Mammon estate. When she fears that Laving would report to the police that she (Christine) has poisoned Ezra, she entreats Orin to stop Laving from doing so because Adam would also be tried as her accomplice. She takes the whole responsibility on her shoulder and tries to save the life of her lover.

Staring at the portrait of Ezra in his study, she appeals to him distractedly, "Ezra.

Don't let her harm Adam! I am the only guilty one! Don't let Orin-?I" And

when she fears that Orin would kill Adam she risks her life and goes to Boston to warn Adam Of Orin. Martyr to Love After killing Adam Orin comes home and tries to console his mother by his affection. He castigates her, for loving a "servants bastard who got her under his influence to take his mothers revenge on Ezra. But he finds that she is still under the influence of her lover.

He, therefore, seeks her forgiveness and begs for her love. But she is silent all the time.

Laving holds that Adam has paid the just penalty for his crime and suggests that Christine can "live". This last word stings her like anything. She glares at Laving as if this were the last insult; she utters with strident mockery "Live! " and bursts into shrill laughter, stops abruptly, raises her hands between her face and Laving and pushes them out in a gesture of blotting her daughter forever from her sight. And, after a few moments, she blots herself from this world--she shoots herself. 3) ORIN MAMMON His Physical Features When Orin is introduced to us we are told that one is struck by his startling Emily resemblance to his father and Adam.

There is the same lifelike mask quality of his face in repose, the same aquiline nose, heavy eyebrows, swarthy complexion, thick straight black hair, light hazel eyes. His mouth and chin have the same general characteristics as his father's had, but the expression of his mouth gives an impression of tense oversensitivity quite foreign to the General's, and his chin is a refined, weakened version of the dead man's.

He

is about the same height as his father and Adam, but his body is thin and his swarthy complexion, sallow. He wears a bandage around his head high up n his forehead. He carries himself by turns with a marked slouchiest or with a self conscious square-shouldered stiffness that indicates that a soldierly bearing is unnatural to him. When he speaks it is jerkily, with a strange vague, preoccupied air.

But when he smiles naturally his face has a gentle boyish charm which makes women immediately want to mother him. He wears a moustache similar to Dam's which selves to increase their resemblance to each other.

Although he is only twenty, he looks thirty. He is dressed in a baggy, ill-fitting uniform--that of a first lieutenant of infantry in the Union Army. War-Torn Anti-Hero Orin is badly scared by war which finishes life within a few moments.

For those who have no experience of war death might be something very serious, he says, but for him who has seen the naked dance of death it is only a joke--"a dirty joke life plays on life". Laving says to him that their father proudly told her that Orin had done one of the bravest things the General had seen in the war.

Then Orin grins with bitter mockery and says that it was all absurd. Then he tells her 'the joke" about his heroic deed. It really happened one night when he sneaked through the enemy's lines. He was always volunteering for extra danger but he was so scared that anyone would guess he was afraid.

There was a thick mist and it was so still

one could hear the fog seeping into the ground. He met a Rev crawling towards his lines ; the face of the Rev drifted out of the mist towards him. He shortened his sword and let him have the point under the ear.

The Rev stared at him with an idiotic look as if he'd sat on a tack-?and his eyes dimmed and went out He had to kill another in the same way. But what was his impression of this act of 'bravery' ? It was like murdering the same man twice. He had a queer feeling hat war meant murdering the same man over and over, and that in the end he would discover that the man was he himself.

Their faces keep coming back in his dreams--?and they change to his father's-?-or to his. Victim of Oedipus complex Through Christine we learn oat when Orin was born she turned to him because her relations with her husband were too disgusting.

But her dream of the love of her son also fizzled out when Laving and Ezra rather forced him to join army. The dramatist does not manage to tell us Orin's response to his mothers coddling in his childhood and adolescence but when he gets wound n his head in the war he always remembers her, as if she were with him. He has most wonderful dreams about her. He imagines that he is on South Sea Islands which mean everything that is not war, everything that is peace and warmth and security.

He dreams that he is there along with his mother.

The breaking of the waves is her voice, the

sky's color is the same as her eye's, the warm sand is like her skin--the whole Island is she. Now when he has come back home he is adoring her beauty: 'You're mote beautiful than ever! You're younger, too, somehow. " He affectionately says to her.

"Of course, Mother! You come before everything! " When Christine suggests that he should marry Hazel, he says in complaining voice, "But now you're a widow, I'm not home an hour before you're trying to marry me off! You must be damned anxious to get rid of me again! Why? His Infatuation with His Mother In spite of the fact that Orin loves his mother so much, he cannot forgive her if he is convinced that she is really in love with Adam. How can he put up with a rival of his mother's love? His fondness for her becomes a sort of infatuation. "And I'll never leave you again now", he says to his mother, "I don't ant Hazel or anyone. " Then again he says with a grin; "You're my only girl! " He recalls to her how his father was always antagonistic to him in his childhood: "And what a row there was when Father caught me! And do you remember how you used to let me brush your hair and how loved to.

He hated me doing that, too.

" He has a strong desire to live with his mother alone after marrying Laving off to Peter. He tells Laving that Christine means thousand times more than his father meant to him. At a time he seems to be so much blind in his love

for her that he cannot believe Albanians report against her. But when he gets certain proof of her bad conduct, he becomes furious to the extent that he resolves to kill her lover: "I'm not anxious to be hanged--for that skunk heard her asking him to kiss her! I heard her warn him against me! " And he eventually kills Adam.

When he looks at the face of Adam lying dead before him, it appears to be like his and he feels as if he has killed himself. In Freudian terms, he has killed the lover of his mother who he himself is.

However, he has not been able to free himself from his mother- fixation even after knowing Christina's relations' with Adam. He still craves for is long cherished desire to live alone with her. Finding her moaning in the memory Of Adam, he says to her: "Mother I Don't moan like that! You're still under his influence! But, you'll forget him! I'll make you forget him I'll make you happy!

We'll leave Vine here and go away on a _ long voyage--to the South Sea-? A Nervous Wreck After the death of Christine Orin becomes a nervous wreck. He is incessantly obsessed by the idea that he drove his mother to commit suicide. Laving fears that he may confess that he is responsible for Christina's death.

Due to this fear Laving takes him to his ideal Island, to China, but nothing attracts or averts his mind from his guilt consciousness. His romantically idealized Islands make him sick and the naked women dancing to the rhythm of laws spontaneity disgust him.

Not only this,

he misjudges that . Laving has fallen in love with one of the natives and lusts with him and so he hastens back home, saying that he would like to face his ghosts and rid himself of his guilt- obsession.

But what happens to him here is that his obsession becomes too horrible. He goes to the study feeling that Christine must be waiting for him there, but finding none there, he cries in despair, "She isn't anywhere", and omitting towards the portraits of the Manson, he says that they are everywhere. He is horrified by the idea that Christine could not forgive his guilt.

He cannot face God's tight--the natural light of the sun--when he is writing the history of the Manson, particularly their crimes. He locks himself in his father's study in daytime and closes the blinds and lights the lamp.

He finds artificial light more appropriate for his work, man's light, man's feeble striving to understand himself, to . Exist for himself in the darkness. It is a symbol of his life--a lamp burning out in a room of waiting shadows. A Perverted Lover Orin's attitude towards his beloved, Hazel, is ambivalent.

On the one hand, he complains to Laving that she does not leave him alone with Hazel for more than a minute, even when they are engaged.

But a few seconds later he says that he is afraid of being too long with her--afraid of himself. "l have no right in the same world with her", he says, "and yet I feel so drawn to her purity. Her love for me makes me appear less vile to myself. " But

in another breath he reverses his idea: "And, at the same time, a million times more vile, that's the hell of it. So I'm afraid you can't hope to get rid of me through Hazel.

In his opinion, Hazel is, like Christine, another lost Island.

He requests Laving to keep Hazel away from him because, he says, when he sees love for a murderer in her eyes his guilt crowds up in his throat like poisonous vomit and he longs to spit it out and confess. He cannot think that if Hazel knows the nature of his agony she may share the burden of his soul and help gain reprieve. The Incestuous Cycle Just as Orin's puritan possessiveness combined with Albanians jealousy is responsible for Christina's tragic end, it is Orin's looking at Laving as his mother-substitute that is responsible for the wreck of her love affairs with Peter.

While they were in China he grew jealous of Albanians happy life there. Then how can he see her loving and living happily here when he feels that she is his accomplice? He cannot bear the idea that Laving should leave him and join Peter in matrimony.

He says that he has written in the history of the Manson the crime of Laving and does everything to prejudice Peter against her-he does not hesitate to mention his idea about Albanians 'lusting' with the native. His every gesture from now onward verges on incestuous advance: "l love you now with all the guilt in me-?the guilt we share!

Perhaps I love you too much, Vine! " Now Laving ceases to be his mother in his eyes; she

rather becomes some stranger with the same beautiful hair as his mother's; she looks like Marie Baritone! Here he becomes another Abe Mammon and Laving a new Marie Baritone. His Guilt-Obsession In spite of his efforts to force Laving to confess their guilt, and pay penalty, for it, Orin finds her "harder to break" than him. Laving, who was so affectionate towards her only young brother, curses him like anything: "l hate you! I wish you were dead! You're too vile to live!

You'd kill yourself if you weren't coward! These words work their influence on him like wild fire; "You want to drive me to suicide as I drove Mother I he says to Laving.

He further says, "That would be justice--now you are Mother! She is speaking now through you l... Yes! Its the way to peace--to find her again-?my lost Island-?Death is an Island of Peace, too--Mother will be waiting for me there-?. " And he ultimately joins his mother in death.

(4) LAVING MAMMON Her Picturesque Personality Laving, the daughter of Ezra Man non, is a young girl of twenty three but looks considerably older.

She is tall like her mother, her body is thin, flat- reacted, and angular, and its, unattractiveness is accentuated by her plain black dress. Her movements are stiff and she carries herself with a wooden, square-shouldered, military bearing. She has a flat dry voice and a habit of snapping out her words like an officer giving orders. But in spite of dissimilarities, one is immediately struck by her facial resemblance to her mother.

She has the same peculiar shade of copper gold hair, the same pallor

and dark violet-blue eyes, the black eyebrows meeting in a straight line above her nose, the same sensual mouth, the same heavy jaw.

Above all, one is truck by the same strange, life-like mask impression her face gives in repose. But it is evident that Laving does all in her power to emphasize the dissimilarity rather than the resemblance to her mother. She wears her hair pulled tightly back, as if to conceal its natural curliness, and there is not a touch of feminine allurement to her severely plain get-up.

Her head is the same size as her mother's, but on her thin body it looks too large and heavy. Victim of Electra complex From the beginning of the play till the death of Ezra Mammon Laving remains a victim of Electra complex.

In her encounter with Laving, Christine ells her that the former has always tried to become the wife of her father and the mother Of Orin. To this Laving wildly reacts, "No. It's you who have stolen all love from me since the time I was born.

" And when Ezra comes home from the front, Laving wants to snatch him from Christine. Christine wants that he should sit on the steps leading to the Mammon house and enjoy the moonlit night there but Laving would not like that Christine should monopolize his love. She says that it is too damp there and that because he must be hungry he must go inside and eats something.

Further, Christine suggests that Ezra should go to bed but Laving, who has been, watching him jealously, suddenly pulls him by the arm with a childish

volubility and says, "No! Not yet! Please, Father! You've only just come! We've hardly talked at all! She is so happy to find her father with her that she excitedly kisses him and says: You're the only man I'll ever love! I'm going to Stay with you! When Ezra and Christine are talking together on the night of the General's 'homecoming her heart is filled with an anguish of jealous hatred: "l hate you! You steal even Father's love from me again!