Home > Mourning Becomes Electra Summary & Study Guide > Essays and Criticism > "Eugene O'Neill's Paradise Lost: The Theme of the Islands in Mourning Becomes Electra"
Mourning Becomes Electra | "Eugene O'Neill's Paradise Lost: The Theme of the Islands in Mourning Becomes Electra"
In the following essay, Werner contends that the theme of the islands in O'Neill's play represents the recovery of the paradise of the original bond between mother and son.
In the plays of Eugene O'Neill, the breaking of the bond between a son and a mother is a common pattern, figuring an original fall from innocence. Just as O'Neill's biography can be read as a series of unsuccessful attempts to re-establish in adulthood the kind of exclusive attachment with a woman that would replicate and replace the broken filial-maternal bond, his plays can be seen as a series of imaginative struggles with the same need. In O'Neill's vision, maternal abandonment is the original sin, and life is a series of...
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- Mourning Becomes Electra: Introduction
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Summary
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Eugene O’Neill Biography
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Themes
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Style
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Historical Context
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Critical Overview
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Character Analysis
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Mourning Becomes Electra: Essays and Criticism
- Mourning Becomes Electra and Oresteia
- "The Legacy of Melville's Pierre: Family Relationships in Mourning Becomes Electra"
- "Eugene O'Neill's Paradise Lost: The Theme of the Islands in Mourning Becomes Electra"
- "Mother and Daughter in Mourning Becomes Electra"
- "Insular Typees: Puritanism and Primitivism in Mourning Becomes Electra"
- "More Shakespeare and Less Aeschylus in Eugene O'Neill 's Mourning Becomes Electra"
- "Our Electra"
- 1931 Review of Mourning Becomes Electra
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Compare and Contrast
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Topics for Further Study
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Media Adaptations
- Mourning Becomes Electra: What Do I Read Next?
- Mourning Becomes Electra: Bibliography and Further Reading
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