The use of modernity in Eugene O’Neill’s language and style in ‘Mourning Become Electra’.

NAME: BHATT URVI P.

ROLL NO. : 31

STD: M.A. (SEM-3)

SUB: THE AMERICAN LITERATURE

PAPER NO. : 10

TOPIC: The use of modernity in Eugene O’Neill’s language and style in ‘Mourning Become Electra’.

SUBMITTED TO: DEPT OF EN GLISH M.K BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

The use of modernity in Eugene O’Neill’s language and style in ‘Mourning Become Electra’.

v  Introduction about Eugene O’Neill:-

          The playwright Eugene O’Neill was born in 1888 in New York City and died in 1953 in Boston. He was an American playwright who was an awarded Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936 and Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1920, 1922, 1928 and 1957. His plays are poetically titled. He introduced technique of realism in American drama. He was influenced by the realism in writing. Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and Swedish playwright August Strindberg inspired him. He was the first American playwright toinclude speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society. His characters struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. He wrote full length plays and one act plays. Some of his plays are:-

Ø  Beyond the Horizon (1918) Pulitzer Prize(1920) Ø  Anna Christie(1920) Pulitzer Prize(1922) Ø  The Hairy Ape(1922) Ø  The Great God Brown(1926) Ø  Strange Interlude(1928) Pulitzer Prize(1928) Ø  The Calms of Capricorn(1983) Ø  Long Day’s Journey Into Night(1941) Pulitzer Prize(1957)

              Tall and thin, dark-eyed and handsome, with a brooding sensitivity, O’Neill was a man of many paradoxical qualities. Though he was ready to work he was by no means ready to change his way of living complexity.

v  Plot Summary:

·         The Homecoming

           It is late spring afternoon in front of the Mannon house. The master of the house, Brigadier-General Ezra Mannon, is soon to return from war.

            Lavinia, Ezra's severe daughter, has just come, like her mother Christine, from a trip to New York. Seth, the gardener, takes the anguished girl aside. He needs to warn her against her would-be beau, Captain Brant. Before Seth can continue, however, Lavinia's suitor Peter and his sister Hazel, arrive. Lavinia stiffens. If Peter is proposing to her again, he must realize that she cannot marry anyone because Father needs her.

         Lavinia asks Seth to resume his story. Seth asks if she has not noticed that Brant looks just like her all the other male Mannons. He believes that Brant is the child of David Mannon and Marie Brantome, a Canuck nurse, a couple expelled from the house for fear of public disgrace.

         Suddenly Brant himself enters from the drive. Calculatingly Lavinia derides the memory of Brant's mother. Brant explodes and reveals his heritage. Lavinia's grandfather loved his mother and jealously cast his brother out of the family. Brant has sworn vengeance.

         A moment later, Lavinia appears inside her father's study. Christine enters indignantly, wondering why Lavinia has summoned her. Lavinia reveals that she followed her to New York and saw her kissing Brant. Christine defiantly tells Lavinia that she has long hated Ezra and that Lavinia was born of her disgust. She loves her brother Orin because he always seemed hers alone.

         Lavinia coldly explains that she intends to keep her mother's secret for Ezra's sake. Christine must only promise to never see Brant again. Laughingly Christine accuses her daughter of wanting Brant herself. Lavinia has always schemed to steal her place. Christine agrees to Lavinia's terms. Later she proposes to Brant that they poison Ezra and attribute his death to his heart trouble.

          One week later, Lavinia stands stiffly at the top of the front stairs with Christine. Suddenly Ezra enters and stops stiffly before his house. Lavinia rushes forward and embraces him.

          Once she and Ezra alone, Christine assures her that he has nothing to suspect with regards to Brant. Ezra impulsively kisses her hand. The war has made him realize that they must overcome the wall between them. Calculatingly Christine assures him that all is well. They kiss.

         Toward daybreak in Ezra's bedroom, Christine slips out from the bed. Mannon's bitterly rebukes her. He knows the house is not his and that Christine awaits his death to be free. Christine deliberately taunts that she has indeed become Brant's mistress. Mannon rises in fury, threatening her murder, and then falls back in agony, begging for his medicine. Christine retrieves a box from her room and gives him the poison.

           Mannon realizes her treachery and calls Lavinia for help. Lavinia rushes to her father. With his dying effort, Ezra indicts his wife: "She's guilty—not medicine!" he gasps and then dies. Her strength gone, Christine collapses in a faint.

·         The Hunted

        Peter, Lavinia, and Orin arrive at the house. Orin disappointedly complains of Christine's absence. He jealously asks Lavinia about what she wrote him regarding Brant. Lavinia warns him against believing Christine's lies.

         Suddenly Christine hurries out, reproaching Peter for leaving Orin alone. Mother and son embrace jubilantly. Suspiciously Orin asks Christine about Brant. Christine explains that Lavinia has gone mad and begun to accuse her of the impossible. Orin sits at Christine's feet and recounts his wonderful dreams about her and the South Sea Islands. The Islands represented all the war was not: peace, warmth, and security, or Christina herself. Lavinia reappears and coldly calls Orin to see their father's body.

           In the study, Orin tells Lavinia that Christine has already warned him of her madness. Calculatingly Lavinia insists that Orin certainly cannot let their mother's paramour escape. She proposes that they watch Christine until she goes to meet Brant herself. Orin agrees.

           The night after Ezra's funeral, Brant's clipper ship appears at a wharf in East Boston. Christine meets Brant on the deck, and they retire to the cabin to speak in private. Lavinia and an enraged Orin listen from the deck. The lovers decide to flee east and seek out their Blessed Islands. Fearing the hour, they painfully bid each other farewell. When Brant returns, Orin shoots him and ransacks the room to make it seem that Brant has been robbed.

        The following night Christine paces the drive before the Mannon house. Orin and Lavinia appear, revealing that they killed Brant. Christine collapses. Orin knees beside her pleadingly, promising that he will make her happy, that they can leave Lavinia at home and go abroad together. Lavinia orders Orin into the house. He obeys.

            Christine glares at her daughter with savage hatred and marches into the house. Lavinia determinedly turns her back on the house, standing like a sentinel. A shot is heard from Ezra's study. Lavinia stammers: "It is justice!"

·         The Haunted

            A year later, Lavinia and Orin return from their trip East. Lavinia's body has lost its military stiffness and she resembles her mother perfectly. Orin has grown dreadfully thin and bears the statue-like attitude of his father.

            In the sitting room, Orin grimly remarks that Lavinia's has stolen Christine's soul. Death has set her free to become her. Peter enters from the rear and gasps, thinking he has seen Christine's ghost. Lavinia approaches him eagerly. Orin jealously mocks his sister, accusing her of becoming a true romantic during their time in the Islands.

            A month later, Orin works intently at a manuscript in the Mannon study. Lavinia knocks sharply at the locked door. With forced casualness, she asks Peter what he is doing. Orin insists that they must atone for Mother's death. As the last male Mannon, he has written a history of the family crimes, from Abe's onward. Lavinia is the most interesting criminal of all. She only became pretty like Mother on Brant's Islands, with the natives staring at her with desire.

           When Orin accuses her of sleeping with one of them, she assumes Christine's taunting voice. Reacting like Ezra, Orin grasps his sister's throat, threatening her murder. He has taken Father's place and she Mother's.

            A moment later, Hazel and Peter appear in the sitting room. Orin enters, insisting that he see Hazel alone. He gives her a sealed envelope, enjoining her to keep it safe from his sister. She should only open it if something happens to him or if Lavinia tries to marry Peter. Lavinia enters from the hall. Hazel moves to leave, trying to keep Orin's envelope hidden behind her back. Rushing to Orin, Lavinia beseeches him to make her surrender it. Orin complies.

          Orin tells his sister she can never see Peter again. A "distorted look of desire" comes into his face. Lavinia stares at him in horror, saying, "For God's sake—! No! You're insane! You can't mean—!" Lavinia wishes his death. Startled, Orin realizes that his death would be another act of justice. Mother is speaking through Lavinia.

            Peter appears in the doorway. Unnaturally casual, Orin remarks that he was about to go clean his pistol and exits. Lavinia throws herself into Peter's arms. A muffled shot is heard.

        Three days later, Lavinia appears dressed in deep mourning. A resolute Hazel arrives and insists that Lavinia not marry Peter. The Mannon secrets will prevent their happiness. She already has told Peter of Orin's envelope.

       Peter arrives, and the pair pledges their love anew. Started by the bitterness in his voice, Lavinia desperately flings herself into his arms crying, "Take me, Adam!" Horrified, Lavinia orders Peter home.

       Lavinia cackles that she is bound to the Mannon dead. Since there is no one left to punish her, she must punish herself—she must entomb herself in the house with the ancestors.

“One of O’Neill’s enduring masterpieces, ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’, represents the playwright’s most complete use of Greek forms, themes, and characters. Based on the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus, it was itself three plays in one. To give the story credibility, O’Neill set the play in the New England of the civil war period, yet he retained the forms and the conflicts of the Greek characters: the heroic leader returning from war, adulterous wife, who murders him, his jealous, repressed daughter, who avenges him through the murder of her mother, and his weak, incestuous son, who is goaded by his sister first to matricide and then to suicide.”

By Arthur Gelb

v  Style:

“It is impossible to put one ‘label’ on Eugene O’Neill’s style of dramatization. And sometimes within the framework, he is a naturalist, a romanticist, a symbolist often bordering on the Surreal. He is an empiricist, a psychoanalyst, and a mystagogue.”       (Bibliographical)    ‘Like William Shakespeare, O’Neill was a man of the theatre’                                                                   He was born into it, grew up in it, worked in it, and wrote for it. He knew his craft, and he hated the artificiality and pretense of the commercial theatre. He said:

“The theatre to me is life-the substance and interpretation of life… [And] life is struggle.” “The theatre to me is life-the substance and interpretation of life… [And] life is struggle.”

 

                             O’Neill was an artist of integrity and courage; he was constantly exploring, expanding and experimenting. He tended towards realism in his work, rejecting material that could not be verified by the senses. At time he played with non-realistic, expressionistic devices, externalizing the interior state of a character with sound or light or language. ‘Mourning Becomes Electra’ is perhaps the longest, essentially consisting of three full length play, with a total of thirteen acts. O’Neill’s view of humanity was despairing and nearly tragic, there are no moral messages in his plays. He does not preach or promote causes. There are few villians in his works; instead there are characters of enormous energy, driven by huge passions- lust greed, ambition, and love. A major thematic concern with O’Neill is obsessive love, love that derives a person without reason and beyond conscience, love that does not heal but smothers and destroys. Christine and Lavinia Mannon in Mourning Becomes Electra rose prime example of the obsession.

           O’Neill is not universally admired. His principal detractors find his style crude, his language clumsy, and his plays in need of ending. Concerning style, one must remember that O’Neill was blazing a path separate from the contrivance of the romantic “well-made play”.

                   

                          O’Neill is able to show great amount of information about his play just through the set alone. This is a unique aspect of his style. O’Neill’s stage directions focus on the individual characters. This occurs in all of O’Neill’s work but there is not finer example than in Mourning Becomes Electra when 

Christine is described:-

               “Christine Mannon is a tall striking-looking woman of forty, but she    appears younger. She moves with an animal grace. Her face is usual,               handsome    rather than beautiful. One is struck by the strange impression it gives in response of being not living flesh but a wonderfully life-like pale                           mask, in which only the deep-set eyes, of a dark vlet blue,                                                         are alive.”

           

                           O’Neill uses striking titles. Mourning Becomes Electra and Desire under the Elms follow a similar pattern. The title Mourning Becomes Electra may have no real meaning to a reader at all prior to reading the play. It is under whether Electra is a person or something else. However after reading the play the genius of title is exposed. The title is a reference to the Electra complex which plays a huge role in then play.

          O’Neill brings the structure of Greek play. He brings “Chorus” of people in Mourning Becomes Electra. Also, this tragedy is influenced by the ancient Greek trilogy. The use of Greek tragedy as a plot influence and structure design is a characteristic of O’Neill’s style which sets him apart from others.

        Eugene O’Neill is a playwright who was so masterful and revolutionary in his language and style that it is impossible to define it with just few sentences. There are consistent traits such as extensive stage directions, evocative titles and Greek-styled structures that separated him from other playwrights O’Neill’s style is versatile with many facets.

“O’Neill traced the course of a modern dramatist in search of an aesthetic and spiritual centre.”                                                                    Gassner

•    Language:-

        O’Neill could use his skill effectively. In some pays he uses interior monologue in some other he makes use of mask. He used dialects effectively for special effects. His language is not as lofty as of the Greeks. It lacks the Greek grammar. There is a feeling that he lacks “language” equal to reach of his non-verbal powers.

       For the language in Mourning Becomes ElectraO’Neill wrote:-

“Masks in that connection demand great language to speak-which let me out of it with a sickening bump.”

 

                             O’Neill could not succeed raising the language. We find an inadequacy of language hampering to greater or lesser degree.

         On the other side if we see O’Neill wrote about common life of sailors and farmers and social outcast where he managed his language very well.

          John Gassner argues that the deficiency found in O’Neill’s language is not entirely the result of his lack of endowment but of the modern division between prose and dramatic poetry.

         O’Neill could create lusty language at Electra-Lavinia’s tragic closing of the doors upon herself in Mourning Becomes Electra. He could not become the great poet, dramatist that he wanted to be. He was described by some critics as “Prose Shakespeare.” Yet there is in this realist-naturalist- symbolist-experimentalist playwright a strain of poetry that makes him almost a romantic.

“In O’Neill plays there is reality and there is joy of life, his vocabulary is rich with the richness of life and work, and his people have that wildness which civilization accentuates. His speeches are fully flavoured as a nut or an apple and they have the poetry of human endeavour and suffering.”           -  Andrew E. Malone

                                 In O’Neill’s plays traces and echoes of Synge, an Irish playwright’s language are found. His philosophy of dramatic language is found in O’Neill’s play. The novelty of O’Neill’s language and style is striking:-

v  Conclusion:-

             O’Neill was pioneer American dramatist. He wrote moving and powerful tragedies. The chief theme of O’Neill’s plays in man in relation to his society, his God and the Universe, O’Neill experimented successfully with new techniques of drama. He wrote lengthy plays. His lengthy plays are of epic dimensions and through these O’Neill brought to the American theatre spaciousness that was known only on the Greek stage where an Aeschylean trilogy kept the people spell bound for house, O’Neill introduced naturalism in America. O’Neill’s play Mourning Becomes Electra is the psycho-analysis of the characters of the plays. O’Neill’s all the plays possess the modern characteristics of the plays of the Modern Age. The tragedy Mourning Becomes Electra has been rich in dialects and possesses amusing style. The mixing of ancient and modern elements is interesting. The characters seem real.

“The Birthday Party” reflects the plight of the artist in modern society.

NAME: BHATT URVI P.

ROLL NO. : 31

STD: M.A. (SEM-3)

SUB: THE MODERNIST LITERATURE

PAPER NO. : 9

TOPIC: “The Birthday Party” reflects the plight of the artist in modern society.

SUBMITTED TO: DEPT OF ENGLISH M.K BHAVNAGAR UNIVERSITY

 

                                 

Harold Pinter was born in 1930, in Hackney, in a working-class neighbourhood in London’s East End, the son of a tailor. He suffered from traumatic war events. 

“The condition of being bombed has never left me,” Pinter later said. At school one of Pinter’s main intellectual interests was English literature. He was a playwright, actor, poet, theatre director and also a screen writer. A major influence on Pinter was his inspirational English teacher Joseph Brearley, who directed him in school plays and with whom he took long walks, talking about literature. At the age of twelve he started writing poetry in school. To supplement his income from acting, Pinter worked as a waiter, a postman, a bouncer, and a snow-cleaner. He also performed on TV and wrote for TV and radio. His works won many awards.

                                “I have often been asked how many plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that is what they did.”

                                        

 In 1950 Pinter started to publish poem under the name Harold Pinta. After some years in provincial reported writing for the stage. His career as a playwright began with a production of “The Room” in 1957 .he wrote a lot. Some of his works are:-

The Room (1957)                                            Tea Party (1964)

The Birthday Party (1957)                            The Homecoming (1964)

The Dumb Waiter (1957)                              The Basement (1966)

A slight Ache (1958)                                        landscape (1968)

Silence (1968)                                                   Old Times (1970) 

                     

                                                                     

“Everything is funny until the horror of the humansituation rises to the surface! Life is funny because it is based on illusions and self-deceptions, like Stanley’s dream of a world tour as a pianist, because it is built out of pretence. In our present day world, everything is uncertain, there is no fixed point, and we are surrounded by the unknown. This unknown occurs in my plays. There is a kind of horror about and I think that this horror and absurdity go together.”

    Harold Pinter was working as an actor in England when he stayed briefly at a dilapidated boarding-house that would serve as his inspiration for The Birthday Party.

The Birthday Party begins in the living room of an English seaside boarding-house in the 1959s Petey, a man in his sixties, enters the living room with his newspaper, Meg, his Wife, also in her sixties, greets him and asks about the breakfast. They talk about weather and birth of a girl child whether Meg opines she would rather have a little boy than a girl. Petey told Meg that two men asked for room. Then she goes to “wake that boy”,(Stanely). Stanely, a scruffy, bespectacled, unshaven man in his pajamas, enters and flops down in his seat at the table. He eats and talks with Petey. Stanely after Petey is gone tease calling her bad wife. Meg informs him that two gentlemen were to arrive at the boarding, Stanely doesn’t like this and both shout at each other. Stanely, very quietly asks her,

                                                   “Who do you think you’re talking to?”   

                                This is the first indication that makes us doubt Stanley’s past. He tells Meg that he has got a job, is going to play piano as he once had. He describes the concert as a great success, but claims his next show was disastrous.  He says,

               “They wanted me to crawl down on my bended knees. Well I can take a tip.”

                This way with bafflement he leaves. Lulu, a young girl in her twenties arrives then. She flirts Stanely. She affectionately calls him a ‘washout’. They exit and enter Goldberg and McCann. McCann is nervous but Goldberg assures him that they were at right house. Goldberg insists. McCann is the best in his profession, and they settle into a discussion about the mysterious job they have to perform. Meg, who went for shopping now, enters.While they are talking we learn that Goldberg was interested in Stanely. He suggests that they should have an impromptu birthday party for Stanely. Meg is thrilled. She showed them their room. Stanley bombards her with questions related to the newcomers. She gives him the package that it his birthday, but Meg doesn’t listen to him. Meg asks him to play the drum. He taps a merry beat but suddenly starts banging the drums erratically. He bangs the drums harder and harder as if he was possessed. Here, the act-I ends.

                       Act-II mainly deals with the mysteries of Stanley, Goldberg and McCann. Stanley’s past is mysterious. But we learn that he used to play piano in the concerts. He might have been a very good pianist. Something went wrong with him. Owing to some unknown reasons somebody spoilt his show and he was forced upon.

                                 Act-II is set later that night. At the beginning, we see McCann tearing the newspaper in five equal strips. Stanley is started to see McCann but greets McCann. Stanley, though tried to escape could not but had to engage himself in talking. Stanley insists that they have met before but McCann denies twice. They argue and McCann savagely hits Stanley. Still they continue talking. Petey and Goldberg arrive. They all talked. We learn something about him here. Goldberg talked about his mother and his girlfriend. Goldberg asked about Stanley’s childhood but he doesn’t respond. McCann and Goldberg interrogate Stanley with a series of unnerving and unrelated questions. Through their questions we come to know Stanley’s past. They accuse him of betraying their “organization”, of being a traitor to the cloth, and of changing his name. They claim he left a girl at the altar, but also claim that he once had a wife whom he killed either by poison or by beating her to death. Stanley denies all these claims. They insist he is dead because he does not truly live. Stanley suddenly comes to life and kicked Goldberg in the stomach. Before they react Meg comes dressed for the party. The party starts. Lulu enters. They are drunk. McCann finds Stanley and ties the blindfold on him. He stumbles. McCann breaks Stanley’s glasses. Confusion ensues. Lulu screams and faints. In the dark, Stanley places him on the table but then he retreats towards kitchen. Amid confusion and chaos the Act-II ends. In Act-II, the past of Stanley is somewhat discovered, though Stanley denies behaviour of Stanley. Goldberg and McCann seem to be there with some secret plan. Stanley’s mystery here deepens. His character and past is revealed more clearly.

                            Act-III is out she sees a car parked s set the next morning. As in first Act the third one also starts with Petey sitting at the kitchen table reading his newspaper, Meg goes for shopping, but as she movesoutside, she I worried and asks about the car. When Petey informs her that it was Goldberg’s car she is relieved when she sees Goldberg, she asks about car but he ignores her. After Meg leaves, Peter asks Goldberg about Stanley suffered a nervous breakdown at the party. Goldberg assures Petey that they will connect Stanley with a followed name Monty, whom he considers the best doctor available. Also, Petey worried about the chaos at his house. Petey wants Stanley to stay at the boarding but Goldberg and McCann were in hurry. Both of them wanted Petey to go away from there. McCann and Goldberg argue with each other. McCann calls him by the names “Nat” and then by “Simey”. Hearing this names Goldberg reacts immediately and violently at this name, screaming –“never call me that” as he seizes McCann by the throat. Meanwhile Lulu enters. McCann leaves them. They enter into the conversation. She accuses Goldberg of using her for his perverse, sexual games. Goldberg insists their liaison was consensual, but she believed did not believe him. She is sent away by McCann and then he brings clean-shaven Stanley, who holds his broken glasses in his hands. They told him to go with them. They promise they want to care for him. To save him from a fate worse than death and to make a man out of him, they promise to gift him ear plugs, stomach pumps, and crutches while they help him skip rope. Stanley remains silent, when asked just made gurgling sound. He tried his level best to be away from the people but at last they caught. We don’t know who were Goldberg and McCann, who sent them in quest of Stanley, why Stanley lived at the boarding house if he silent, why can’t he speak while going, who are “they” that Goldberg reflects while talking to Stanley etc.

                                   Now, Goldberg gently takes Stanley’s hand and leads him towards the door. Meanwhile Petey arrived, unnoticed, and insist they leave Stanley alone with him. Here, again we are not what Petey knows about Goldberg and McCann’s mission. Whether he was aware of their secret or not, whether he knew about any past that surrounded Stanley and of course, we don’t know anything about Stanley’s plight from the reality.

                                   Petey could not stop Goldberg and McCann talking Stanley away but they suggested him to accompany them. Though he did not stop them from leaving the hose, he does shout, “Stan, don’t let them tell you what to do!”Petey’s boarding was empty now. He sat alone reading newspaper. Meg enters and directly asks about Stanley. Petey tied that she had lovely time in the party and insisted that she was the bell of the ball and Petey agrees with her assessment.

                                 In Act-III, Petey is the central character. At the beginning when Meg realizes that the drum has broken but does not remember how it happened, Petey consolidates her saying she could buy another one. Here, the dramatic irony is that the drum represents Stanley. As the drum is broken so is the condition of Stanley. He is mentally unstable.

                                      Again, in this act we see three breakdowns-

Seeing black car she breakdown. She remembers Stanley’s threat to have her taken away in a wheelbarrow, and worries that the car is intended for the same purpose. Actually, wheelbarrow is a device used to remove debris-from place to place. But the irony here is Stanley’s threat has come true not for her, but for himself.

                        At the end of the play, Goldberg is no more dominating person but it is McCann whom we saw disturbed in the act-I every person is reliant upon his own delusion, and hence subject to pain and difficulty when that delusion falters.

Stanley is an artist, who should not be afraid of anything, but in the play is the most frightening. Any reader could compare. Stanley’s breakdown with that of their own. When one is forced to comfort his or her past sins and delusion too forcibly, one can suffer from the same nervous breakdown.

               

              Stanley Webber is palpably Jewish name. He is a man who shores up his precarious sense of self through fantasy, bluff, violence and his own manipulative form of power play. His treatment of Meg initially is rough, playful, teasing…but once she makes the fateful mood-changing relation-“I’ve got to get things r  eady for the two gentlemen-he’s as dangerous as a cornered animal.”

“The Birthday Party appears to be a straightforward story of a former working pianist now holed up in a decrepit boarding house.”                                                by Bob Bows

                    Stanley is in his late thirties. He indulges himself in fantasies about exotic cities in which he had performed as a concert pianist. In Kafkaesque fashion, he speaks of a career that was ended by persons he refers to as “them”. Filling his landlady’s need for a lodger and a surrogate son, he is comfortably ensconced as a member of the household until his position is threatened by the arrival of two strange, surrealistic guests, Goldberg and McCann. He suggests that the two have come to cart away Meg, his landlady, in a wheelbarrow. In the climactic scene, at his birthday party, Stanley beats the drum Meg has given him as a present, the tempo savagely increasing as he marches around the room. During a game of blind man’s bluff, the lights go out. When the lights come back on, he is standing with his glasses broken over Lulu, who lies spread-eagled on a table. The next morning he appears in striped trousers, black jacket, while collar, and bowler hat, and is carted away by Goldberg and McCann to a mysterious healer, “Monty”, for treatment.

“One feels like saying that the two executioners, Goldberg and McCann, stand for all the principles of the state and social conformism. Goldberg refers to his “job” in a typically Kafka-esque official language which deprives the crimes of all sense and reality.” 

“Maybe Stanley will met his death there or maybe he will only receive a conformist brainwashing after which he is promised…many other gifts of civilization….”                                                                                            -Sinko 

                   

                                                   The play leaves many questions unanswered. Stanley is an artist who might have amused a lot but now he is spending his life in isolation. Many questions are brainstorming. For example,  

Ø Why are Goldberg and McCann anger on Stanley?

Ø Where did Stanley come from?

Ø What has Stanley done so that he fears Strangers?

Ø Why has Stanley developed sense of guilt?

Ø Why isn’t he now playing piano

Ø Where do the two men take Stanley?

                                            The mystery and ambiguity of Stanley’s character goes deeper. We may think that it presents an image of man’s fear of being driven out from his warm place of refuge on earth when Stanley is taken away from boarding house. It can be considered as a metaphor for the process of growing up, of expulsion from the cozy world of childhood.

                                We can also think that the artist (Stanley) whom the society claims back forms a comfortable, bohemian existence and who is compelled by society to conform to its own standards of conduct and behaviour.

                               Goldberg and McCann can be taken as the representatives of Stanley’s own sub-conscious mind of which he is afraid of. he is running away from his own past.

                               Lulu can be considered to be the inspiration of an artist who is seduced by the agents of society or evil forces working to curb the freedom of working to curb the freedom of speech of expression of artist.

                               Stanley is without work. His mysterious past and his feelings of menace move us. His aloofness and strange behaviour puzzles us. While playing drums, he beats savagely. He attempts to abuse Lulu physically at the partly. His behaviour with Meg is beyond comprehension. His curious fear of strangers and his behaviour before they arrived strangle us.

                             Stanley’s changed appearance towards the end of act-III, when he is wee-dressed and clean-shaven, seems to symbolise an artist’s eventual submission or surrender to society. He is an artist who had rebelled against the mode of life which society tries to impose upon its members but the pressures of society make the artist conform to the prevailing social manners and mores. Society could not tolerate the, free-thinking individualistic artist because it own stability. Society symbolised by Goldberg and McCann has destroyed the artist’s individuality. Petey’s feeble attempts the apathy and timidity to the force of dictators and totalitarians.

                               Our modern society has innumerable artists; some are painters, some writers and so on. Sometimes they don’t get the freedom where they can develop. We have many examples of such artist in our society who has to leave their own motherland and shelter elsewhere in order to preserve their art. They are force to leave as refugee in other countries to save their art. Same way Stanley might leave his place and boarded in a boarding house in order to save his life. He stopped playing piano. The reason might be plight from the society, may someone recognize and he could have to face trouble. I think the artist, Stanley tried to run away from his art but society wanted him back.