John Loving is engaged in a life and death conflict with the sneering, cynical element of his psyche which has poisoned his past life, made him prey to false gods, and now seeks to destroy him through suicide. He seeks absolution and his tormentor perishes at the foot of the Cross. SCENES ACT ONE PLOT FOR A NOVEL Scene—John Loving's office in the offices of Eliot and Company, New York City—an afternoon in early Spring, 1932. ACT TWO PLOT FOR A NOVEL (CONTINUED) Scene—Living-room of the Lovings' duplex apartment—later the same afternoon. ACT THREE PLOT FOR A NOVEL (CONTINUED) Scene One—The living-room again—evening of the same day. Scene Two—John Loving's study—later that night. ACT FOUR THE END OF THE END Scene One—The study and Elsa's bedroom—a little before dawn of a day about a week later. Scene Two—The interior of a church—a few minutes later.
Author
American playwright Eugene Gladstone O'Neill authored Mourning Becomes Electra in 1931 among his works; he won the Nobel Prize of 1936 for literature, and people awarded him his fourth Pulitzer Prize for Long Day's Journey into Night , produced in 1956. He won his Nobel Prize "for the power, honesty and deep-felt emotions of his dramatic works, which embody an original concept of tragedy." More than any other dramatist, O'Neill introduced the dramatic realism that Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg pioneered to Americans and first used true American vernacular in his speeches. His plays involve characters, who, engaging in depraved behavior, inhabit the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. O'Neill wrote Ah, Wilderness! , his only comedy: all his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
