Desire Under The Elms

The life and works of Eugene O'Neill have extremely intimate relation to each other. To some extent, almost all his dramas are autobiographical. Of them, Desire under the Elms is called Eugene O'Neill's unconscious autobiography. Therefore, most critics conduct author-direction analysis of this play by now. More specifically, the cause of the tragedy or the death of the protagonists is always attributed to O'Neill's deliberate design.Thus, this thesis aims at tracing the cause of the tragedy in a pure textual analysis unaffected by the author with the help of Lacanian psychoanalysis. It turns out that there is a whole human ontological structure or the essential way of our existence embedded in the text of the play leading to the tragedy. According to the development of this argumentation, the thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter reviews the ontological structure of human beings provided by Lacan. Each of the rest chapters represents a part of this structure in the textual analysis of the play. The second chapter focuses on Ephraim Cabot who is not an ordinary father but the puritan society predating its social members. The third chapter gives an account of the symptoms of Oedipus Complex presented by Eben and Abbie and how they get over it to enter the Symbolic Order. The fourth chapter resorts to the fights between the Cabots as subjects to explain their enigmatical actions and tells how Simeon, Peter, Eben, and Abbie use their deaths to win a final triumph over Ephraim and consequently establish their subjectivity. In the conclusion, the reason why the tragedy happens is finally revealed.