Carnival Of Desires

Desire under the Elms is considered an excellent tragedy Eugene O’Neill evercreated. Critics have studied this drama from varied perspectives, but few haveevaluated this play in the light of Bakhtin’s carnival duality. By interpreting this tragedyin the light shed by Bakhtin’s carnivalesque theory, it is argued that this play ischaracteristic of carnival duality.Carnival duality refers to the synchrony of the official world and the nonofficialworld, and the co-existence of subversion and invigoration in events, and the identity ofpositive and negative of the human attributes. As an important concept in BakhtinCarnival Poetics, it can be found in his many interpretations of Medieval Folk carnivalculture. Simply speaking, the carnival duality is usually reflected in the followingrespects: the official world and the non-official world, the event that consists of doublemeaning, the characters have double personalities because of the official and unofficialsocial environment. And the core of carnival duality is the nature of alteration of thenew and the old and the co-existence of the death and the rebirth.Chapter one and Chapter two are the introduction to the thesis and the literaryreview. The main body of this thesis has three parts; it studies carnival duality of DesireUnder the Elms from three aspects. It first examines the duality of the farm, a truecarnival square. It is the foolishness of the wise father, the madness of the sons, thedrunk of the Cabots, the fight between father and son, the incest of Abbie and Eben, andthe infanticides make the farm a place for everyone to live a canivalized life. The life onthe farm reveals that the state of human being is always turning and altering, and it is inthis kind of state that men and the world achieves long lasting development. What’smore, it also studies the animalization of the characters, and uses these examples just tomake audience and readers aware the expansion of materialism and the weird turbulenceof people’s emotions, which can degrade the dignity of human being, deprive men’sstatus and may smash the noble manhood into pieces. In this way, Eugene O’Neillpoints out man’s inner problems and world’s outer malpractice of that time, and warnspeople to be on the alert for them.The second part focuses on the discussion of carnival events: the changingoccurrence caused by the official society and the carnival society. And all thesecarnivalistic events are associated with men’s desires. The sons disobey and even fight with their father, but at same time they have the similar personalities and characteristicsinherited from Ephraim. The hatred is another carnival event in the play, because Abbieis a potential threat to Eben for inheriting the farm, which he always claims to belong tohis”Maw”, but this hatred also cannot stand alone and it is characterized as twodimensioned, as well. It is juxtaposed with the opposite emotion: possiblypossessiveness at the beginning, and love in the end. Another carnival event to beanalyzed in this chapter is the infanticide. Abbie kills her son to prove her love for Eben,thus the crime is committed. However, it bears another deep meaning: it can be regardedas a sacrificial act which is generative to redeem their souls. This suggests that nothingis absolute in the contradictory world where we dwell and anything is possible, which isvery useful for person to understand the event happens every day in a dynamic way.The third part analyzes the characters’ dual personalities caused by the official andnonofficial environment. There are two kinds of dual personalities: the dual personalityone character shows and the dual personality two characters shows. Ephraim has dualpersonalities in the carnival on the farm: on the one hand, he is a wise man withintelligence and authority, and on the other hand he is a foolish man laughed by othersfor his ignorance of the incest between his son and his young wife. Eben and Ephraimhave opposite personalities, and their personalities are in complementary with eachother. Abbie and Eben are with twin personalities for one mirror the other.From the study above, the thesis draws the conclusion: Desire under the Elms is aplay carnivalized with carnival duality. It shows repeatedly from many angles to reflectthe core of duality features: both in official and non-official dual existence or in theevent of a double meaning, or in the personality of the contradictory oneness,everything is in constant death and rebirth.