The House of Mannon Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra is a work of revenge, sacrifice and murder conveyed through visible references to Aeschylus' House of Atreus. O'Neill alludes to The House of Atreus to establish the work; connecting the plot to well-known aspects of the story. Furthermore, it carries with it a certain meaning that would otherwise be overlooked if their underlying manifestations went unnoticed. The most important of these allusions is to Aeschylus' House of Atreus. O'Neill specifically modeled Mourning around Aeschylus' work, modernizing it and applying it to a new generation of readers. Agamemnon, a general in the Trojan War, becomes Ezra Mannon, a Civil War soldier of the same rank. Ezra “was a great man…he was a positive power” (323). He was well respected within the community: he was a Mannon. “They've been the boss here for almost two hundred years and they don't let the people notice” (265). A famous man with a name that connotes wealth and power, he returns home physically drained from battle, but emotionally in touch with himself, to his wife, Christine, who shadows Aeschylus' Clytemnestra. The city perceived Christine negatively; “she is not the Mannon type” (265). She would go so far as to conspire with Brant (Aegisthus), further tainting the Mannon name, in order to "bring you (Brant) my share of the Mannon estate" (294). Christine poisons her husband, both literally and figuratively, not only by revealing her affair with Adam Brant, but by administering poison instead of heart medicine to her enraged husband, thus killing him. Lavinia (Electra), rushes in when she hears her father's cries, only to be told, "She's guilty, it's not the medicine" (316) as she falls limply onto the bed. It is at this point in the story that Lavinia begins a vendetta with her mother, saying, "You killed him anyway - tell her! I suppose you think you'll be free to marry Adam now! But you won't." ! Not while I'm alive! I will make you pay for your crime, I will find a way to punish you!" (317). Following the plot of The House of Atreus, Orin (Aeschylus' Orestes) returns home from battle, finding a cold, dark house, with which is unfamiliar. In a conversation with Peter, he asks, “Has the house always seemed so ghostly and dead?” (327), and continues to contrast it with a “tomb"." (327).