The Family Reunion Play Analysis

In both of the plays, , there is no escape from getting bothered from the past in the future or in the present, but both in Ghosts and in The Family Reunion, it is accepted that the ghosts of the sad memories of the past would be faced in order to form a future no matter how painful it can be. Mourning can be said to be a ritual for remembering the past. Mourning for the dead makes the dead real and bound to the present and in a way steal the quality that makes them ghosts. Ghosts tend to be unwanted as they haunt us. However, mourning makes the memory of the dead desirable and welcomes it. That is exactly why ghosts are not welcome in both of the plays as mourning is lacked in them. In Ghosts, Mrs. Alving rejects to mourn her deceased husband as she thinks that the death of his was salvation to her own well being and of her son’s. She sees the living memory of her husband was what was keeping her executing her own identity and her free will in a complete sense. The same thing is true for Amy in The Family Reunion . Not only has she refused to mourn the dead husband but also she refuses to mourn for the dead wife of her son. She sees both of those as beings that kept her from fulfilling her duties as a wife and a mother. And with the death of those two she thinks that the remains of the present can be lived in the

S. Eliot are renowned plays that have their indistinct ways of asking questions about the society at the time they were written. But, they also might ask questions about the societies which future might hold when they are going to be read and talked about. And, today, each of those two plays contains the figure of a son who is disturbed by the sinful actions together with sinful intentions of the past that did not take place. Both of those sons cannot get rid of the ghosts of the past and are forced to live in a present and a future where the border between imaginary and the real turns out to be