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An Interpretation of Desire Under the Elms from Žižek’s Ideological Theory

Author(s)

Yi Shan

Affiliation(s)

Guangdong University of Science and Technology, Dongguan, Guangdong, China

Abstract

This paper takes Slavoj Žižek's theory of ideological criticism as the framework to interpret the deep structure of the conflicts among material desire, sexual desire and ethics in Eugene O’Neill’s drama Desire Under the Elms. Through the analysis of the characters' possessive desire for the farm, the incestuous love between Abbie and Eben, and the division of their subjectivity, it reveals how the ideological illusion in the capitalist patriarchal society manipulates the behavior of the subject through the mechanism of the “unconscious”, and explores the dilemma and tragic nature of the subject in the process of “traversing the illusion”.

Keywords

Slavoj Žižek; Ideological Illusion; Sublime Object; Desire Under The Elms; Symbolization

References

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