Mourning Becomes Electra The Hunted, Act 3 Summary

  • Orin's gone to the study to pay his respects to his father.But he's not doing a really good job. He's too busy being angry at Lavinia.
  • He stands over the corpse in the coffin, and talks about how he still can't believe he's dead, adding that maybe now that Ezra's dead they can be friends.
  • Lavinia walks in on this and is disgusted. She tells Orin she has to talk to him, and she's shocked at how cold and uncaring he seems to be toward the now deceased Ezra.
  • Orin says that, having seen so much death in battle, he doesn't have the same attitude toward it that other people have.
  • Orin talks about a night when he murdered two rebel soldiers before basically losing his mind and running unarmed toward a bunch of them the next day.
  • He tells Lavinia that Ezra twisted things around to make it seem like Orin had done something really brave and inspiring.
  • After Lavinia tries telling him that what he did really was a brave thing, Orin gets frustrated and asks her if she's gone crazy thinking all of these awful things about Christine.
  • Lavinia insists that she's perfectly sane, and that she's never lied to Orin about anything.
  • She threatens to go to the police.
  • Orin tells her to calm the heck down.
  • Desperate, Lavinia actually asks her father's corpse for help convincing Orin.
  • Instead of thinking this is weird, Orin just tells Lavinia not to get Papa Mannon involved, because he always took Lavinia's side in an argument.
  • They argue for a while. Orin takes the box of poison pills from Lavinia.
  • Lavinia tells Orin to man up, and that Christine had told her all of the lies that she told Orin.
  • She finally convinces Orin that Christine was screwing around with Brant.
  • Orin demands that she prove it.
  • Lavinia says that she will, if it means he'll help her get justice for their murdered father. He agrees; he's murderously angry at Brant.
  • They both hear Christine coming, calling for Orin.
  • Orin's afraid that he can't even look at Christine now, but Lavinia tells him to suck it up.
  • Before Christine shows up, Lavinia takes the box of poison pills and puts it on Ezra's corpse where it's lying in the casket.
  • Christine walks in, all flustered because she's afraid Lavinia's working her own magic on Orin.
  • Orin tries to calm Christine down, telling her that he thinks Lavinia is crazy.
  • Christine notices the box of pills on Ezra's body and freaks out.
  • Orin starts whining about how sick he is of death. Now he knows the truth. He leaves.
  • Lavinia says she knows that Brant gave Christine the poison.
  • She leaves as Christine begs her not to let anything happen to Brant.