ALIENATION, SECLUSION, AND DEGRADATION OF CHARACTERS IN ELIOT'S THE FAMILY REUNION

Prominently, The Family Reunion has been acknowledged as one of the important plays that contributed
to the revival of poetic drama in England. It was the first-ever attempt on the part of the playwright to
employ contemporary settings and speech in drama. However, the play is also important for its
contemporaneity of the themes and subsequent moralizing on the part of the writer. The play has been
reviewed by literary scholars from a philosophical, psychological, and religious point of view. Although
the Christian theme of sin and its expiation, crime, and final punishment hold the ground throughout the
play, it touches upon various common, day-to-day issues of the modern world. Alienation, loneliness
identity crisis, and survival are some of the other themes that have been highlighted by the dramatist here.
The present research paper explores the psychological ailment of the play’s prominent characters which
they represent in their separation in the relationship. Simultaneously, it touches upon the other issues that
are extremely experienced by the people of England in the twentieth century like degeneration, disbelief,
selfishness, cunningness, and deterioration in human feelings and sentiments.