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It was like murdering the same man twice. I had a queer feeling that war meant murdering the same man over and over, and that in the end I would discover the man was myself! Their faces keep coming back in dreams—and they change to Father's face—or to mine

Orin relates his Civil War nightmare to Lavinia in Act III of "The Hunted." It allegorizes the lethal rivalries afoot between the play's male doubles. Mourning's male players are all at war in an Oedipal drama, vying for the desire of Mother. The Civil War, generally remembered as a war between brothers, comes to symbolize this struggle. The men's rivalries are murderously infantile, operating according to a jealous logic of "either you go or I go." Because in these rivalries the other appears as that which stands in the self's rightful place within the Oedipal triangle, the rivals appear as doubles of each other as well. Orin's nightmare of his murders in the fog allegorizes this rivalry. Here Orin repeatedly kills the same man, himself, and his father. This compulsive series of murders demonstrates the impossibility of the lover ever acceding to his rightful place within the Oedipal triangle—Mother will always want another, and producing yet another rival.

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