paper No 108 the American literature
Long Day's Journey into Night is a play in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939–1941 and first published posthumously in 1956.[4] It is widely regarded as his magnum opus and one of the great American plays of the 20th century.[5] It premiered in Sweden in February 1956 and then opened on Broadway in November 1956, winning the Tony Award for Best Play. O'Neill received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama posthumously for Long Day's Journey into Night. The work is openly autobiographical in nature. The "long day" in the title refers to the setting of the play, which takes place during one day.
Written by :- Eugene O'Neill
Characters:- Mary Cavan Tyrone James Tyrone
Edmund Tyrone
James Tyrone Jr.
Cathleen
Date premiered:- February 10, 1956
Place premiered:- Royal Dramatic Theatre
Stockholm, Sweden
Original language :- English
Subject:- An autobiographical account of an explosive home life with a morphine-addicted mother and alcoholic father.
Genre:- Tragedy
Setting:- The summer home of the Tyrones, August 1912
➢Long Day's Journey into Night Full Play Summary
The play is set in the summer home of the Tyrone family, August 1912. The action begins in the morning, just after breakfast. We learn as the first act unravels that Mary has returned to her family recently after receiving treatment in a sanatorium for morphine addiction. Edmund, meanwhile, has in recent weeks begun to cough very violently, and we learn later on in the play that, as Tyrone and Jamie suspect, he has tuberculosis. Throughout the course of the play, we slowly find out that Mary is still addicted to morphine, much to the disappointment of her family members.
The gradual revelation of these two medical disasters makes up most of the play's plot. In between these discoveries, however, the family constantly revisits old fights and opens old wounds left by the past, which the family members are never unable to forget. Tyrone, for example, is constantly blamed for his own stinginess, which may have led to Mary's morphine addiction when he refused to pay for a good doctor to treat the pain caused by childbirth. Mary, on the other hand, is never able to let go of the past or admit to the painful truth of the present, the truth that she is addicted to morphine and her youngest son has tuberculosis. They all argue over Jamie and Edmund's failure to become successes as their father had always hoped they would become. As the day wears on, the men drink more and more, until they are on the verge of passing out in Act IV.
Most of the plot of the play is repetitious, just as the cycle of an alcoholic is repetitious. The above arguments occur numerous times throughout the four acts and five scenes. All acts are set in the living room, and all scenes but the last occur either just before or just after a meal. Act II, Scene i is set before lunch; scene ii after lunch; and Act III before dinner. Each act focuses on interplay between two specific characters: Act I features Mary and Tyrone; Act II Tyrone and Jamie, and Edmund and Mary; Act III Mary and Jamie; Act IV Tyrone and Edmund, and Edmund and Jamie.
The repetitious plot also helps develop the notion that this day is not remarkable in many ways. Instead, it is one in a long string of similar days for the Tyrones, filled with bitterness, fighting, and an underlying love.
➢Long Day’s Journey into Night Characters
James Tyrone
James is the patriarch of the Tyrone family, a sixty-five-year-old man who seems younger because of the confident way he holds himself. A former matinee star, he has the posture of a well-known actor and the clear enunciation of a true thespian. He is also a high-functioning alcoholic who drinks in great excess without letting the effects show, though by the end of the play there is no hiding the toll that whiskey has taken on his alertness. This, it seems, has been a pattern throughout his entire life, as Mary—his wife—often talks about how much time he spends in barrooms. In fact, people have frequently had to bring him home because he’s been too drunk to find his own way. Despite his own addiction, though, James spends most of his energy focusing on Mary, hoping desperately that she won’t relapse and continue her morphine habit. As such, he’s sure to praise and compliment her at the beginning of the play, since she has recently returned from rehab and has thus far refrained from using drugs. Unfortunately, this doesn’t last, and James quickly grows despondent about his wife’s addiction. He adopts a fatalistic mindset about the entire matter, feeling as if he can do nothing to stop Mary from using morphine. As such, he sits back and listens to her blame him for all sorts of things, like the fact that he is constantly thinking of ways to save money even though he’s rich and his family members need assistance. Indeed, this is another part of James’s personality; despite his wealth, he’ll never forget what it was like to grow up in an impoverished Irish Catholic family, and so he hordes his money and makes unwise real estate investments because he thinks buying land is the only way to make sure he won’t end up in the “poorhouse.”
Mary Tyrone
The matriarch of the Tyrone family. A recovering morphine addict, Mary is “restless” at the beginning of the play because she has recently returned from rehab and is trying hard to stay clean. However, everything around her seems to put her on edge, especially the foghorn that bleats throughout the night and keeps her awake. At the same time, this is perhaps only an excuse to return to her old ways of taking morphine. Before she relapses, her family members all notice the tell-tale signs, suggesting that this has happened many times before. Even so, Mary shames them all into giving her privacy, framing their concern as intrusive and distrustful. In turn, they give her the benefit of the doubt by granting her independence. Still, they’re relatively unsurprised when she starts using morphine again. Unfortunately, her drug use only encourages her to guilt-trip her family members even more, so that she starts blaming them for her own troubles and shortcomings. Indeed, she chastises James for never buying her a proper home, suggests that Jamie purposefully infected Eugene—her second-born who died as a baby—with measles, and blames James for hiring the doctor who first got her addicted to morphine. As she spirals back into full-fledged drug use, she also spends more and more time romanticizing her past life, when she lived as a young girl in a convent and wanted to be either a nun or a concert pianist. Unwilling to confront her bleak present reality, she plunges into a kind of nostalgia that not only blinds her to what’s going on in her life, but also isolates her from her family.
Edmund Tyrone
James and Mary’s youngest son. At twenty-three, Edmund has worked in the “tropics” as a sailor, but always seems to come back to his parents without any money. And although he is certainly his parents’ favorite child, they lament the fact that he has adopted the alcoholic, lazy ways his older brother, Jamie. Nonetheless, James and Mary are slow to critique Edmund these days because he sick. Although Mary insists that her son only has a “summer cold,” everyone else—including Edmund himself—acknowledges that what he has is clearly serious. Indeed, this is confirmed when Doctor Hardy informs James that Edmund has consumption and that he’ll have to go to a sanatorium. Despite this news, Edmund refuses to stop drinking. Instead of monitoring his health, he pours himself large glasses of whiskey with his father and brother (who both make a show of discouraging him, though they always relent and tell him that one more drink won’t hurt). This morbid resignation to a bleak fate aligns with how Edmund sees the world. After all, he writes depressing poetry and embraces the idea of loneliness. At the same time, his acceptance of isolation is more than mere pessimism, but rather a belief that loneliness is simply a fact of life that ought to be ushered in rather than ignored. Finally, it’s worth noting that Edmund is based on Eugene O’Neill himself.
Jamie Tyrone
James and Mary’s eldest son. Jamie is a thirty-three-year-old failed actor who spends the majority of his time drinking and living the raucous lifestyle on offer in New York’s Broadway theater scene. Like his father, he is a talented thespian, but he doesn’t have the discipline that James applied to his own craft. As such, he frequently returns to live with his parents, which is why he’s currently staying in their summer home. When Mary begins taking morphine again, Jamie is the first to know, and he immediately becomes pessimistic and harsh about the matter, wanting his family to acknowledge her relapse and recognize that she can’t be helped. Because of this, he often finds himself at odds with Edmund, who wants to believe their mother might find the willpower to stop using the drug. At the end of the play, Jamie offends Edmund by speaking badly about their mother, and Edmund punches him in the face. In response, he simply thanks his brother for knocking sense into him. He then warns Edmund—because he’s drunk enough to admit it—that he should be wary of him. Insisting that he loves his younger brother, he confesses that he thinks he purposefully brought him down to his own level by showing him the lifestyle of an alcoholic. This, it seems, most likely has to do with the fact that Mary blames Jamie for the death of Eugene, who died as a baby before Edmund was born. Not wanting to pale in comparison to Edmund, then, he has sabotaged the young man’s life (though it’s worth noting that this seems less like a confession and more like an internalization of his parents’ disapproval)
Cathleen
One of the Tyrones’ housekeepers. O’Neill describes Cathleen as an “Irish peasant” in her “early twenties.” When the Tyrone men leave Mary home alone in the third act, she offers Cathleen drinks out of James’s whiskey bottle, getting the young woman drunk so that she has someone to talk to while she waits for her family to return.
Eugene Tyrone
James and Mary’s second child, who died as a baby. Mary blames Eugene’s death partly on James and partly on Jamie. Indeed, she says she never would have left Jamie and Eugene with her mother if James hadn’t invited her to come on tour with him. If she hadn’t left, she maintains, Jamie wouldn’t have been allowed to go into Eugene’s room while he had measles. As such, the baby wouldn’t have contracted the disease, and would not have died as a result. It’s worth noting that O’Neill had a brother who died as a baby before he himself was born, and that this child’s name was Edmund. In Long Day’s Journey into Night, then, O’Neill has switched his name with his dead brother’s.
Mother Elizabeth
A nun in the convent Mary attended as a young girl. When Mary told Mother Elizabeth that she wanted to be a nun herself, Mother Elizabeth advised her to live a normal life for one year before committing herself to the church, just to make sure she truly wanted to embark upon a religious life. During this period, Mary met James, fell in love, and decided to not become a nun.
➢Minor Characters
Doctor Hardy
The doctor that diagnoses Edmund with consumption. Although James upholds that Hardy is a good and reliable doctor, the rest of the family believes that he is a “quack,” accusing James of skimping on Edmund’s medical care.
Captain Turner
A neighbor who stops to talk to James in the Tyrones’ yard.
McGuire
A man who periodically convinces James Tyrone to buy land from him, getting him drunk and convincing him that he’s giving him a good deal when, in reality, James doesn’t need more property.
➢Themes
Fatalism and Resignation
Because Long Day’s Journey into Night is a play about addiction and vice, O’Neill is interested in the ways in which his characters conceive of their own predicaments. Although most of the members of the Tyrone family effectively deny their shortcomings by refusing to acknowledge their substance abuse problems, they also seemingly accept their addictions in a morbid, fatalistic way. For instance, James Tyrone technically claims he isn’t an alcoholic, but he has no problem fully embracing the lifestyle of a boozer, spending the majority of his time in bars and the lion’s share of his money on liquor. Similarly, Mary gives herself over to an opiated existence, one in which “reality is but an appearance to be accepted and dismissed unfeelingly.” This mentality—which enables a person to “dismiss” reality—is problematic because it keeps one from grappling with and fully acknowledging his or her troubles. This, it seems, is the kind of thinking that enables people like James and Mary to indulge their addictions. As such, their acceptance of this lifestyle is unhealthy and self-defeating, and is ultimately better described as a pessimistic resignation to fate. Whereas a true acceptance or acknowledgement of vice might empower a person to change the way he or she lives, this bleak embrace of the worst-case scenario only makes it harder for a person to improve him- or herself. By emphasizing the deleterious effects of this kind of thinking, then, O’Neill effectively shows the audience that fatalistic resignation leads to disempowerment.
Even though James Tyrone argues against anyone who insinuates that he’s an alcoholic, he throws himself with reckless abandon into the lifestyle of a drunkard. Constantly looking for an excuse to drink, he pours himself glasses of whiskey throughout the day until he’s almost too drunk to play cards with Edmund at midnight. In other words, he gives himself over to living like a drunk even as he refuses to admit he’s an alcoholic. There is, he seems to think, nothing to be done about his drinking, so he simply drowns himself in more alcohol. This pessimistic approach to addiction also brings itself to bear on the way he conceives of his wife’s morphine habit. In a conversation with his sons about Mary’s addiction, he concludes, “But what’s the use of talk? We’ve lived with this before and now we must again. There’s no help for it.” This notion that there is “no help” for addiction is exactly the kind of attitude he himself apparently embraces when it comes to his drinking, considering that he continues to pour himself large glasses of whiskey even as Mary and his sons criticize him for being an alcoholic. Simply put, he has resigned himself to a bleak reality, one in which he can go on drinking because he believes there’s no remedy or alternative choice.
Mary, for her part, also welcomes the fatalistic idea that there is “no help for” her addiction. In fact, the very act of relapsing is in and of itself one of resignation, since Mary relents and gives herself over to her vice despite knowing that doing so will undo the hard work she’s done to get sober. When James pleads with her to stop, she says, “James! We’ve loved each other! We always will! Let’s remember only that, and not try to understand what we cannot understand, or help things that cannot be helped—the things life has done to us we cannot excuse or explain.” In this moment, she frames her addiction as something that no one can “understand” or “help.” She also suggests that “life has done” things to her and James that can’t be undone. In turn, she gives herself an excuse to live in a way that is blatantly self-destructive, portraying her situation as hopeless and unchangeable.
Like the rest of his family, Edmund also appears unwilling to take control of his addiction. However, he is perhaps the only member of the Tyrone clan who recognizes the harmful effects of resigning oneself to a bleak reality. In a conversation between James, Edmund, and Jamie about Mary’s relapse, James says, “I wish she hadn’t led me to hope this time. By God, I never will again!” This pessimistic outlook bothers Edmund, who replies, “That’s a rotten thing to say, Papa! Well, I’ll hope! She’s just started. It can’t have got a hold on her yet. She can still stop. I’m going to talk to her.” This is the hopeful perspective the rest of the Tyrones lack, a form of optimism that encourages Edmund to confront his mother rather than simply making a morbid kind of peace with the idea that she will succumb to her addiction. Rather than resigning himself to this dismal outcome, Edmund acknowledges that his mother is a morphine addict without plunging himself into helpless nihilism, and this is why he has the strength to try to help her.
However, everyone in Edmund’s life is so committed to their fatalistic outlooks that it’s unlikely he himself will ever be able to turn his optimistic proactiveness onto himself to address his own alcoholism. Indeed, in a conversation in which he criticizes his brother, his mother tells him, “[Jamie] can’t help being what the past has made him. Any more than your father can. Or you. Or I.” Under this interpretation, a person can do nothing to change him- or herself, and it is this idea that is responsible for Edmund’s inability to quit drinking. Indeed, he recognizes the danger of resigning oneself to fate, but he doesn’t have the power to face his own troubles. He has, it seems, internalized his family’s pessimistic worldview, rendering him incapable of improving himself. In turn, O’Neill illustrates how difficult it is to fight against apathy and resignation, especially when a person is surrounded by people who don’t believe in meaningful change.
Denial, Blame, and Guilt
In Long Day’s Journey into Night, O’Neill showcases how hard people will work to avoid confronting their guilt. This dynamic is most evident in the way Mary tries to keep her family from focusing on her addiction. First and foremost, she takes attention away from her morphine habit by staunchly denying that she is headed toward yet another relapse. However, her denial isn’t enough to placate her worried family members, and so she accuses them of distrusting her. This is a way of deflecting their suspicions by forcing them to pretend—along with her—that nothing is wrong. Of course, once they begrudgingly give her their trust, she relapses. Then, once she’s high, she continues to blame them for her own shortcomings, finding it even easier to avoid taking responsibility for her actions. In fact, after she’s taken morphine, she goes even further with her guilt-tripping,
ultimately accusing James—in a roundabout way—of driving her to addiction, and Jamie of killing her second-born son, who died of measles as a baby. In turn, O’Neill shows the audience the extravagant lengths people will go to in order to cope with their own sorrows without having to face their feelings of guilt and culpability—even if doing so means destroying their own familial relationships.
Because Mary has relapsed so many times, her family members pay close attention to her at the beginning of Long Day’s Journey into Night.
When Edmund notices her walking around the house at night, he fears she’s reverting to her old ways, recalling that she used to get up late and go into the guestroom to inject morphine. When he confronts her about this, though, she guilt-trips him for distrusting her. “For heaven’s sake,” she replies, “haven’t I often used the spare room as my bedroom? But I see what you thought. That was when—” Feeling remorseful, Edmund interrupts, saying, “I didn’t think anything!”
Nonetheless, Mary accuses him of distrusting her, bitterly adding that it would “serve [him] right if it was true” that she was using the drug again. “Mama! Don’t say that! That’s the way you talk when—” Edmund begins, but Mary cuts him off and says, “Stop suspecting me! Please, dear! You hurt me!” It’s worth noting here that Mary hasn’t actually started using morphine yet, but her nervous behavior is a clear indication that she is nearing another relapse. Nonetheless, she hasn’t broken down, suggesting that her intense response to Edmund is an attempt to convince herself that everything is still okay. Indeed, she wants to deny the possibility of a relapse, as if she isn’t already on the cusp of succumbing to her craving.
While it’s true that Mary wants to deny the possibility of yet another relapse, it’s also evident that something else is at play in her conversation with Edmund. When she says “you hurt me,” for example, the audience gets the uneasy feeling that she’s purposefully trying to manipulate him into feeling ashamed for even suggesting she might relapse. By doing this, she slyly convinces him to ignore his misgivings. Even though it’s logical for him to suspect her of relapsing, she makes it seem as if he’s being cruel, and this keeps him from following up on his suspicion. In this way, she uses blame as a way of enabling herself to do the very thing her family is afraid she’ll do: relapse.
Knowing his mother is worried about his own illness, Edmund tries to make her promise that—if he’s diagnosed with something serious—she won’t turn to drugs as a way of coping. “Of
course, I promise you. I give you my sacred word of honor!” Mary says. But then, with what O’Neill calls a “sad bitterness,” she adds, “But I suppose you’re remembering I’ve promised before on my word of honor.” Interestingly enough, Edmund vehemently denies this, saying, “No!” As such, he proves how successful Mary has been in guilt-tripping him into feeling bad about “suspecting” her. After all, Edmund surely has heard her “promise” on her “sacred word of honor” before, but he goes out of his way to make it seem like he’s not worried or suspicious. In keeping with this, when Mary says she’s going upstairs to lie down—something she used to say when she was using morphine—he gives her an “instinctive look of suspicion” before looking away “ashamed of himself” and going outside, thereby affording her a moment alone—an opportunity she takes advantage of by going upstairs and injecting morphine.
Once Mary finally relapses, she becomes less subtle about blaming her loved ones for her own hardships. In one argument, she blames her husband, James Tyrone, for turning Jamie, their eldest, into an alcoholic. “You brought him up to be a boozer. Since he first opened his eyes, he’s seen you drinking,” she says, failing to recognize that Jamie has also witnessed her own substance abuse. “When you have the poison in you, you want to blame everyone but yourself!” James replies. This is quite true, as made evident by what Mary says when discussing the death of her second-born child, Eugene, who died as a baby. Indeed, she says she should never have left the child alone with her mother, but that she did so because James invited her on the road (there is, it’s worth noting, an unspoken accusation even in this small detail). When she was gone, she upholds, Jamie went into Eugene’s room and infected him with measles—something Mary claims Jamie did on purpose. Of course, this is a ridiculous thing to say, but it indicates just how willing she is to blame her loved ones for her misfortune.
What’s more, she even manages to suggest that she never would have become addicted to morphine if James had hired a more expensive, knowledgeable doctor who—in the aftermath of Edmund’s complicated birth—would have known what to do to ease Mary’s pain without introducing her to morphine. As she spins this hypothetical scenario, the audience sees how determined she is to avoid taking responsibility for her own addiction. And though everyone in the Tyrone family denies their vices—the three men insisting they aren’t alcoholics even as they drown themselves in liquor—it’s clear Mary’s way of dealing with her problems is the most tragic, since she cruelly tries to manipulate her loved ones into shouldering the burden of her despair. In this way, O’Neill spotlights the ways in which using denial and blame to avoid guilt can ravage personal relationships.
Loneliness, Isolation, and Belonging
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Loneliness, Isolation, and Belonging
Theme Analysis
Themes and Colors Fatalism and Resignation Theme Icon Denial, Blame, and Guilt Theme Icon Loneliness, Isolation, and Belonging Theme Icon Love and Forgiveness Theme Icon The Past, Nostalgia, and Regret Theme Icon
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Long Day’s Journey into Night, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Loneliness, Isolation, and Belonging Theme Icon
A sense of loneliness pervades Long Day’s Journey into Night. Despite the fact that the Tyrone family lives together and is constantly surrounded by servants, they are all on their own when it comes to dealing with their emotions. Mary, in particular, struggles with a feeling of isolation that makes her feel alone even when her husband and sons dote on her and try to make her happy. This, she claims, is because she has never had a true “home.” Instead, she’s spent her entire adult life traveling with James and staying in cheap hotels, a lifestyle that has made it impossible for her to forge meaningful relationships with people outside her family. Now that she actually has settled down into this summer home, though, she feels even more isolated from the world than before. Similarly, Edmund insists that he will “always be a stranger who never feels at home.” But the difference between him and his mother is that he’s willing to admit he’ll never feel like he belongs anywhere, whereas Mary insists upon disparaging her current situation in order to go on hoping that she might someday—in another context—rid herself of loneliness. Given that she appears unable to even hear or speak to her family members by the end of the play—a representation of how much she has isolated herself—it’s reasonable to argue that O’Neill condemns this kind of grass-is-always-greener mentality. By perpetually chasing a sense of belonging that doesn’t exist, Mary has only intensified her solitude. In turn, O’Neill intimates that loneliness is an inherently human condition that affects everyone, and that this ought to be accepted as a fact of life.
In the first act, O’Neill makes it clear that Mary has idealized the idea of leading a socially gratifying life. Indeed, she believes that having a home and friends might alleviate the sense of isolation she seems otherwise incapable of escaping. In a conversation with Edmund about their neighbors, she says, “People like them stand for something. I mean they have decent, presentable homes they don’t have to be ashamed of. They have friends who entertain them and whom they entertain. They’re not cut off from everyone.” At the beginning of this passage, it seems as if Mary is concerned first and foremost about her image, since she speaks enviously about her neighbors’ “presentable home.” However, she eventually points out that these acquaintances aren’t “cut off from everyone.” As such, she hints that she herself does feel “cut off” from the outside world. Of course, what she fails to take into account is that she is currently living in a home, which is what she has always wanted. Nonetheless, this fact is apparently incapable of soothing her sense of isolation—an indication that superficial matters like home ownership do nothing to banish a person’s loneliness.
Throughout the play, Mary goes on at length about wanting to settle down in a true home, saying things like, “In a real home one is never lonely.” She also laments the fact that she has never lived in a place long enough to make friends. “If there was only some […] woman friend I could talk to—not about anything serious, simply laugh and gossip and forget for a while—someone besides the servants,” she says. However, O’Neill insinuates that Mary doesn’t actually want these things. Indeed, Mary has romanticized the idea of domesticity. This is evident in her conversation with Edmund about their neighbors. After speaking jealously about the fact that these people aren’t “cut off from everyone,” she adds, “Not that I want anything to do with them. I’ve always hated this town and everyone in it.”
As such, it becomes clear that she’s not interested in actually living the lifestyle of a wealthy suburban woman, but that she has simply determined that this way of life might eradicate the loneliness she currently feels. She admits this much to Edmund at the end of their conversation about the neighbors, saying, “I know it’s useless to talk. But sometimes I feel so lonely.” This, it seems, is her chief concern: finding a way to get rid of her sense of solitude
Like his mother, Edmund feels lonely and isolated. However, he doesn’t believe—like she does—that he could ever get rid of this feeling. He reveals this in a drunken conversation with his father in the play’s final act, when he talks about the time he’s spent as a sailor. He talks about lying on the bowsprit one night and looking up at the starry sky as waves crashed beneath him, and he speaks adoringly about the freedom he felt in this moment, in which he was utterly alone and yet felt connected to the world. “I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it,” he says, “and for a moment I lost myself—actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred night! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, or Life itself!” By giving himself over to a feeling of complete solitude in the middle of the ocean, Edmund achieves something like transcendence. “As it is,” he says, “I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong
Having his loneliness, then, Edmund’s worldview is bleak, but it is this very mindset that enables him to access fleeting moments of joy and transcendence. Whereas Mary spends her time fantasizing about ways to feel a sense of belonging, Edmund embraces his feeling of isolation and, in doing so, manages to convert it into something worthwhile. This, O’Neill suggests, is the only way to approach loneliness, which is an inherently human condition that is impossible to avoid.
Love and Forgiveness
It’s easy to identify the strains of anger, hate, and resentment that run throughout Long Day’s Journey into Night, but readers and audience members often overlook the tenderness that the Tyrones have for one another. The characters can’t communicate effectively, fight constantly, and frequently accuse one another of malice, but they also always try to make amends. Indeed, their disputes are punctuated by sudden reversals, in which the family members take back the venomous things they’ve said or—at the very least—try to make up for their hurtful words by changing the subject. Of course, this relational dynamic is dysfunctional and seemingly untenable. And yet, no matter how intensely they insult each other—no matter how viciously they yell—they simply go on with their pattern of spite and forgiveness. In turn, the audience begins to sense that, although the Tyrone family is tragically flawed, there is almost nothing that can truly tear them apart. After all, they would have already parted ways for good if their relationships couldn’t survive the tensions that arise between them. In this way, O’Neill suggests that certain familial bonds can withstand even the most toxic environments, though it’s worth noting that he doesn’t indicate whether this resilience is for better or for worse.
Because they’re often drunk, the arguments between the Tyrone men are often exaggerated and aggressive. This is evident throughout the play, but the most notable dispute comes when Jamie and Edmund—both excessively drunk after a day of hard drinking—sit in the living room and talk about their mother’s addiction. When Jamie calls Mary a “hophead,” Edmund rears up in a protective fury. Wanting to defend his mother’s honor, he punches Jamie in the face. As the audience braces for an all-out brawl, though, the situation quickly diffuses itself. O’Neill’s stage direction reads as follows: “For a second Jamie reacts pugnaciously and half rises from his chair to do battle, but suddenly he seems to sober up to a shocked realization of what he has said and he sinks back limply.” In this moment, Jamie’s drunken scorn evaporates, leaving him ashamed and sad. He even thanks Edmund for hitting him, saying, “Thanks, Kid. I certainly had that coming. Don’t know what made me—booze talking—You know me, Kid.” In response, Edmund says, “I know you’d never say that unless—But God, Jamie, no matter how drunk you are, it’s no excuse!” After a pause, he adds, “I’m sorry I hit you.” What began as a heated argument on the cusp of intense physicality has now become nothing more than a passing incident about which both brothers feel sorry. The fact that they each apologize to each other—and seem to genuinely forgive each other—demonstrates not only how accustomed they are to getting into fights, but also that their bond enables them to overcome violent altercations.
The Tyrones are so used to getting into fights that they’ve learned how to avoid them. When, for instance, Mary goes on an inebriated rant in which she disparages Jamie, both Edmund and James tell her to be quiet, knowing that in her opiated state she’s liable to say things that will upset them. “Stop talking, Mama,” Edmund says, and James agrees, saying, “Yes, Mary, the less you say now—.” However, Edmund eventually gets sucked into what she’s saying, unable to resist responding to her upsetting notions. “Now, now, lad,” James interjects when Edmund begins to reply. “You know better than to pay attention.” Despite this wise counsel, though, even James finds himself enraged by what Mary has to say, and starts to respond only several moments later, at which point it’s Edmund’s turn to interject, saying, “Papa! You told me not to pay attention.” No matter what these family members do to avoid conflict, then, they are seemingly incapable of refraining from argument. By virtue of this, O’Neill shows the audience that fighting with loved ones is unavoidable, even when a family makes a concerted effort to sidestep drama.
Beneath the Tyrones’ animosity, there is a strong undercurrent of love and appreciation. This is how they find it in themselves to forgive one another after terrible fights. “I’m sorry if I sounded bitter, James,” Mary says after a particularly bad argument. “I’m not. It’s all so far away. But I did feel a little hurt when you wished you hadn’t come home. I was so relieved and happy when you came, and grateful to you.” When she says this to her husband, she reveals her affection for him. Following up on this, she asks if he remembers the day they first met. Tenderly and “deeply moved,” James replies, “Can you think I’d ever forget, Mary?” to which she says, “No. I know you still love me, James, in spite of everything.” Moving on, he says he will love her “always and forever.” This is why they never leave one another—they love each other “in spite of” the anger and tension that runs rampant throughout the family, touching not only them, but their sons, too. “I’ve loved you dearly,” Mary says, “and done the best I could—under the circumstances.”
The Past, Nostalgia, and Regret
In many ways, Long Day’s Journey into Night is a play about a family that can’t extricate itself from the past. The majority of the characters are obsessed with periods in their lives that have already ended. For Mary, this obsession manifests as a form of nostalgia, one in which she tries to escape her present reality, which is bleak and depressing. Unfortunately, though, her drugged-out reveries of living her past life only make her feel like she has taken the wrong path. Indeed, she fondly remembers her days as a girl, when she lived in a convent and planned to be a nun or a concert pianist. Similarly, James waxes poetic about his past, and although he did ostensibly lead the life he always thought he wanted, he eventually realizes that he focused on the wrong things by sacrificing his passion for art in favor of a commercially successful acting career. As such, both Mary and her husband wallow in regret, wishing they could turn back time and change the way they lived. And though this is impossible, they waste away the present by mourning the past. In fact, at the end of the play, Mary even tries to pretend she’s a girl in the convent again, but this is only a disturbed, inebriated fantasy. In this manner, O’Neill spotlights the futility of dwelling on the past, making it clear that focusing on nostalgia and regret do nothing to help a person attain happiness.
Part of the reason Mary finds herself unable to stop thinking about the past has to do with how she views personal history. Rather than seeing life as constantly changing, she believes a person’s past dictates the rest of his or her existence. As such, she’s unable to ignore her own history. This becomes clear in a conversation she has with James, in which he urges her to “forget the past.” “Why?” she asks. “How can I? The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won’t let us.” When Mary says that “life won’t let” her wriggle out of the past, she commits herself to the idea that she’s locked into a certain way of being. Under this interpretation, what has already happened in her life not only determines the nature of her “present” experience, but also dictates her “future.” As a result, she has no reason to stop thinking about the past. In fact, this mentality only further encourages her to disregard her current life, ultimately inspiring her to spend all her mental energy thinking about that which has already happened.
The nostalgia Mary has for the past turns easily into regret, since she laments the fact that she has lost touch with her old life. Before she met James, she explains at several different moments throughout the play, she was an “innocent” young girl living in a convent, studying to be a nun, and practicing to become a concert pianist. Once she met James, however, she became smitten with him and quickly left behind her old ambitions. Instead of entering the church or pursuing a career as a musician, she decided to travel with him as he went around the country as a famous actor. And although she seems to have thoroughly enjoyed this at first, now she can only focus on what she gave up to live this life. “You’re a sentimental fool,” she mutters to herself at one point after she has told Cathleen—the servant—about how delightful it was when she first met James. “What is so wonderful about that first meeting between a silly romantic schoolgirl and a matinee idol? You were much happier before you knew he existed, in the Convent when you used to pray to the Blessed Virgin.” It’s worth noting here that, though Mary is discounting the notion that her first encounter with James was “wonderful,” she is doing so in order to further exalt her past. After all, she says that she was “much happier before” she met him, thereby using her “sentimental” story about James as a way of romanticizing her convent days to an even greater extent. Needless to say, this does not help her make the best of her current situation.
Mary isn’t the only family member to spend the majority of her time thinking fondly about the past, since James also has a tendency to glorify his days as a famous actor. In a conversation with Edmund, he rehashes the finest moment of his career, when a legendary actor praised his portrayal of Shakespeare’s Othello. “As I look back on it now,” he says, “that night was the high spot of my career.” However, he has already prefaced this story by saying that he’s tired of “fake pride and pretense,” admitting that this play—though it was the “high spot of [his] career”—ruined him because it brought him too much fame and attention. Instead of following his heart and pursuing interesting roles, he tells Edmund, he started chasing commercial success. Depressed after recounting this story, he says, “I’d gladly face not having an acre of land to call my own, nor a penny in the bank—I’d be willing to have no home but the poorhouse in my old age if I could look back now on having been the fine artist I might have been.” When he says this, it becomes evident that—as is the case with Mary—James’s nostalgia easily turns into regret, for there’s nothing he can do to change the past, and yet, he can’t help but retell the stories of his halcyon days.
At the end of Long Day’s Journey into Night, Mary comes downstairs holding her wedding dress and starts saying in a confused, opiated way that she’s going to be a nun. In this moment, the audience sees that she has plunged herself into a disturbed reenactment of her own personal history by pretending to be a younger version of herself. In doing so, she proves how thoroughly entrenched she is in the past. This only emphasizes the tragedy of her and James’s obsession with their personal histories. Unhappy with their current existences, they waste their days reliving experiences that are long gone. In this way, O’Neill uses Mary’s sad attempt to reenter the past to symbolize the pointlessness of indulging nostalgia, suggesting that the only thing a person can do to alleviate regret is to simply move on with life.
➢Long Day’s Journey into Night Symbols
The Fog
Throughout Long Day’s Journey into Night, fog both troubles and soothes Mary, who sees it as something that ushers in isolation and loneliness. At the beginning of the play, she suggests that she’s troubled by the thick fog that enshrouds the Tyrones’ summer home each night, especially since the foghorn keeps her awake and rattles her nerves. However, her relationship with fog isn’t quite so simple. Indeed, although O’Neill uses the onset of fog to foreshadow Mary’s relapse, Mary herself claims at one point that the fog itself doesn’t bother her. “It’s the foghorn I hate,” she says. “It won’t let you alone. It keeps reminding you, and warning you, and calling you back.” This suggests that what Mary actually dislikes has nothing to do with the sound of the horn, but rather the fact that it “remind[s]” her that she can’t simply slip into the pure solitude of the fog, which is what she would really like to do. Indeed, fog is something that creeps between people and makes it impossible for them to see each other—something that appeals to Mary because she’d like to isolate herself from her present reality, thereby enabling herself to indulge her drug addiction without having to endure the scrutiny of her disappointed family. In this way, O’Neill uses the fog as a representation of the ways in which isolation and separation manifest themselves within personal relationships.
Mary’s Wedding Dress
Because of how much she covets it, Mary’s wedding dress comes to stand for her own desperate attempt to reconnect with her past. In an opiated rant about her wedding, she fondly remembers how picky she was in the process of choosing her gown, saying, “It was never quite good enough.” After describing the dress at length, she suddenly wonders where it is, saying, “Where is it now, I wonder? I used to take it out from time to time when I was lonely, but it always made me cry.” As such, it’s clear that this particular article of clothing is fraught with meaning and symbolic of the fact that Mary will never again be able to relive her past, which she has romanticized as a way of taking her mind off her bleak current circumstances. In the play’s final scene, she appears holding the dress, which is draped over one arm and dragging along the floor as she advances into the room and talks about her life as a young girl in the convent. The fact that she focuses in this moment not on the dress itself but on the life she led before she got married suggests that finding the gown has done nothing to help her revitalize her past. As a result, she has gone back even farther in time and trying to relive her years in the convent. In turn, the dress comes to signify the futility of romanticizing the past.
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