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LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHTWritten by Eugene O’Neill
On a hot day in August 1912, we come upon the summer home of the Tyrone family. It is 6:30 in the morning, and we are introduced to the Tyrones themselves as is customary when beginning a play. All have just finished breakfast. First we see James Tyrone, head of the household. The aging Irishman is characterized by a great love for his wife and two boys and by a strong work ethic. His chief fault is his stinginess; he was abandoned at the age of ten and had to work incessantly from the onset of his teenage years. Mary Tyrone married James while still in her youth, and although she sometimes regrets marrying him and spoiling her dreams of becoming a nun or a concert pianist, she also cares for her family immensely. Their sons Jamie and Edmund are in their early thirties and twenties, respectively. Both drink like fish, just as their father does, squandering their money on liquor and women although Edmund works harder. He is more of a dreamer, while Jamie is a cynic. There is an underlying tension right from the beginning of the play, indicated by the speech and mannerisms of the characters. For example, James tends to comfort Mary unceasingly, and Mary’s hands show her extreme nervousness as she twists and wrings them, never keeping them still even for a moment. It isn’t long before James and Jamie break into a fight, the father dissatisfied with the son’s laziness and the son bitter towards the father for his lack of love shown.
O’Neill paints a vivid picture of a dysfunctional family right from the start, and throughout the entire play the sum of their problems is totaled in a single day. It seems that Edmund has a persistent hacking cough, which they are informed is tuberculosis. He will have to enter a sanatorium, and although this is objectionable to all, it is his life on the line. Edmund and James fight about the cost of the place, while Mary refuses to acknowledge the disease at all, as her father died of TB as well and that is the last thing she wants to dredge up from her past. However, there is a lot more that Mary is denying as well. We see evidence of her morphine addiction right off the bat, and those who know dope fiends will see the signs first. The story unveils that she had been previously addicted and then gone through rehabilitation, and all three men are still nervous but supportive of her condition. She sneaks the drugs throughout the day, slipping farther and farther away into her dreams and into her past, pupils big as saucers, arguing and stumbling around more painfully as the day goes on. At the end of the day, Mary is like a ghost, while the three men are nearly passed out from alcohol consumption. In fact, the lines and themes of the play itself repeat throughout, reflecting the cycles of an alcoholic. This is no unusual day in the Tyrone home; the family continually experiences obvious pain and deep suffering along with a hidden filial love. Yet the family is not altogether lost. There are values that they cling to which are of good merit in any Western family. For instance, we see a great sense of aesthetics and a classical education from the scene description—Books lie all over the house, and far more of those than bottles of whiskey. James was an actor, and a successful one; his boys have amounted to less, but they are educated all the same.
Partly autobiographical, stemming primarily from Edmund’s character, Long Day’s Journey into Night was meant by O’Neill to show the world what his family life was like. Although the work was published posthumously, at his request, it was not simply because his childhood and early adulthood shamed him. O’Neill also meant for the play to show how much love and forgiving can be found in the circle of the most disintegrated family bonds. The play is tragic and a bit depressing, although hope can be found even in the most flagrant flaws in each character and in the situation and dialogue as well. This hope is what makes me realize what a great work O’Neill has left for Christian readers. Throughout all the struggles in life, even ones as close to home as immediate family, love abounds. Although it doesn’t truly flourish, it is this love and caring that keeps the family together as a family should be. Mary and James share an Irish Catholic upbringing that keeps them firmly bonded, and they are both pious in their own fashion. Mary turned from her near-vocation as a nun, and she sometimes rejects it but also accepts God’s will in her family vocation, for she truly loves James. He, throughout the play, prays and lets out those little Irish exclamations wherein he praises the Lord or otherwise references God. The Tyrone house is truly a home, even if it is only a summer home, and it is a house of God as well. One might say that only love and God’s grace keeps the family together; sadly, this is often the case not only in America but all over the world as well. O’Neill’s work is well-written, a classic American drama, which lifts the common dysfunctional family out of its stereotypical cursed view and giving hope to those out there who still have love and want to press on in the face of growing suffering. Long Day’s Journey into Night reminds us that we are all at the bottom of a dark chasm—it’s just that some of us are looking up at the stars. We turn our eyes towards God and he gives us hope.
- Tina Hegg
September 2002
September 2002
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