Long Days Journey Into Night

 THINKING ACTIVITY: LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

Long Day's Journey into Night is a play in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939–41, first published posthumously in 1956. The play is widely considered to be his magnum opus and one of the finest American plays of the 20th century. It premiered in Sweden in February 1956 and then opened on Broadway in November 1956, winning the Tony Award for Best Play.

O'Neill posthumously received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Long Day's Journey into Night. The work concerns the Tyrone family, consisting of parents James and Mary and their sons Edmund and Jamie. The "Long Day" refers to the setting of the play, which takes place during one day. The play is autobiographical.

The play takes place on a single day in August 1912, from around 8:30 a.m. to midnight. The setting is the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrones, Monte Cristo Cottage. The four main characters are the semi-autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his older brother, and their parents.

Characters:

James Tyrone

Mary Tyrone

Mary Tyrone

Edmund Tyrone

Jamie Tyrone

Cathleen

Eugene Tyrone

Mother Elizabeth

Minor Characters:

Doc Hardy

Captain Turner

McGuire

The Play, Long Day's Journey Into Night is about the guilt and sorrow of major characters namely the Tyrone family but that is Mostly James and Mary Tyrone.

There is a relentless logic in the fact that Eugene O'Neill, America's greatest tragic playwright, ended his career with the writing of a starkly autobiographical play. “Long Day's Journey Into Night” is the story of the four O'Neills—called the Tyrones in the play—at a moment of anguished crisis in the summer of 1912. The play's names and events are, so thinly disguised that there is no disputing the literal nature of its revelations. Like James and Mary Tyrone of “Long Day's Journey,” James and Ella O'Neill fought an endless, losing battle to adjust to each other's totally dissimilar natures.

At the time in which “Long Day's Journey Into Night” is set, James and Ella had settled fatalistically for the cycle of love‐hate, guilt and forgiveness, depicted in the play.

While “Long Day's Journey” is the final, naked revelation of O'Neill's “truth” about his family, it is by no means O'Neill's only significantly autobiographical play.

But it was not until the publication of the play in 1956, three years after O'Neill's death, and the recognition of its autobiographical content, that it became possible to discern how very autobiographical many of his earlier plays had been.

James and Mary Tyrone are shown to be at once deeply in love and irrevocably embattled; Mary dwells on the fact that she has, out of helpless passion, married beneath her. She indulges in self‐pitying monologues. She has tried to understand James's ambition, and his terror at being unable to rise to, and stay at, the top, but she cannot excuse the effect it has had on her. James cannot reach her through the fog of morphine into which she withdraws.

James, for his part, adores her but writhes under her withdrawal and contempt. Ella perceives herself as having been driven to addiction by James. He feels that her weakness has ruined his life. He has had to resign himself to caring for her as one would a child. Just like the mother and father in the play, Jim and Ella drive each other to the brink of madness, but they do not let go. In the end, Jim's hope of rising above the petty cruelties that life has imposed on him is crushed, and he resigns himself to being Ella's nurse.

We can say that these things which are connected to his past that as his family problems and his own experience are portrayed in the play.

Most of the characters are addicted in the play. 

What caused them to become addicted?

There are many reasons behind their addiction some of them are: Deception, Loneliness, guilt, moral corruption, and money.

Implicit in the responses to Mary’s drug addiction is the belief that addiction was an indication of a weak moral will. Public disclosure of her behaviour seems to be more threatening to the family than Jamie’s disgraceful drinking, gambling, and whoring. In honest moments, Tyrone recognizes that morphine is a poison and that Mary cannot control her need, but the moral stigma remains. Jamie’s moral descent, buffered by his affection for his brother and mother, is treated as less of a social embarrassment, even by Tyrone.

The Tyrone family is fragmented, and each of its members to some degree is alienated from the rest. The most obvious estrangement exists between Tyrone and Jamie, both of whom allow their bitterness to overwhelm whatever residual love and respect they have for each other. Jamie holds his father’s tightfistedness to blame for Mary’s addiction to morphine, while Tyrone cannot forgive what he sees as his son’s gutter-bound dissolution. The two are barely civil to each other, and knowing the recriminations their encounters habitually bring, they simply try to avoid each other, especially when drink has dissolved their masks of civility.

For Mary one of the reasons for the addiction is the death of her son Eugene and the guilt that she left him alone that's why he died.