Long day's journey into night

Hello everyone,

So, Today i write blog on 'Long day's journey into night' is a play by Eugene O'Neill as part of thinking activity from our syllabus given by Ma'am. 

So first i would like to give brief information about Eugene O'Neill.

Eugune O'Neil

Full name of Eugene O'Neill is  Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into the U.S. the drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. The tragedy Long Day's Journey into Night is often numbered on the short list of the finest U.S. plays in the 20th century.

foremost American dramatist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. His masterpiece, Long Day’s Journey into Night is at the apex of a long string of great plays including the,

1)Horizon (1920)

2) Anna Christie (1922)

3) Strange Interlude (1928)

4)Ah! Wilderness (1933)

5)The Iceman Cometh (1946)

Long day's journey into night :- 

After death O’Neill  received the award for his best known and most often produced work, 'Long Day’s Journey into Night'. It was published five years after his death and had its world premiere at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. The autobiographical play describes the dysfunctional Tyrone family grappling with addiction problems.

The whole play is in four act and four characters actually five but major characters are four. The play is all about Tyrone family and their life Style, mental condition, circumstances , facing of realities and relations with eachother.

The four main characters are the semi-autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his older brother, and their parents.

Character's name :-

1) Mary Tyrone (Mother)

2) James Tyrone (Father)

3) Jamie Tyrone (Elder son)

4) Edmund Tyrone (younger son)

5) Cathleen (maid)

As per title 'Long day's journey into night' the whole play is journey of family member's single day which end into night.

The play is dealing with many such themes like :-

1)Alienation and Loneliness

2)Lies and Deception

3) The Destructive power of Addiction

4) Guilt and innocence

5) Search for self

6) Fate and free will

7) The haunting presence of past 

8) Wealth and poverty

Theme of Addiction :-

 In Long Day's Journey Into Night, the Tyrone family's past and present have been so dire that normal coping mechanisms family love, togetherness, can't keep up. So what do they turn to for relief? Alcohol and drugs. These forms of retreat might numb the pain, but they also bring their own problems -  Mary's constant zoning out and Jamie's inability to hold down a job, to name two examples. There's also a vicious cycle involved in all of this: Mary takes drugs and the Tyrone men drink to escape, but they also feel bad about doing so but they ain't able to face reality and for that they have to do addiction and it's became one of the major issue for them to handle eachother.

First of all, Mary The wife of Tyrone and mother of Jamie and Edmund, she struggles from a morphine addiction that has lasted over two decades. While she has broken the addiction several times, she always resumes her morphine use after spending more time with her family. She is on morphine in each scene of the play, and her use increases steadily as the day wears on. Although she loves Tyrone, she oftentimes regrets marrying him because of the dreams she had to sacrifice of becoming a nun or a concert pianist. 

Whenever she came out from her room she takes morphine and in the last scene she take it overdose that's why she wears a bride dress and told what she want do when she was young.

Character of James - 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.

Hear Jamie - Elder son,  approaching the house, Tyrone steps into the next room. Jamie enters, drunk and slurring his speech. He drinks more so he can't stand properly. Jamie complains about Tyrone briefly, then learns of his agreement with Edmund. Jamie says that he spent the evening at the whorehouse, where he paid for a fat whore whom no one else was willing to take. He is not only alcoholic but also womanizer and at end of the play he took one girl with him who love him , praise him. Edmund attacks Jamie with a punch when Jamie begins praising himself and berating others. Jamie thanks him suddenly for straightening him out, he has been messed up by problems related to Mary's addiction. He and Edmund both begin to cry as they think about their mother. Jamie is also worried about Edmund, who may die from consumption. Jamie says that he loves Edmund, and that in a sense he made him what he is at present and he never allow him to achieve because he never want to lose him. 

Edmund also take alcohol occasionally, so every character was alcoholic in one or another way and reason behind this is that they can not tolerate each other they are constantly fighting and blaming eachother for their situation and whatever happened in past. 

To know more about the play Click here