Background
Long Day's Journey into Night relates the early story in the life of Eugene Gladstone O'Neill, its playwright. O'Neill's father, James O'Neill, was a succesful actor in the 19th century whose most famous role was the Count of Monte Cristo in a stage adaptation of Alexandre Dumas novel. Ella, his mother, accompanied her husband across the country. Eugene was born in a hotel, and spent his childhood in hotels and in the backstage. He had the theatre in his blood. He recibed the Irish catholicism of his father and the mystic piety of his mother, what he would reflect into his plays. He spent his summer in a modest family home next to the Thames River in New London, Conn. He attended Princeton university for one year. Afterwards, he shipped to sea and lived in Buenos Aires, Liverpool, New York City. At this time, he was an alcoholic and attempted suicide. He recovered and worked in a newspaper as a reporter and contributor to the poetry column. After this, he came down with tuberculosis or consumption. Most of these autobiographical events are reflected in the play, we will analyze them in a further analysis.
Two historical periods must be taken into account in Long Day's Journey into Night. It was written between 1939 and 1941, but it is set in 1912, which was a critical period in the author�s life because he broke his marriage to Kathleen Jenkins, he was ill with tuberculosis and attempted suicide. All these facts are parallel to the character who represents the author in the play, Edmund Tyrone.
Eugene O'Neill had finished the play in 1941 and it was produced in 1956, three years after his death. From the very beginning, O'Neill didn�t want it to be produced after twenty-five years after he died, because Long Day's Journey into Night tells the true story of his family and its secrets with a different name, instead of being the O'Neill family they are the Tyrones. Edmund Tyrone as we have said before represents O'Neill, Jamie Tyrone Jr is James O'Neill (son), James Tyrone is James O'Neill and Mary Tyrone is Ella O'Neill. O'Neill gave verbal permission to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Sweeden to stage it in Stockholm. The Stockholm production was very successful. Nine months later the play was in Helen Hayes Theatre in New York.
Carlotta O'Neill, the author's widow, wanted the play published in 1955. It was published in Yale University Press. Long Day's Journey into Night gave Eugene O'Neill his fourth Pulitzer Prize. He also won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936. O'Neill is the only American playwright with this prize.
The play clearly represents the biography of Eugene O'Neill and his family which is embodied by the Tyrones. The historical events of this period are not presented on the Tyrone family dialogue. For instance, there is no mention to the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, or the Captain Scott expedition to the South Pole.
O'Neill focuses on the Tyrone problems. There are no historical allusions to events of the epoch. This fact creates a play's claustrophobic impact. It can be appreciated an awareness of the outside world by the Tyrones in their conciousness of living on the margins of respectability because of Tyrone's Irish Catholic heritage.
The Play
Long Day's Journey into Night is a sad, deep and nihilist story. It is almost perceptible from the tittle that the Tyrone family story is a journey into its secret and hidden matters. The play begins in the morning with the sun and the Tyrones in a good mood and ends in the night of the same day with the nasty reality of the Tyrones' inner problems.
In the morning of this day James Tyrone shows an optimistic attitude towards his wife:
"I can't tell you the deep happiness it gives me, darling, to see you as you've been since you came back to us, your dear old self again" (Page 14)
From this sentence, we deduce that something does not work with her or something did happen with her in the past. After advancing with the play we will discover that Mary Tyrone (Ella O'Neill) is a morphine addict and from the beginning of the play James thinks this drug wouldn't be an obstacle any more with his wife. He is mistaken.
Mary (Ella) is a very insecure woman. She is not conscious of herself. For instance, when any of her sons looks at her to analyze her, she realizes of the stare but she asks if it is because of her hair. She thinks they must be observing something from outside because she is not able to look at herself inside. She clearly has an inner conflict and difficulties to accept her own person.
On the other hand, her sons are really worried about her, and so is her husband. But Mary is not the only one with difficulties inwards. As the play develops we see that the father relationship with his sons is not as adecuate as it could be. James Tyrone (James O'Neill) has problems to accept his son Jamie (James O'Neill Jr), but his attitude is relaxed towards his younger son Edmund. James has problems to accept Jamie, and we are conscious that Jamie is extremely similar to him. James Tyrone was an actor, and so is Jamie. There are similarities in their physical appeareance and even in their addiction, both of them drink whiskey. James Tyrone cannot tolerate himself. As a consequence, he cannot approve someone who looks like so similar to him.
"Jamie, the elder, is thirty-three. He has his father's broad shouldered, deep-chested physique, is an inch taller and weighs less, but appears shorter and stouter because he lacks Tyrone's bearing and graceful carriage." (Page 16)
Jamie does not appreciate himself neither. He is always sneering. He is thirty- three and he doesn't still have independence from his parents. Jamie hates and censures his father, he loves his mother and feels envy towards his brother. Mary's attention is for Edmund, that's why we feel Jamie as the outsider of the family.
Edmund Tyrone (Eugene O'Neill) is the artist of the family, the scholar, the protected one by her mother and father. Edmund does also drink, but it is not so openly showed in the play. He adores his mother. When Mary Tyrone is attacked by someone we will always find Edmund as the protector of her.
Jamie and Edmund get on well. At the end of the play, we discover that Jamie is jealous of Edmund. He would like to have Edmund's ability to write, and Edmund's respect of their parents. Jamie, totally drunk, confesses:
"I have been rotten influence. And worst of it is, I did it on purpose. [...] Wanted you to fail. Always jealous of you [...] Mama�s baby, Papa�s pet [...] I love you more than I hate you [...] I hate myself. Got to take revenge. On everyone else. Especially you." (Page 146)
Jamie confesses he has been a bad influence on purpose to worse the nature of his brother with alcohol and women.
The play ends with Mary under the effect of morphene playing the piano, and Tyrone and his sons listening to it in the kitchen after a drink.
Conclusion
I consider the play has a nihilist ciclical structure. It begins in the same place that it ends: the kitchen of the summer place of the Tyrones. From my point of view it is nihilistic because it is circular. Nothing new has happened from the beginning until the end of the play. The play is an exposition of a family situation and they don't have any positive escape from it. That's why it ends where it begins.
I feel sorry about the Tyrones' (O'Neills') tragic story. They are their own victims. I think Edmund and Jamie impossibility to be free men is due to the excessive proximity to their mother. They suffer from Oedipus complex and Edmund in a deeper way because his mother is always attending him.
Appart from that, James Tyrone does not give a real importance to his wife. When she is crazy about morphine he goes out of the house and leaves her alone. I understand Mary, they don't take care of her so she needs a kind of consolation prize: morphine. They are in the same situation, they cannot mend their lives so their refuge is alcohol.
At the same time, we get the feeling that Edmund hasn't been painted as well as the rest of the family. Perhaps the author was trying to protect its image. It seems that O'Neill is telling us: there is no way to escape of my family, of what I am. There is no possibility to escape from this circle.
Publicado el 18/08/2008
Por Vanesa Reyes de Pablo
