NAME : Mahida Bhumika Prakashbhai
M A Sem - 2
ROLL NUMBER : 4
ENROLLMENT NUMBER :3069206420200021
SUBJECT : Paper 108: The American Literature
ASSIGNMENT TOPIC : "Long Day's Journey Into Night" As A Psychological Play
Introduction:
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.
O'Neill's plays were among the first to include speeches in American English vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society. They struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. Of his very few comedies, only one is well-known . Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.
Long Day's Journey into Night
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.
Edmund and Jamie are heard laughing in the next room, and Tyrone immediately grows bitter, assuming they are making jokes about him. Edmund and Jamie enter, and we see that, even though he is just 23 years old, Edmund is "plainly in bad health" and nervous. Upon entering, Jamie begins to stare at his mother, thinking that she is looking much better. The conversation turns spiteful, however, when the sons begin to make fun of Tyrone's loud snoring, a subject about which he is sensitive, driving him to anger. Edmund tells him to calm down, leading to an argument between the two. Tyrone then turns on Jamie, attacking him for his lack of ambition and laziness. To calm things down, Edmund tells a funny story about a tenant named Shaughnessy on the Tyrone family land in Ireland, where the family's origins lie. Tyrone is not amused by the anecdote, however, because he could be the subject of a lawsuit related to ownership of the land. He attacks Edmund again, calling his comments socialist. Edmund gets upsets and exits in a fit of coughing. Jamie points out that Edmund is really sick, a comment which Tyrone responds to with a "shut up" look, as though trying to prevent Mary from finding out something. Mary tells them that, despite what any doctor may say, she believes that Edmund has nothing more than a bad cold. Mary has a deep distrust for doctors. Tyrone and Jamie begin to stare at her again, making her self-conscious. Mary reflects on her faded beauty, recognizing that she is in the stages of decline.
As Mary exits, Tyrone chastises Jamie for suggesting that Edmund really may be ill in front of Mary, who is not supposed to worry during her recovery from her addiction to morphine. Jamie and Tyrone both suspect that Edmund has consumption, and Jamie thinks it unwise to allow Mary to keep fooling herself. Jamie and Tyrone argue over Edmund's doctor, Doc Hardy, who charges very little for his services. Jamie accuses Tyrone of getting the cheapest doctor, without regard to quality, simply because he is a penny-pincher. Tyrone retorts that Jamie always thinks the worst of everyone, and that Jamie does not understand the value of a dollar because he has always been able to take comfortable living for granted. Tyrone, by contrast, had to work his own way up from the streets. Jamie only squanders loads of money on whores and liquor in town. Jamie argues back that Tyrone squanders money on real estate speculation, although Tyrone points out that most of his holdings are mortgaged. Tyrone accuses Jamie of laziness and criticizes his failure to succeed at anything. Jamie was expelled from several colleges in his younger years, and he never shows any gratitude towards his father; Tyrone thinks that he is a bad influence on Edmund. Jamie counters that he has always tried to teach Edmund to lead a life different from that which Jamie leads.
In the last scene Midnight, that night. Edmund comes home to find his father playing solitaire. The two have the normal quota of fights and drinking, but they also manage to have an intimate, tender conversation. Tyrone explains his stinginess, and he also reveals to Edmund that he ruined his career by staying in an acting job for money. After so many years playing the same part, he lost the talent he'd once had. Edmund understands his father now better than he ever has. He talks to his father about his days sailing, and talks indirectly about his hopes to be a great writer. They hear Jamie coming home drunk, and Tyrone leaves to avoid fighting. Jamie and Edmund have their own conversation, and Jamie confesses something: although he loves Edmund more than anyone else in the world, he wants Edmund to fail. And he'll try to make Edmund fail. Then Jamie passes out, dead drunk. When Tyrone returns, he wakes up, and then they start to fight again. Mary comes downstairs, by now so doped up she can barely recognize them. She is carrying her wedding gown, lost completely in her past. The men watch in horror. She does not even know they are there.
as a psychological play
As mentioned earlier in section I of this thesis, the situation set in this
play is that a husband and wife are from different social classes and backgrounds. They were born and raised in a completely different world
as evident from the conversation of the couple. It may sound like an ordinary husband and wife dialogue but their attitudes toward each other reflect their social layers. When viewed from the hierarchical layers, the husband’s kind words of considerations towards his wife is expressed in
his words, however, on the contrary, his wife quite frankly and openly
speaks what and how she feels directly to him. Her attitude towards him
is always from top to down.
As Tyrone pleads Mary to forget the past, she argues that past is
already happened and cannot be changed. She tries to be her true self,
once spotlighted and shined on the stage, by tracing back her past.
However, the reminiscence of the past entails the cursed history of her life. In order to sustain the life in the real world, morphine was the only remedy she had. It was the magic powder that created her virtual reality, which is very similar to the pipe dreams of the characters in Iceman Cometh, who live in the world of pipe dreams, they created. They see the delusional self in the virtual world which became the elixir of their lives.
The past is activated in her mind and gives a smile of a high school
student at the Catholic school . When she talking on her past, she seems to be stable and relaxed, however, when she is in
the real world, she is irritated and disapproves her sons and her
husband. Her anxiety and complaints against other family members
intensify.
In Act Three, there is a scene where she starts to insults the family
background of her husband, “His people were the most ignorant kind of poverty-stricken Irish.” He stands without knowing what to do, while
controlling his anger. An aging and worn out, the old man looks defeated
and tired.
In the final Act, the husband and the two sons just stand vacantly to watch the insanity of Mary. She appears with her wedding gown trailing. She looks around but she seems to be in a different world and walks like a sleep walker, passes at the back of the chair Jamie sits and behind
Edmund .
In the play, his behaviors and attitudes show that he inherits many of
his father’s attributes. Tyrone complains about his first son to Edmund
that Jamie’s ambition is just alcohol and women.
Jamie is a pain in the neck to the family but his concerns for his
mother is stronger than Edmund. From his lines, “Where’s the hophead?” we know that his shock of knowing his mother’s drug addiction is immense. He does know how to express himself and he directs his shock against Tyrone and Edmund. However, deep inside his psyche, his affection towards his mother and brother is deeper than anyone else. Deeper the love towards Mary, the shock of her addiction is
unbearable. However, Jamie always turns against his father, conflict appears on the
stage from the beginning to end. He only reveals his true mind at the
final scene, same as his father.
All the men in Journey try to understand each other by disclosing
their true feelings. On the contrary, Mary never tells her deep hidden
nature to other family members. She indulges herself into the realm of
her past.
In Act four, Tyrone and Edmund confronts each other, face-to-face.
Edmund blames his father for his obsession of money that caused
Mar y’s morphine addiction. This may be interpreted as Edmund’s
rebellion against the Irish bloodline. Tyrone’s hardships and adversity
are never understood by his son, but the situation change when he
shares his childhood experience they are more connected to each other
than ever, which makes Edmund comfortable to talk on his memory.
O’Neill valued the Irish family origin as evident from this letter.
Edmund attempts to harmonize with Irish which signifies the evolution of his identity. It is the fusion between Irish ethnicity and American
society.
Conclusion :
in Journey,O’Neill placed the complex social class layer at the basement of
the story and tried to show the inner structure of the deep psychology of the characters. The clarification of social layer was in fact the long
journey to trace back the history of O’Neill himself. At the same time, it
was the history that created the great playwright Eugene O’Neill. The self-denial
and self contradiction are repeatedly happening in each of the family. The
diversified Irish identity is expressed through the characters. Mary’s
pain, Tyrone’s regrets, Jamie’s debauchery and Edmund’s personality, all
relates to the social class layer.
References:
Characters
12153
Words
2078
Sentences
179
Paragraphs
92
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