Nicole Abinajem
20 September 2008
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Many writers subtly reveal experiences they have encountered throughout their lifetime by paralleling experiences of the characters in their work with their own life. Throughout Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the Tyrone family members mirror O’Neill’s own family and their issues; many of the situations amongst the Tyrones are nearly identical to O’Neill’s life. The feelings and thoughts about life that the characters portray reflect O’Neill’s own outlook, implying that O’Neill is a concealed narrator and the play is actually a biographical work. Because of the fact that the implied viewpoint of life in the play is O’Neill’s own, he wrote the play later in his life after he had much time to reflect on the problems within his family and how they aided in molding his “tragic sense of life” in which everyone is doomed to suffering (Contemporary Authors Online). “’None of us can help the things life has done to us," noted Tyrone. "They're done before you realize it, and . . . they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever’" (O’Neill). Eugene O’Neill utilizes parallelism between his family and the Tyrone family to express his own pain and beliefs on living.
Perhaps the most obvious link between the characters in the play and O’Neill’s family is his choice of names. Mary Tyrone is addicted to morphine and seems stuck in a state of nostalgia in which she has many regrets. For example, she regrets marrying James because it kept her from her dreams of being a nun and a concert pianist. Mary Quinlan, O’Neill’s mother was raised in Catholic convent schools and also became addicted to morphine after recovering from Eugene’s birth; O’Neill didn’t learn of her addiction until his teen years (Contemporary Authors Online). James Tyrone is an actor with no artistic integrity and is ridiculously cheap; a fact that torments the rest of his family. O’Neill’s father, James, is an actor as well and was obsessed with financial security. As a result of his obsession, the family was forced to travel on tour with him due to his role in The Count of Monte Cristo (Contemporary Authors Online). O’Neill and his family lived in and out of different hotel rooms; the closest thing they had to a home was their summer house in New England, Connecticut (Contemporary Authors Online). This frankly parallels the transient lifestyle of the Tyrone family as they lived in and out of hotel rooms as well and in their summer house, which did not have the feeling of a home at all, simply a house, exactly like O’Neill’s living situation. The villain of the play, Jamie Tyrone, is a careless alcoholic and finds affection only at brothels. Jamie, the older brother of O’Neill, was irresponsible due to pampering from his parents, picked up the bad vice of drinking, and could only accept “love” from prostitutes (Contemporary Authors Online).
While these connections between the characters in the play and O’Neill’s own family that are utilized to display the pain and disappointment O’Neill felt about their predicaments are blatant, O’Neill veils himself under a different name in the play; Edmund, the name of his brother who died in early life. In the play, Edmund Tyrone is the only one who truly ponders his existence and the meaning of it. "It was a great mistake my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish," Edmund says. "As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home . . . who must always be a little in love with death” (O’Neill). O’Neill himself was a sailor for a period of time and took a great liking to the sea. He admired its vastness and its ability to give him a sense of rising above his existence (Contemporary Authors Online). The perspective Edmund Tyrone has on life in which people are constantly teased by dreams they cannot accomplish and that the only peace one will experience will be in death is a hidden expression of O’Neill’s own ideas on life.
The autobiographical elements in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night are cleverly placed throughout the play in order to give the reader a glimpse inside the genius mind of O’Neill as a writer, and as a human being that was coming to terms with tormenting events in his life. The reader can easily relate to the common feelings of internal pain and despair portrayed throughout the play. Although O’Neill’s family problems impacted him very harshly and left him with a hopeless outlook on life, he came to accept and forgive them; that led him to become the great writer he was (Contemporary Authors Online). The reader is left with a greater understanding of these events and how they transformed O’Neill into the person he became. The play is evidence of his recognition of all of the events of his life and how they, through much suffering, directed him towards writing unforgettable works for which he will be remembered forever.
Works Cited
Contemporary Authors Online, ed. "Eugene (Gladstone) O'Neill." 21 Sept. 2004. Gale. 17 Sept. 2008.
O'Neill, Eugene. Long Day's Journey Into Night. New York, NY: Yale Nota Bene, 2002. 1-179.
