Paradox

O’Neil uses paradoxes in Long Day’s Journey into the Night in order to represent the relationships between the members of the Tyrone family in an appropriate manner. The Tyrone’s do love each other, they are family after all. Although there is a screen held up between each member of the family. Jamie loves his brother Edmund more than he hates him, but Jamie forever attempts to suppress Edmund’s potential and happiness. When your own brother truly wants the worst for you, all hope has been lost. In addition, Mary Tyrone claims throughout the play that she loved her husband dearly, all while she despises James for apparently placing her in her present state. She feels as though her life would have been changed drastically if they had never met, but yet, she does love him dearly.

Setting

In O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey into the Night the Tyrone’s house is haunted by the family’s past and present state. As the fog covers the area surrounding the home, a murky mood is set as well. The lives of the family members are shadows of the past, while Eugene, Mary’s son, long since past, leaves an indelible mark on the Tyrone’s souls. Through Eugene, and the other unfortunate circumstances of their pasts, the Tyrone’s house is haunted, all while their shelter has no characteristics of a true home. Mary Tyrone, haunts the family framework, but is also haunted herself. Edmund, referring to Mary once stated, “She’ll be nothing but a ghost haunting past by this time, back before I was borne.” Mary haunts the halls of the house carrying her dead wedding dress as if it was a dead body. The house is a shaken and contorted being, controlled by the people within it, as these people are troubled beyond all comprehension.

Works Cited (Long Day's Journey into the Night)

1. Gassner, John. “Eugene O’Neil”. American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies Vol. 3. Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1974.

Mini Research Paper

Eugene O’Neil was a playwright who embodied and described realism, truth and the depths of the human condition. O’Neil himself is eerily present in his creation of Long Day’s Journey into the Night, especially through his ideology behind the main character known as Edmund Tyrone. Edmund, as the sickly youngest son in the play, and O’Neil, the like within his family, endure a similar lifestyle, but also show strong comparisons in traits and beliefs. Eugene O’Neil was a man who was not content with the world in which he lived. O’Neil stood by and watched his family crumble, and witnessed countless more destructive families end as his did throughout his life; before it started. “For the author himself, it was only a brief holiday from his most persistent memories, which were normally bleak, and from the contemporary world, about which he never felt particularly cheerful. That it represented only a vacation from a gloomy view of la condition humaine” (Gassner 11). In Long Day’s Journey into the Night, the life and times of O’Neil’s past manifest themselves into forms the title: day, journey, and night, creating a dark and hopeless view of the American family unit.
Days represent what is obvious in the life of Eugene O’Neil and within the play Long Day’s Journey into the Night. As the light from the son brightens the sky, seeing is easy in the day, and there is nowhere to hide faults and failures. O’Neil’s father was an actor, as was James Tyrone in the play. They are both described as “Penny pinchers”, and showed little regard for their family throughout their acting careers. Eugene was kicked out of college and went to Central America in search of gold. Edmund was also removed from his place of study, but instead of gold digging, he went out to the sea. Edmund describes multiple times how free and wonderful his experiences on his ship were, when there were no worries, only nature and his body. Novelty wore off quickly, and both returned to everyday life soon after. Both Eugene and Edmund were greatly affected by their fathers, and they would never fully recover from what they were put through.
As the journey through life rolls on a story is what forms from the past and is carried, whether true or altered into the uncertain future. Eugene O’Neil had an unlucky but fitting start to his journey. He was born in a hotel room, a place of which he would become quite familiar with as he traveled around with his father throughout his early years. “Usually,” O’Neil declared to a reporter in 1932, “A child has a regular, fixed home, but you might say I started as a trouper. I knew only actors and the stage. My mother nursed me in the wings and in dressing rooms” (Gassner 2). Edmund did the same in this play, and as a result, he never felt as if he had a home, or even knew what home was. Certainly that lifestyle is not suitable for a child, and both Edmund and Eugene miss something in their life through that experience, they are homeless. This is what leads them to go off and explore places such as the sea and Central America, they need something more. They needed to find a deeper meaning in life, or they would be left wit nothing.
The night and the darkness hides what people are unwilling to reveal. The darkness, like the fog in the play, represents a screen that no one wants to remove out of fear of the unknown. Eugene O’Neil’s mother had a drug addiction, as did Mary Tyrone. Both O’Neil and Edmund had alcoholic brothers as bad influences as well. These are things that both of these people unsuccessfully tried to shield from their lives, but the fact of the matter is, it consumed their lives. Darkness did not help, because at the end of the night, there was day, and amidst day, their journey was staring them in the face.
Eugene O’Neil implements his entire being into the play Long Day’s Journey into the Night. O’Neil’s life is fully represented through the work and specifically Edmund in content, ideology, and events. This makes for a very deep and full work that digs viciously into human emotions, and shows us a true American family.

Conflict Paragraph

In O’Neil’s Long Day’s Journey into the Night, James Tyrone and his son Jamie are in constant conflict throughout the play, and deal with the fact that they aren’t much different from each other. This is precisely the reason why they are at such uncontrollable odds; Jamie is truly his father’s son. All while Jamie accuses and blames his father for the gradual deterioration of there family, Jamie possesses the same qualities and characteristics his father does. James Tyrone was a poor Irish immigrant who is no stranger to rough times. Through growing up with very little money, he learned a great deal about the importance and scarcity of those precious pieces of paper. Throughout the play, James exhibits this idea as he sends his wife, Mary, to an awful sanatorium, leading to her ongoing addiction to morphine. He purchases undesirable land that will do nothing positive for him, instead of investing his money in a true home( which they don’t have), and on multiple occasions, he insists on keeping the lights off whenever possible. Jamie refers to his father as a miser, and accuses him of being cheap with his wealth, but that isn’t the only reason James insists on the lights off. James doesn’t want to see the destruction that has shook his family. If the lights are off, he is symbolically ignorant to his surroundings, including his poisoned wife, and his children. Jamie Tyrone also has problems with his money; he squanders every dime of it. Jamie uses his father as an example of someone he doesn’t want to become, but yet, in his early thirties, he has already become his father. He has no money, no sense of pride, and no true morals. His spending consists of alcohol and prostitutes, and while he believes he is doing the opposite, he’s really shaping into the same being as his father. Both men want to believe they have done the right thing through their years, but in their hearts, they know that is not the case. Both Jamie and James cause the family bond slip away, and it’s remains to spiral out of control. As long as they continue on their merry, selfish ways, they will never come to terms with each other, and the family will only suffer more, as the guilt upon their shoulders gains weight.

"We Lean, and We Lean"

A river flowing through and through,
stinging, pinching through to you.
I would no longer speak if you only knew,
the words I should cease to speak to you.

The levees fail, and the depths of mind are revealed,
and my lips are far, so far from sealed.
But through the shields forth I go,
as I hurt you, hurt me, hurt us so.

I know not why or where this comes from,
whether pain, or love, or tradition, or rum.
Thought does not come into use,
the blind say words deserve abuse.

With nothing to say, but much to hear,
to learn, I fear, I turn my ear.
For I have something more profound to say,
and by God I will say it, till I turn grey.

For the wind never stops, even when you cant see it,
and neither do words, so I say so be it.
But on the contrary, can this be stopped,
or on weak wooden sticks is this world propped.

For when a heart is made solely of stone,
all that’s left to savor, is blood, and bones.
And when we are all gone, dead as dead gets,
I hope we can sit down and play on the frets.

Pour us some whiskey, or some glasses of beer,
For brothers are brothers, there is nothing to fear.
But I do know this, where the grass lays green,
Love, Love, and Love, we lean and we lean.