Long Day's Journey into Night

by : Eugene O'Neill

Characterization
 Eugene O'Neill
• He is generally regarded as America's finest
playwright, was born on October 16, 1888, in
New York City, the youngest son of James (a
successful actor) and Mary Ellen (Quinlan)
O'Neill. The family was Irish-Catholic, and O'Neill
was sent to a Catholic boarding school and then
to Betts Academy in Stamford, Connecticut,
before enrolling at Princeton University in 1906.
He left Princeton a year later.
• O'Neill was emotionally scarred by his mother's
addition to morphine, and the fact that it was his
birth that precipitated her addiction. She tried to
commit suicide in 1902.
• The year 1912 was a crucial one for O'Neill. He
continued to drink heavily, and lacking stable
employment, was forced to depend on his father
for financial assistance. He attempted suicide by
taking a drug overdose, and he also divorced his
wife. During the summer and fall, his father took
him to their summer house in New London,
Connecticut. This is the period of O'Neill's life
that appears in the character of Edmund in
O'Neill's play, Long Day's Journey Into Night,
which is set in 1912.
• O'Neill was established as the leading American
dramatist of the day.

• Strange Interlude, which lasted for nearly five

hours in performance, is often regarded as the
first play in which O'Neill revealed his full power
as a dramatist. It won for him his third Pulitzer
Prize.

• In 1936, O'Neill won the Nobel Prize for

Literature, the first American dramatist to receive
the award.
• prevented O'Neill writing any plays during
the last decade of his life. He died of
pneumonia on November 27, 1953, in
Boston, Massachusetts
Introduction
• Long Day's Journey Into Night, written in
1941 but not staged until three years after
his death. This autobiographical play
about the troubles of the O'Neill family
won O'Neill's fourth Pulitzer Prize, in 1957.
• Long Day's Journey into Night was never
performed during O'Neill's lifetime. On his
twelfth wedding anniversary with his wife
Carlotta, O'Neill gave her the script of the
play with this note:
For Carlotta, on our 12th Wedding Anniversary

Dearest: I give you the original script of this play of old

sorrow, written in tears and blood. A sadly inappropriate
gift, it would seem, for a day celebrating happiness. But
you will understand. I mean it as a tribute to your love
and tenderness which gave me the faith in love that
enable me to face my dead at last and write this play ?
write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness
for all the four haunted Tyrones.
These twelve years, Beloved One, have been a Journey
into Light ? into love. You know my gratitude. And my
love!

Gene
Tao House
July 22, 1941.
The play is deeply autobiographical. O'Neill, like •
Edmund, was the child of a Broadway actor. The O'Neills
were Irish-American, as are the Tyrones. Catholicism
looms large in both families, with a religious father
appalled by his sons' apparent rejection of the Church.
O'Neill's father was an alcoholic, and like James Tyrone,
he gave up a promising career as a Shakespearean
actor for a part in a commercial but artistically worthless
play called Monte Cristo. In the play, Tyrone speaks of
this commercial success but never names it. O'Neill's
mother in real-life was a morphine addict, and like Mary,
became one after the birth of her youngest child. Jamie
is also modeled after O'Neill's real-life brother, a
dissolute alcoholic whoremonger who failed miserably at
everything he put his hand to. And Eugene had an older
brother named Edmund who died as a baby; in the play,
the dead middle son is named Eugene
Character list

• James Tyrone Husband of Mary and the father of Jamie

and Edmund
• Mary Tyrone The wife of Tyrone and mother of
Jamie and Edmund
• Jamie Tyrone The elder Tyrone son, he is in his
early thirties
• Edmund Tyrone  The younger Tyrone son, he is ten
years younger than Jamie
 James Tyrone
• James Tyrone is a vigorous, healthy man of sixty-five.
His predominant trait, other than the fact that he drinks
too much, is his miserliness, which is to blame for many
of the family's troubles. Tyrone refuses to spend money
on their summer house to make it pleasant for his wife,
and he tries to send Edmund to a state sanatorium just
to save money. Although he is comparatively well off,
Tyrone lives in fear of ending his days in poverty. He tries
to secure his future by investing in real estate, but he
rarely makes a good deal. The origins of his miserliness
lie in his childhood. His father deserted the family and at
the age of ten, Tyrone was sent to work long hours in a
machine shop. The family was always poor, and Tyrone
learned, as he frequently puts it, the value of a dollar.
Tyrone is an actor who as a young man was considered •
one of the most promising actors in America. But he
squandered his talent by performing for years in a
popular melodrama, thus getting typecast and ruining his
chances of getting other, more challenging roles. He
traded artistic excellence for financial success, and he
bitterly regrets it. Tyrone is an Irish Catholic who
despises his sons for rejecting the faith. He thinks Jamie
is an idle, ungrateful loafer and has no respect for
Edmund's reading in poetry and philosophy, denouncing
Edmund's favorite authors as atheists and degenerates.
Tyrone's great love is Shakespeare, and he thinks all
.other writers are inferior
• Tyrone has a genuine love for his wife, but is thrust into
despair when she lapses back into her addiction. He
knows the situation is hopeless.
. Quotes
• "If he's ever had a loftier dream than
whores and whiskey, he's never shown it."
Act 3
Tyrone speaks about Jamie.
Mary Tyrone
• Mary Tyrone is fifty-four years old. She
was once beautiful and still has a youthful
figure, as well as a charming, innocent
manner. But her manner also betrays
extreme nervousness. Her hands are
never still. They too were once beautiful,
but have become gnarled and ugly
through rheumatism.
• Mary was raised in a prosperous home and she was devoted
to her father, who died of consumption. Educated in a
convent, she wanted to become a nun or a concert pianist,
and she looks back at this period as a happy time in her life.
She was introduced to James Tyrone by her father, and fell in
love with him immediately. But their life together, although
initially happy, was hard on her. She had to travel a lot, stay in
lonely, cheap hotels and eat bad food. Her husband refused
to spend enough money to make their summer home a
pleasant one. One son, Eugene, died when he was two, and
Mary blames herself because she left the baby with her
mother so that she could accompany her husband on his
travels. Weakened by the strain of their lifestyle, Mary
became sick after giving birth to Edmund. She was prescribed
morphine by an incompetent doctor and became addicted to
it. She also feels guilty about Edmund's bad health, since after
Eugene's death she felt she was not worthy of being a mother
and that God would punish her if she gave birth again.
• When the play begins, Mary has been home for two
months after going away to get cured of her addiction,
and Tyrone believes she has recovered. But it soon
becomes obvious that she has not. She cannot face the
fact that Edmund is seriously ill, claiming that he has
nothing more than a common cold, and starts taking
morphine again. This cushions her from reality, and as
the play progresses she starts to live in the past, since
the present is too painful for her to endure. By the end of
the play, she has regressed completely into the past and
talks as if she is still a girl at the convent
. Quotes
• "None of us can help the things life has done to us." Act
2, scene 1
Mary tries to excuse her son Jamie for his faults, but her
comment reveals her attitude to herself as well.

• "I hate doctors! They'll do anything-anything to keep you

coming back to them. They'll sell their souls! What's
worse, they'll sell yours, and you never know it till one
day you find yourself in hell!" Act 2, scene 2
Mary gives vent to her anger.

• "The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future, too." Act
2, scene 2
Mary expresses her depressed vision of how people are
slaves to what happened in the past.
 Jamie Tyrone
• Jamie Tyrone is thirty-three years old. Physically,
he takes after his father, and has the same
robust constitution. But Jamie is a cynical man
who is wasting his life. He was expelled from
every college he ever attended, although he did
acquire some training as an actor. With the help
of his father he has had some success in that
profession on Broadway, but he never saves any
money and is broke by the end of the theater
season.
• During the summer, he earns his keep at the Tyrones'
summer home by taking care of the grounds. But he
spends most of his time drinking whiskey and hanging
out at the brothels in town. He and his father, who thinks
he is a lazy, ungrateful, good-for-nothing, quarrel bitterly
throughout the play. Jamie has been a huge
disappointment for his father. He has also been a bad
influence on his brother. At first he tries to deny this,
saying that Edmund is stubborn and independent, but
near the end of the play he admits that he has
deliberately tried to make Edmund fail, since a
successful brother would have made his own failure
more galling.
. Quotes
• “ if you can't be good you can at least be careful." Act 1
Jamie summarizes the advice he gave to his younger
brother.

• "Happy roads is bunk. Weary roads is right. Get you

nowhere fast. That's where I've got-nowhere. Where
everyone lands in the end, even if more of the suckers
won't admit it." Act 4
Jamie finally confesses the truth about his own life.

• "The Mad Scene. Enter Ophelia! " Act 4

Jamie's sardonic remark when his mother enters the room,
apparently unaware of her surroundings
Edmund Tyrone
• Edmund Tyrone is twenty-three years old
and is the youngest member of the family.
Unlike Jamie, he does not have his
father's strong constitution, but takes more
after his mother. He suffers from
tuberculosis and must shortly go away to a
sanatorium for treatment.
• Edmund has led a restless life. His older brother
was a bad influence on him, and he was expelled
from college. After that he went to sea, ending up
in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He knows what it is
like to work hard for low pay. Often in South
America he was broke and slept on park benches
because he had nowhere else to go. Once he
tried to commit suicide. At the time the play takes
place, Edmund has a job as a reporter on a local
newspaper, in which he also publishes some of
his poems. His father hopes that he is now on the
road to success, having found something he
wants to do.
• Edmund rejects the Catholicism of his father and
is well read in modern poetry and philosophy. He
has a gloomy attitude to life. Fond of his mother,
he holds out hope for her as long as he possibly
can, longer than the cynical Jamie. He has many
resentments against his father, especially when
Tyrone wants to send him to a cheap
sanatorium. But by the end of the play he has a
deeper understanding of why his father behaves
the way he does. He also learns to understand
the love-hate relationship he has with Jamie.
. Quotes
• . "Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is.
That's what I wanted-to be alone with myself in another world where
truth is untrue and life can hide from itself." Act 4
Edmund speaks of his feelings as he walked home in the fog.

• "I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying
spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship
and the high dim-starred sky." Act 4
Edmund tells his father about the ecstasy of some of his experiences at
sea.

• “ For a second you see-and seeing the secret are the secret. For a
second there is meaning." Act 4
Edmund talks about the meaning of his peak experiences at sea.
: Done by
• Siham Ali Al-Shehri

• Huda Muhammad Al-Faify

• Bodour Gabal Al-Solmi

• Nawal Safar Al- Amri

• Nouf Al-Otaibi