Themes Flashcards
Fatalism and Resignation
Because Long Day’s Journey into Night is a play about addiction and vice, O’Neill is interested in the ways in which his characters conceive of their own predicaments.
Although most of the members of the Tyrone family effectively deny their shortcomings by refusing to acknowledge their substance abuse problems, they also seemingly accept their addictions in a morbid, fatalistic way.
For instance, James Tyrone technically claims he isn’t an alcoholic, but he has no problem fully embracing the lifestyle of a boozer, spending the majority of his time in bars and the lion’s share of his money on liquor. Similarly, Mary gives herself over to an opiated existence, one in which “reality is but an appearance to be accepted and dismissed unfeelingly.”
This mentality—which enables a person to “dismiss” reality—is problematic because it keeps one from grappling with and fully acknowledging his or her troubles. This, it seems, is the kind of thinking that enables people like James and Mary to indulge their addictions. As such, their acceptance of this lifestyle is unhealthy and self-defeating, and is ultimately better described as a pessimistic resignation to fate. Whereas a true acceptance or acknowledgement of vice might empower a person to change the way he or she lives, this bleak embrace of the worst-case scenario only makes it harder for a person to improve him- or herself. By emphasizing the deleterious effects of this kind of thinking, then, O’Neill effectively shows the audience that fatalistic resignation leads to disempowerment.
Denial, Blame and Guilt
In Long Day’s Journey into Night, O’Neill showcases how hard people will work to avoid confronting their guilt. This dynamic is most evident in the way Mary tries to keep her family from focusing on her addiction.
This dynamic is most evident in the way Mary tries to keep her family from focusing on her addiction. First and foremost, she takes attention away from her morphine habit by staunchly denying that she is headed toward yet another relapse.
However, her denial isn’t enough to placate her worried family members, and so she accuses them of distrusting her. This is a way of deflecting their suspicions by forcing them to pretend—along with her—that nothing is wrong. Of course, once they begrudgingly give her their trust, she relapses.
Then, once she’s high, she continues to blame them for her own shortcomings, finding it even easier to avoid taking responsibility for her actions. In fact, after she’s taken morphine, she goes even further with her guilt-tripping, ultimately accusing James—in a roundabout way—of driving her to addiction, and Jamie of killing her second-born son, who died of measles as a baby.
In turn, O’Neill shows the audience the extravagant lengths people will go to in order to cope with their own sorrows without having to face their feelings of guilt and culpability—even if doing so means destroying their own familial relationships.
Loneliness, Isolation and Belonging
A sense of loneliness pervades Long Day’s Journey into Night. Despite the fact that the Tyrone family lives together and is constantly surrounded by servants, they are all on their own when it comes to dealing with their emotions.
Mary, in particular, struggles with a feeling of isolation that makes her feel alone even when her husband and sons dote on her and try to make her happy. This, she claims, is because she has never had a true “home.” Instead, she’s spent her entire adult life traveling with James and staying in cheap hotels, a lifestyle that has made it impossible for her to forge meaningful relationships with people outside her family. Now that she actually has settled down into this summer home, though, she feels even more isolated from the world than before.
Similarly, Edmund insists that he will “always be a stranger who never feels at home.” But the difference between him and his mother is that he’s willing to admit he’ll never feel like he belongs anywhere, whereas Mary insists upon disparaging her current situation in order to go on hoping that she might someday—in another context—rid herself of loneliness.
Given that she appears unable to even hear or speak to her family members by the end of the play—a representation of how much she has isolated herself—it’s reasonable to argue that O’Neill condemns this kind of grass-is-always-greener mentality. By perpetually chasing a sense of belonging that doesn’t exist, Mary has only intensified her solitude.
In turn, O’Neill intimates that loneliness is an inherently human condition that affects everyone, and that this ought to be accepted as a fact of life.
Love and Forgiveness
It’s easy to identify the strains of anger, hate, and resentment that run throughout Long Day’s Journey into Night, but readers and audience members often overlook the tenderness that the Tyrones have for one another.
The characters can’t communicate effectively, fight constantly, and frequently accuse one another of malice, but they also always try to make amends. Indeed, their disputes are punctuated by sudden reversals, in which the family members take back the venomous things they’ve said or—at the very least—try to make up for their hurtful words by changing the subject.
Of course, this relational dynamic is dysfunctional and seemingly untenable. And yet, no matter how intensely they insult each other—no matter how viciously they yell—they simply go on with their pattern of spite and forgiveness. In turn, the audience begins to sense that, although the Tyrone family is tragically flawed, there is almost nothing that can truly tear them apart. After all, they would have already parted ways for good if their relationships couldn’t survive the tensions that arise between them.
In this way, O’Neill suggests that certain familial bonds can withstand even the most toxic environments, though it’s worth noting that he doesn’t indicate whether this resilience is for better or for worse.
The Past, Nostalgia and Regret
In many ways, Long Day’s Journey into Night is a play about a family that can’t extricate itself from the past. The majority of the characters are obsessed with periods in their lives that have already ended.
For Mary, this obsession manifests as a form of nostalgia, one in which she tries to escape her present reality, which is bleak and depressing. Unfortunately, though, her drugged-out reveries of living her past life only make her feel like she has taken the wrong path. Indeed, she fondly remembers her days as a girl, when she lived in a convent and planned to be a nun or a concert pianist.
Similarly, James waxes poetic about his past, and although he did ostensibly lead the life he always thought he wanted, he eventually realizes that he focused on the wrong things by sacrificing his passion for art in favor of a commercially successful acting career.
As such, both Mary and her husband wallow in regret, wishing they could turn back time and change the way they lived. And though this is impossible, they waste away the present by mourning the past. In fact, at the end of the play, Mary even tries to pretend she’s a girl in the convent again, but this is only a disturbed, inebriated fantasy.
In this manner, O’Neill spotlights the futility of dwelling on the past, making it clear that focusing on nostalgia and regret do nothing to help a person attain happiness.
