Long day's journey into night

Long day's  journey into night 

About Author:

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (October 16, 1888 – November 27, 1953) 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, alongside Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

About the play

Long Day's Journey into Night is a play in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1939–41, first published posthumously in 1956. The play is widely considered to be his magnum opus and one of the finest American plays of the 20th century.

Characters:

James Tyrone(Protagonist)

Mary Tyrone(wife of James tyrone)

Jamie tyrone(elder son of James tyron)

Edmund tyrone(younger son of james)

Cattlemen.        (Maid of the house)

Summary of the play

O’Neill’s autobiographical play is a shattering depiction of a day in the dreary life of a couple and their two sons. James Tyrone, a semiretired actor, is vain, self-obsessed, and miserly; his wife, Mary, feels worthless and retreats into a morphine-induced haze. Jamie, their older son, is a bitter alcoholic. James refuses to acknowledge the illness of his consumptive younger son, Edmund. As Mary sinks into hallucination and madness, father and sons confront each other in searing scenes that reveal their hidden motives and interdependence.

 Theme of addication :

The Theme of addiction  is can be seen in the character of Mary. Mary has a habit of addiction  of drug which is quite well represented  in the last scene when she was wearing the gown of her wedding and recalls her golden years but she can not remember about this.

The plot of Long Day's Journey into Night focuses on a dysfunctional family trying to come to grips with its ambivalent emotions in the face of serious familial problems, including drug addiction, moral degradation, deep-rooted fear and guilt, and life-threatening illness.

, the Tyrone family's past and present have been so dire that normal coping mechanisms (family love, togetherness, etc.) can't keep up. So what do they turn to for relief? Alcohol and drugs. These forms of retreat might numb the pain, but they also bring their own problems – Mary's constant zoning out and Jamie'sinability to hold down a job, to name two examples. There's also a vicious cycle involved in all of this: Mary takes drugs and the Tyrone men drink to escape, but they also feel bad about doing so, leading them to snipe at one another even more maliciously.