In Eugene O’Neil’s Long Days Journey Into Night, a typical dysfunctional family is exemplified through the failing relationships that are held between the family members. Various issues including substance abuse, alcoholism or even a prolonged dwelling in one’s past lead to many internal conflicts. There are many of these conflict between two characters among the Tyrone family that cause the family unit as a whole to repeatedly tear each other down and force the deterioration of a loving family to a group of feuding relations.
One of the most prominent relationships that is characterized by a constant sense of conflict is the father to son bond between James Tyrone and Jamie Tyrone. Throughout the entire play the two characters bicker at each other as they are in a constant battle between the lifestyles of the past and lifestyles of the present. In many instances James Tyrone is depicted as a disappointed father as he talks of the failures of Jamie as he wastes his life away. Coming from a hard-working Irish immigrant background, James sets the standard too high for the lazy son of his. The father scolds his son for not being a successful actor because of a lackluster work ethic like his own, while the son harasses back on the subject of the father’s stinginess. Jamie accuses his father of never committing real emotions to the well being of their family. Blaming him for their mother’s haunting addicted shadow, and even the eventual death Edmund will face due to cheap treatment. A reoccurring concept in the play is the house with all the lights switched off. This illustrates the stinginess of James, but can also symbolize the attitude he holds with a family against him. It can show how he “shuts off” his family from the social class they belong in by holding them down by his morals. This conflict is not allowed to leave the family as James resist any idea of resolving this issue by forcing his morals onto the unwilling minds of his two sons (Fleche).
Jamie is not the only family member that cannot bear James, as his wife Mary Tyrone alternates through the story between a loving wife to a frustrated wife, as the wife to husband conflict arises. Initially the readers are shown the marriage that caused this handicapped family was only based on the high status of James Tyrone’s acting career. But the chief issue that surfaces in the play is when Mary is portrayed to live in a regretful frame of mind that she finds by repeatedly turning to the past. The main problem that rises is the blame Mary places on James for the death of her son Eugene. This accidental death sets Mary in a never-ending downward spiral of remorsefulness, that leads to another ill relationship with her son Edmund as his life is a living reminder of the regret she feels for marrying James and having a third child she must be responsible for. Once again rather than resolving this conflict Mary turns to an addiction of drugs that further presses her family into an endless hole of disgust. O’Neil allows Mary to play to roles as a loving mother and wife but at the same time an ashamed mother and a disloyal wife with her morphine use.
The play utilizes these two major internal conflicts in the attempt to demonstrate the extent to which the Tyrone family slowly worsens throughout the long night. Each of the four main characters realize throughout this night the limited amount of trust and faith they can place in their own family because they find themselves in a constant atmosphere of disagreements and quarrels. These two characteristics force the characters to alienate themselves from each other rather than the normal familial ties of unity, due to the parents dwelling in their past and the sons attempts to burst into the new ideals of society.
Works Cited
Fleche, Anne. "Long Day's Journey into Night: The Seen and the Unseen." Mimetic Disillusion: Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and U.S. Dramatic Realism. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1997. 25-42. Rpt. in Drama Criticism. Ed. Janet Witalec. Vol. 20. Detroit: Gale, 2003. 25-42. Literature Resource Center. Gale. LEE COUNTY LIBRARY SYSTEM. 21 Sept. 2008
