Broken home: Portrait of an (Awful) American Family

“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.” (Scene taken from the film adaptation of the novel directed by Sidney Lumet in 1962.)

Family. 

Family is the most important thing in the world. Family always comes first and we, most of the time, love them without boundaries forgiving their mistakes. We have always seen dysfunctional families on series such as The Simpsons or Breaking Bad; sometimes we have dysfunctional families. Eugene O'Neill had a dysfunctional family and he portrayed it in his play called Long Day's Journey into Night.

In the play we can find the family composed by James Tyrone, a husband who was once a promising actor in the past, Mary Tyrone, a mother and wife who is addicted to morphine, Jamie Tyrone, son of James and Mary and a man addicted to booze and women, Edmund Tyrone, the youngest son and brother of Jamie, a young man who dreams of having a bright future, and Cathleen, the family maid. 

Long Day's Journey into Night shows a depressing story about the past, illusions and addictions. 

Jamie is addicted to alcohol. 

Mary is addicted to morphine. 

James is a man who is an illusion of the person he used to be. 

Edmund is a dreamer who is sick with tuberculosis.

All of them have their own inner demons to fight, but they cannot help themselves or one another.

The Tyrone family is empty, broken, and scarred and there's no way out. That is the sad part, because when you have a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a friend, you can get away from them and they are not part of your life anymore, but with family is not the same. Your mother is still your mother; your father is still your father. Those are ties that you cannot run away from. The Tyrone family are living ghosts of better times, and they cannot be the light, they cannot find the light they need, and fate plays with them, showing that we live in a cruel and chaotic world.

In the play we would expect a hero to appear and at least save one of them from that nightmarish and repetitive existence, but it never happens. There are no saviors, no heroes, no gods, there is not a Deus Ex Machina that magically solves everything. And that is why this play is so important, because it shows the harsh part of living without giving us false hope. Sometimes there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

O’Neill lived with depression and alcoholism; the characters from this play are their family with other names. How can someone live with so much sadness, alienation and broken dreams? How can someone walk that path alone? There is so much self-pity and so much selfishness in that family. If I were O’Neill I think I would have had to deal with those issues and try to find some light even though I could never reach it.

The ones who felt hopeless used drugs and booze to escape, to feel alive. Mary wanted to feel something again inside her soul, Jamie wanted to triumph despite being the black sheep, everyone had an objective or something to live for, but did they reach salvation? Did they reach the light? Or was it all just another illusion?

Family is beautiful, but it is also a two faced god that takes and gives.


References:
Neill, E. (1956). Long day's journey into night. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Long day's journey into night [Motion picture]. (1962). Republic Pictures Home Video.