Long Day’s Journey Into Night: Guilt, Resentment, Denial, and Some Other Things

Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey Into Night is widely known to be O’Neill’s representation of his own suffered family. He himself is represented by one of the characters, Edmund, and apparently he wrote it as a sort of redemption for his family and for himself. It is tragic; the reader can feel the tension emanating from its pages, and rightfully so, as O’Neill wrote at the beginning: this is a ‘play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood’.

Now, I’m sure we all know what it is like to feel like our family, or whatever group of people surrounds us, is dysfunctional. I guess it is actually normal to feel dysfunctional. So we can relate, in a way, to these characters.  What I loved about this play is how it shows each one of the four of them. I cannot help but understand and in a way emphasize with each one of their situations, because we get glimpses of how they truly feel.

For example, for most of the play, Tyrone just appears as an infuriating miser; he does not want to spend money to pay good doctors for his family -which is what caused Mary’s addiction to morphine in the first place, apparently- but we come to know he grew up poor. Jamie appears to be a simple alcoholic that doesn’t like to work, but he carries the enormous guilt of causing the death of his long dead younger brother, Eugene, before Edmund was born.  I’m not trying to justify their actions, but merely trying to explain their behaviours, as they explain the breaking point they suffer as a family in this long day’s journey.

The play is full of guilt, resentment and intolerance towards one another. Jamie feels guilty, and his mother openly blames him for the death of Eugene. Mary blames Tyrone for not paying a good doctor when she first fell ill and for not providing a ‘real home’. Jamie resents his younger brother for having more talent. Both brothers resent their father for being a miser. And so on. They are angry all the time, they argue, and when one somewhat yields, the other gets even angrier soon after. They just can’t seem to get anything right.  

Summing all that up, we could say that they cannot let go of the past. The play is, also, full of denial, which, according to Rothenberg and Shapiro (1973), is a method of defense against threats (p.52). One of the most obvious examples of this is how Mary refused to accept that Edmund was truly sick and didn’t just suffer from a cold, although we see how she knew it, deep down. This defense is used by the family to avoid the disaster they are trying to prevent, but ultimately - and ironically - this same defense is what leads to the disaster to happen. They wanted to deny at first that Mary was falling into addiction again, but their actions, including suspicion, make her fall again (Rothenberg & Shapiro, 1973, p.56).

The family relations present in this play sometimes reflect our own reality; beyond family, even. Intolerance is present in our everyday lives, especially these days full of social movements. So here is where I make the connection with our recent reality: I did not participate a lot in the ‘paro’ activities. I came to the ‘asambleas’ (assemblies?) during the first weeks, when I felt like the whole movement was still working and that it had a clear purpose. However, these assemblies (I guess I’ll call them that) started to bore me; more times than not, they even annoyed me. One person talks, then another, then someone else, and it starts feeling repetitive (there are also those who use the same discourse over and over and over again). Usually someone speaks not even responding to what people previous to them said.  Isn’t that similar to what happens in the play? Maybe we are not considering what the rest think or feel.

What I’m trying to say here is, we need real communication. Like the characters in the play did. To actually listen to what other people say. It is hard, extremely so at times. I’m saying this realising I don’t do it sometimes, but what we can do is to realise we are not actually listening, acknowledge it, leave aside our pride, and try to understand the other’s point of view. There is, almost always, a reason why they hold that specific point of view. And we have to admit that we can be wrong. I guess asking for respect is close to a cliché nowadays, but if we all could do this, then the world might be a better place. And maybe if families like the ones in the play were open about their problems, if they were honest and accepted their flaws, then maybe endings like those could be avoided.  

‘Humans are funny creatures and have a foolish aversion to being wrong. Rather than appreciate the benefits of being able to change one’s mind through better understanding, many will invent ways to cling to old beliefs’

O'Neill, E. (1956). Long Day's Journey into Night. London: Yale University Press New Haven.

Rothenberg, A., & Shapiro, E. D. (1973). The Defense of Psychoanalysis in Literature:" Long Day's Journey Into Night" and" A View From The Bridge". Comparative Drama, 51-67.