Long Day's Journey Into Night

Long Day’s Journey Into Night

The characters in any story or play are affected by many outside stimuli. In O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the setting, plot, and theme all affect the characters in both positive and negative ways. Everything in this play has a symbolic meaning, from the fog around the house to things the characters themselves say or do. The author must first paint a picture of where and when the story takes place for the reader to better imagine what is happening in the story. The plot is necessary to move the characters along in their lives. Themes are important to connect the storylines with other works or everyday lives. All of these aspects come together to form the complete story with nuances and details.


Setting is very important to this work. The time period has a lot to do with how the characters are treated and interact. The play takes place during times when tuberculosis was a big problem. Edmund catches consumption and must be sent to a sanitarium, something that causes a lot of problems for the family. The physical setting of the summer house speaks volumes of the mindsets of the family. The house is only inhabited a few months out of the year, it’s a temporary place of residence, not a home, which is what the characters really need. Obviously the characters sense a lack of structure in their lives that they reflect in different ways. The house is constantly flooded with fog, making Mary nervous, while symbolizing how the family fog their emotions and refuse to see the truth in front of their faces. Mary has problems with the fog horn constantly sounding, showing her mental breakdown of worry over her son and her relapse back into addiction to morphine. The sea is nearby, symbolizing the changeable and cold nature of the family, aimless and without direction. Tyrone always keeps the lights off in the house, showing both his hatred of spending money and how the family keeps their feelings in the dark. Of course, the entire play takes place in just one day, going back to the Greek belief that a tragedy should all come to fruition in one day. Setting in this play tells information about both the characters and the place.


The plot of this play has a lot to say about the characters themselves and is the vehicle to get them from beginning to end. Over the course of the day, the plot allows the reader to see how the family interacts with each other, and Mary’s slip into a mental breakdown. Jamie and Edmund show the dependence on alcohol in the entire family while Mary talks to Cathleen and gives the information of her broken past and her unhappiness in the presence. Tyrone demonstrates his lack of dedication in his life, as shown in his settling on one job while moving around constantly. At the end of the play Mary gets her wedding dress out in order to symbolize her fragile mental state.


Regret is one of the major themes of this work. Regret tells so much about the people in the work. Each of them, especially Mary have problems in the past. She says that she had a bright future, either a concert pianist or a nun. Unfortunately she fell for Tyrone and had to follow him all over the country. When she lost her second child she never really got over it, especially since she thinks she tried to replace him by having Edmund. Her regret about how she ended up in the house by the sea seeps into the rest of the family. Jamie has no real ambition or drive, simply looking for meaning by visiting Fat Violet. Edmund sometime wishes for death, like when he says he should have been born a seagull. The regret affects the characters by perpetuating the sadness and circumstances of the family.


All of these aspects contribute to who the characters are. They are changed because of the setting, plot, and the way they deal with regret. If they had different reactions, they may have been a more functional or healthy family, able to cope with difficulties. Unfortunately it takes tragedy to shock them into noticing Mary’s health and everyone else’s need for alcohol. Peter Quinn writes about the affect of Catholicism has on Tyrone. A devout Catholic would do what is best for his family, instead of turning a blind eye. Instead of getting Mary the help she needs, he simply got her hooked on morphine, which does not help anything. The intricate web of the past and present causes the family sadness and unhappiness because of the choices they made.






Work Cited:
Quinn, Peter. "Down the Nights and Down the Days: Eugene O'Neill's Catholic Sensibility." Commonweal 124.n18 (Oct 24, 1997): 22(2). Academic OneFile. Gale. Lee County Library System. 21 Sept. 2008 .

College Essay

Growing up in Florida has made me no stranger to widespread power outages during hurricane season. I am all too familiar with the darkness following the storm. Yet nothing had ever prepared me for what happened one night as I walked down a strange street in a foreign country.
In March of my Junior year in high school, my Spanish teacher took a group of students to the Galapagos Islands. The trip was incredible, but one of my most vivid memories occurred on the last night. Our group was walking down the main street in the small city when all of the lights flickered and went off. Apparently this happens all the time, because the residents did not panic, they merely lit candles and continued on as if all was normal. However, us tourists in the middle of the street clung to each other to stay together. A million thoughts ran through my mind, worrying about getting run over by a car or separating from the group. Amid panic, I gripped my friends’ hands even tighter. As my eyes adjusted to the pitch black, something made me look up to the sky and I saw…everything. I saw more stars than I had ever seen before, including the Milky Way. It was incredibly beautiful. The awe of seeing the night sky strewn with billions of stars took my breath away. It was a good thing my friends and I had grabbed hands, because I was too busy gaping at the sky to watch where I was going. Without my friends I would have walked into a building, into a parked car, off the pier…
Thanks to my friends, I did not fall off the pier, I was able to soak in the sight of the universe and learn a few things. Whether the electricity failing was a human error, a faulty generator, or chance, I am grateful it happened because it taught me a few things. I was reminded that even in the darkest periods of life, my friends will always guide me and prevent me from falling. Ever since that night I have avoided taking my friends for granted. I also learned that when you least expect it, Nature will knock you sideways and remind you that it’s still in control. I have not forgotten the feeling of how incredibly large the world is and how tiny we are, like tiny pinpricks of light in the vast night sky. Something so familiar as darkness has so much impact in the right situation. Sometimes the lack of illumination provides the most illumination of all.

Like Thoughts

Like dragonflies flitting through the blue sky,
Like steam rising from a cup of hot coffee,
Like the dust the wind flings to the heavens,
Like the mist that rises off the road after a heavy rain,
Like an exhaled breath on a very cold day,
Thoughts are here one moment and gone the next.
Able to be seen but never for long.
Blink and you miss them.
The fleeting, fickle nature of thinking
Causes both confusion and clarity.
Allowing minds to wander can result in beauty.
Different worlds, people, places can be explored.
An escape from reality is needed.
Like a firefly flickering in the night,
Thoughts are here and gone.