Mini Research Paper

 

            Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” includes biographical parallels focusing primarily on his own personal flaws as well as the shortcomings of his family members. Through the poem, O’Neill stated the plight of his upbringing without directly attracting attention to his personal life. Utilizing biographical aspects in many of his works; readers mistake many fictional situations as ones that are highly realistic or actually true. Growing up in a household with a family that did not display any signs of love or emotion led to a lack respect for himself or anybody else. Similar to the fact in today’s world that a child growing up in an abusive or broken is more likely to become an abuser; O’Neill was mentally and emotionally abused, leading to his participation in heavy drinking and attending brothels. The ignorance from his own mother and father hindered O’Neill from having a truly positive outlook on life. In O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” the lack of effort Mary and James Tyrone invest in their sons disables the children from ever seeing the future as optimistic, mimicking the unfortunate situation O’Neill suffered through in his early years.

            Mary Tyrone replicates O’Neill’s mother through all of their worst qualities. The two women suffer from a serious drug addiction that has a stranglehold on their ability to mother a child. Mentally incapacitated, O’Neill conveys the tragedy of having a mother who cannot emotionally soothe, although she is physically there. O’Neill’s father, a famous actor, traveled the country leaving his wife alone with his son. An intimate relationship could never be formed because of the addiction to morphine; a fact in the play as well as in O’Neill’s life. The love between the two never was in question, but the morphine was a wall between mother and son that neither ever scaled. O’Neill could not find a haven in his father’s love either because he never displayed any signs of emotion to prove he truly cared. 

            O’Neill manipulates James Tyrone to exemplify his own father in the role of actor, husband, and father. Both are Irish immigrants and famous actors who perform strictly as a means of earning good money. O’Neill’s real father traveled performing The Count of Monte Cristo, a less popular, but higher paying occupation than performing on Broadway. O’Neill does not change almost anything about his real father and James Tyrone, the two even sharing the same first name. Neglect is the most common trait the two men share. Leaving their wife and child alone a majority of the time, they did not ever verbalize to their families the emotions they felt. The love between father and son existed, but was empty. James O’Neill and James Tyrone abandoned their children to some degree because they created a relationship with their sons that hindered them from having a passion for the many opportunities in their lives.

            O’Neill integrates himself into “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” as all three sons in the Tyrone family. Every child in the play possesses negative qualities their parents helped them develop. O’Neill himself plays a lesser role in the characterization of Jamie, comparable only in visiting brothels and drinking heavily. He relates himself most closely to Edmund, who like O’Neill, suffers from tuberculosis. Both attend a sanatorium to treat their tuberculosis, which does very little to help treat their disease. Edmund’s tuberculosis disintegrates any dreams or aspirations he had, and drives him to drink and think somewhat erratically. O’Neill contracted tuberculosis at a similar time in his life and reacted the same way. O’Neill named the member of the Tyrone family that died shortly after birth after himself, suggesting perhaps he would have rather died than live the life he did.

            “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” explains the basis for all of O’Neill’s other plays and pieces of literature. This play, when examined from the author’s biographical view, provides the foundation for the tone of several of O’Neill’s future works. He did not want the play published for fifty years after he wrote it probably to allow readers to formulate their own opinions on his works. Publishing “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” allowed readers to understand O’Neill and gain a great respect for his works.