long day's journey into night

A detailed Summary of long day's journey into night


For many generations now, dysfunction, for whatever reason, has been a more common dynamic in the relations of the modern family. Many writers have captured this dynamic in their work for a plethora of reasons. Some may do it simply to get the reader to identify, while others may do it to give us a bit of insight into the dysfunctional life, regardless of weather we can relate or not. This was the case in Eugene O'Neill's classic play, "Long Day's Journey Into Night." In his work, he tries to show the reader that dysfunctional dynamics are not resulted from one, maladjusted member of the family, but rather the result of the defects and shortcomings of many if not all members of the family, each adding something to the cycle of defectiveness. He uses the nuclear familiar characters, Tyrone, Mary, and Jamie to illustrate this.

One example would be the father of the household, James Tyrone. Tyrone has influence over the entire household. His first mistake is the way in which he always tries to protect or to boost the self-esteem of his wife, Mary, so as to avoid upsetting her. This does not help Mary in the long ru


Jamie is a 34-year-old bum with no ambition or goals, and no direction in life. For one reason or another, for one reason or another, he feels that he can just coast along through life and all will be fine. But life is an uphill journey, and one cannot coast uphill. Sooner or later Jamie will roll back down into ruin. Also, partially due to Tyrone's behavior towards Jamie, he harbors a deep resentment towards his father. He is passive-aggressive towards him and lives to antagonize him. This is show in the last scene of the play, when Jamie comes home drunk and focuses all of his energy on Tyrone. Meanwhile all sorts of considerably more important things are happening with his mother and her medication: "Jamie- 'Got a great idea for you, Papa. Put on a revival of "The Bells" this season. Great part you can play in it without make-up. Old Gaspard, the miser!" And now on to the mother, Mary.

Mary, though not responsible for the dysfunction of the family, is essential to it. For one thing, she constantly protects Jamie from his father, even though Tyrone is obviously in the right. This makes it easy for Jamie to turn on his father and hide und

Some common words found in the essay are:
Mary Mary, Sooner Jamie, JOURNEY NIGHT<, Tyrone Tyrone, Jamie's Jamie, Tyrone Meanwhile, Journey Night, Jamie's I'll, Jamie Jamie, Jamie Mary-, scene play, jamie father, day's journey, bum ambition, tyrone mary,

Approximate Word count = 782
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels

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