Long Day's

Journey Into
Night
By Eugene Gladstone O'Neill (1888-1953)
A Study Guide
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Plot Summary Setting Characters Type of Work

First
Themes Climax Symbols
Performance

Study Essay Author

Paradox
Questions Topics Information

Type of Work and Year of First Performance

.
Long Day's Journey Into Night is a tragic stage play in four
acts. O’Neill based the events in the play on those in his
own life, although he altered the events to suit his dramatic
purpose. He completed the play in 1941, but it was not
produced until 1956, three years after his death. The play
was first performed on February 10 of that year in
Stockholm, Sweden. It opened in New York City on
November 7, 1956, at the Helen Hayes Theatre. The play
received the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for literature.
Setting
.
The action takes place in the living room of the Tyrone
family’s seaside country house in Connecticut. Act 1
begins at 8:15 on a sunny morning in August 1912. Act 2
begins at 12:45 p.m. The air is warm and the sky is hazy.
Act 3 begins at 6:30. A heavy fog blankets the area, and a
nearby lighthouse periodically sounds a foghorn. Act 4
begins at midnight. The fog is even denser than before,
and the foghorn continues to sound while ship's bells
occasionally ring. 

Characters
James Tyrone Retired actor. Although he is sixty-five, he
looks about ten years younger. He was born into a humble
Irish Catholic family and began working hard at an early
age, developing an appreciation for money that turned him
into a tightwad as an adult. He was a skilled actor but
never realized his full potential because he was content to
play the same roles again and again. Tyrone has a
fondness for Shakespeare and whiskey. The character of
James Tyrone was modeled on author O'Neill's father,
James, a traveling actor who performed Shakespeare but
spent most of his time playing the lead role in The Count of
Monte Cristo. James O'Neill earned a great deal of money
as an actor but, like his fictional counterpart, was reluctant
to spend money because of a gnawing fear that he might
suffer a ruinous financial reversal.
Mary Cavan Tyrone Wife of James Tyrone. She has been
addicted to morphine since October of 1888, when she
gave birth to her son Edmund. Although she has been
institutionalized for her addiction, she is unable to
overcome it. She thinks often about the past, expressing
regret that she did not become a nun or a concert pianist.
Nevertheless, she says she loves her husband. The
character of Mary Tyrone was modeled on author O'Neill's
mother, Ella Quinlan O'Neill, who frequently accompanied
her husband during his road tours. Like Mary Tyrone, she
became a morphine addict while giving birth. 
Edmund Tyrone Twenty-three-year-old son of James and
Mary. He suffers severe coughing spells that worry his
family, especially his mother, who refuses to believe they
are symptoms of a serious illness. The other members of
the family suspect that he has consumption (tuberculosis),
and medical tests prove them right. Edmund shows
promise as a writer. Like his father, he enjoys whiskey
even though he knows his doctor has forbidden it. The
character of Edmund Tyrone was modeled on O'Neill
himself. Like the fictional Edmund, Eugene O'Neill worked
on a ship, had an alcohol problem, attempted suicide, and
developed consumption (tuberculosis). He received
effective treatment at a sanitarium in Wallingford,
Connecticut. Oddly, in the play, author O'Neill calls the
character representing him Edmund and calls the Tyrone
child who died in infancy Eugene. In real life, it was
Edmund who died in infancy and Eugene who was the
twenty-three-year-old who suffered coughing spells.
Jamie Tyrone Thirty-three-year-old son of James and
Mary. He is the hellion of the family, drinking heavily,
frequenting houses of prostitution, and ignoring his father’s
frequent pleas to make something of himself. Although he
is highly intelligent, he has been content simply to put in
time as an actor in a job his father obtained for him.
Jamie’s failure in life is apparently partly due to the guilt he
feels about the death of his infant brother, Eugene. When
Jamie was a child, Eugene contracted measles from him
and died shortly thereafter. Jamie’s father and mother
continually berate Jamie because they think he is a bad
influence on Edmund. The character of Jamie Tyrone was
modeled on author O'Neill's brother, Jamie (James Jr.),
who died of alcoholism in middle age. 
Cathleen Irish domestic. Her idle comments—for example,
about James Tyrone’s preference for a “drop of whiskey,”
about Edmund’s health, and about Mary’s lapsed
Catholicism—help to develop the characters. Cathleen
also helps to draw out Mary’s thoughts by asking questions
and by listening attentively.
Offstage Characters
The following characters are mentioned by the Tyrone
family, but they do not appear on the stage: (1) Eugene,
son of the Tyrones who died in infancy. ; (2) Bridget, the
Tyrones' cook; (3) Doctor Hardy, the Tyrones' incompetent
family physician; (4) Harker, businessman who sells James
Tyrone real estate; (5) Mother Elizabeth, mentor of Mary
Tyrone when Mary was young; (6) Fat Violet, harlot friend
of Jamie; (6) Smythe, chauffeur who drives Mary and
Cathleen into town; (7) Shaughnessy, enemy of Harker
who accuses the latter of plotting to kill his pigs; (8)
Captain Turner, neighbor who talks with Tyrone while the
latter is working in his yard. 
.
Plot Summary
By Michael J. Cummings...© 2005
.
It is a sunny morning in August 1912. At about 8:30 James
Tyrone, sixty-five, and his wife, Mary, fifty-four, are
exchanging pleasantries in the living room of their seaside
summer home in Connecticut. Tyrone, a retired actor of
modest renown, tells Mary in his resonant voice that she
looks just right after gaining weight, but she says she
needs to lose a few pounds. When she asks why the their
two sons—James, Jr., thirty-three, and Edmund, twenty-
three—are still in the dining room, Tyrone answers, “It’s a
secret confab they don’t want me to hear, I suppose. I’ll bet
they’re cooking up some new scheme to touch the Old
Man.”
His comment—though made lightheartedly—contains a
trace of pique, suggesting that all may not be well between
Tyrone and his sons. When Mary hears Edmund coughing,
she says the youth should eat more to build the strength
he needs to get rid of what she thinks is a bad cold. Tyrone
assures her the lad is fine, but his worried look alerts the
audience that he is keeping disturbing information from her
—namely,as the audience soon learns, that he believes
Edmund has consumption (tuberculosis), a potentially fatal
disease.

Why is he hiding this information from her?

Because he knows she'll go to pieces if he tells her what

he thinks, for Mary is a delicate, unstable creature. When
she gave birth to Edmund 23 years before, the physician
prescribed morphine for her pain, and she became
addicted to the drug. Her habit has tortured the family, as
only a drug addiction can. However, she has recently
returned from a sanitarium after prolonged treatment to
wean her from the drug. But since the slightest upset could
sabotage her recovery, Tyrone hides from her his
suspicion that Edmund is suffering from consumption,
which claimed the life of Mary's father. There is more to
this story, though. The physician who prescribed the
morphine is a man of dubious skills whom Tyrone engaged
to save money. His penny-pinching on this matter and
others has long rankled the rest of the family. So
closefisted is he that he monitors whiskey bottles to see
whether others have been nipping at his supply, and he
unscrews light bulbs in the living-room chandelier to save
on the electric bill. 

When the conversation between Mary and her husband

shifts to his loud snoring, she calls her sons into the living
room to confirm that Tyrone sounds like a foghorn when he
sleeps. After Jamie and Edmund compliment their mother
on how she looks—they, too, want to keep her spirits up—
they support her in her observation about Tyrone's snoring,
with Jamie quoting an appropriate line from Shakespeare’s
Othello: “The Moor, I know his trumpet.”

Tyrone does not take kindly to Jamie's remark—which is

nothing new—and says:.

“If it takes my snoring to make you remember

Shakespeare instead of the dope sheet on the ponies,”
Tyrone tells Jamie, “I hope I’ll keep on with it.”

Jamie is a ne'er-do-well who gambles, drinks heavily, and

frequents brothels. Why he turned out to be the hellion of
the family is matter of conjecture, but it may be due in part
to the guilt he feels about the death of his infant brother,
Eugene, twenty-six years before. When Jamie was seven,
Eugene contracted measles from him and died shortly
thereafter. 

Tyrone's remark stirs Mary to Jamie's defense. Her

husband, she says, should not be so touchy; Jamie meant
no harm. When Edmund also defends Jamie, Mary
unpredictably scolds Edmund for always siding with Jamie
against their father. Jamie then pleas for sanity: “Let’s
forget it.” Tyrone replies: “Yes, forget! Forget everything
and face nothing! It’s a convenient philosophy if you’ve no
ambition in life except to—“

The word war has begun; it will continue late into the
evening.

After Tyrone further excoriates Jamie, Edmund, disgusted,

goes upstairs coughing. Mary says his “summer cold” has
made him irritable. “It’s not just a cold he’s got,” Jamie
says. “The Kid is damned sick.”

Mary leaves the room. Tyrone then again attacks Jamie,

this time for letting on that Edmund might be seriously ill.
Such news will only upset Mary, he says, and make her
turn to morphine for relief. Jamie insists that his mother
should be aware that Edmund might have a serious
affliction. Then he criticizes his father for being too cheap
to send Edmund to a good doctor instead of an “old
quack.” Tyrone retorts that he knows the value of a dollar
but that Jamie squanders his money at the end of each
acting season on “whores and whiskey!” Furthermore, “If
you weren’t my son,” he says, “there isn’t a manager in the
business who would give you a part.”

The conflict gradually worsens as the living room becomes

a battleground whenever two or more members of the
family are in it. One person attacks; another person
counterattacks. 

A favorite tactic of Tyrone is to accuse Jamie of setting a

bad example for Edmund, who has apparently picked up
many of Jamie’s habits, including drinking to excess.
Jamie, angry that his parents seem to regard Edmund as
the fair-haired boy of the family, attacks Edmund where it
hurts—his ambition to become a writer. Though Edmund
exhibits promise, Jamie attempts to dismiss him as a
hack. 

Meanwhile, Mary tells her husband that she loves him but
in the same breath berates him for never having provided a
real home for her and their sons. Year after year, he went
on the road to perform in plays, leaving his family in limbo
or installing them in cheap hotels. He never cultivated
friends for the family to socialize with; his friend was a
barroom and booze.

Jamie and Edmund are the same way, she says, because
they have never had an opportunity to meet people.

“I know you both would have been so different," she says,

"if you’d been able to associate with nice girls instead of—
You’d never have disgraced yourself as you have, so that
now no respectable parents will let their daughters be seen
with you.”

Thankfully, the Tyrone summer house has a front yard,

and Tyrone and Jamie go out to work in it, providing a
respite from the feuding. Mary goes upstairs to lie down
(that is, to shoot morphine), and Edmund lounges on a
couch with a book. 

Just before lunch, Jamie comes in, and he and Edmund

have a whiskey and water the bottle to prevent their father
from noticing their thievery. Jamie becomes upset when he
learns that Edmund has allowed Mrs.Tyrone to go upstairs
alone. Left unattended, he believes, she will succumb to a
hidden supply of morphine. Jamie’s fears are well founded,
for when she comes back downstairs for dinner, her eyes
are glazed. When Tyrone comes in for lunch, he pours a
whiskey for himself and reluctantly allows Jamie and
Edmund to have a shot. He seems in a good mood. But
when he discovers Mary’s condition, he is devastated. She
was supposed to be cured of her addiction; now she is
right back where she was before she went to the
sanitarium. 

As the day progresses, so does the family feuding. Mary

continually resurrects the past, saying she gave up a good
home with her father to marry Tyrone. She could have
been a nun, she says, or perhaps a concert pianist. But,
no, she married Tyrone. Not only is he unable to provide a
decent home, she says, he also refuses to lay out enough
money to hire competent domestics and even engages the
cheapest doctors for the family’s health care. 

Tyrone rebukes his wife for lapsing back into her drug
addiction. He also attacks Jamie and Edmund for
renouncing their Catholic religion. When Jamie criticizes
his father for his lukewarm faith, Tyrone admits that he is
not the best of Catholics but says he is on his knees every
morning to pray for Mary’s recovery. Edmund, alluding to
his mother’s failure to overcome her habit, then snidely
observes that Nietzsche must have been right when he
said God was dead.

Later in the afternoon, Edmund leaves for a doctor’s

appointment; Jamie and Tyrone also go out. By early
evening, Mary is stoned on morphine and full of self-pity.
With Cathleen as her audience and with a foghorn
sounding outside, she talks about her past, dwelling
especially on her missed opportunity to become a nun or a
concert pianist. Cathleen is only too happen to listen, for
she gets to nip at the whiskey bottle. 

After Edmund and Tyrone return, Mary tells Edmund to be

wary of Jamie, who, she says, will only lead him down the
path of failure. She also observes that Tyrone has set a
bad example for them with his drinking. When Tyrone is in
the cellar fetching more whiskey, Edmund tells Mary how
serious his illness is: The doctor has confirmed that he has
consumption. But Mary, lost in stupor, refuses to confront
this news. After Edmund leaves, Tyrone comes back with
his whiskey and says he’s ready for dinner. But Mary goes
upstairs.

When Edmund returns, he and Tyrone argue about the

institution Edmund is to enter for treatment of his disease.
True to his form, Tyrone has chosen a low-cost, low-quality
facility for Edmund. “To think when it’s a question of your
own son having consumption,” Edmund says, “you can
show yourself up before the whole town as such a stinking
old tightwad! . . .I won’t go to any damned state farm just to
save you a few lousy dollars to buy bum property with. “

Edmund has a coughing spell.

Tyrone throws up his arms and says, “You can go

anywhere you like. I don’t give a damn what it costs.” Then
he modifies his statement, saying Edmund can go
anywhere he likes "within reason."

Tyrone, noticing how weak Edmund looks, says. “You’d

better take a bracer.” Edmund pours his glass to the brim
and gulps.  Tyrone pours another drink for himself, then
talks about his money philosophy. When he was young, he
says, he learned the value of a dollar and “the fear of the
poor house.” Ever since that time, he has worried that
something unforeseen will take away his hard-earned
money. So he began investing in property. “The more
property you own," he says, "the safer you think you are.”In
his defense, he says he gave Edmund everything when he
was a boy—nurses, schools, college, food clothing.
Although he acknowledges that Edmund worked hard
when he had a job working on a ship, he downplays this
type of work as a great adventure.

Edmund replies, “Particularly the time I tried to commit

suicide. . . and almost did."

Tyrone talks more about his family history, then repeats

that Edmund may go to any sanitarium he likes. He also
admits that he may have made a mistake by playing the
same stage role again and again and ended up a slave to
it. 

“I lost the great talent I once had through years of easy

repetition, never learning a new part, never really working
hard. In his earlier days, he says, he had acted with the
renowned Edwin Booth, showing great promise, but he did
not capitalize on his talent.

Edmund is pleased that he and his father have had their

talk. “I know you a lot better now,” he says. When they
hear Jamie approach the front door, Tyrone goes out a
side door, saying, “I’ll go out on the front porch. He has a
tongue like an adder when he’s drunk. I’d only lose my
temper.”

After Tyrone sneaks out, Jamie stumbles in very drunk. He

complains that the room is dark as a morgue and screws in
lights in the chandelier that Tyrone had unscrewed to save
money. When he sees his father’s whiskey bottle, he pours
himself a generous glass and discusses the good time he
had with a prostitute named Fat Violet. Then, referring to
his mother, he says in a sneering, hateful tone, “Where’s
the hophead? Gone to sleep?”

Enraged, Edmund jumps up and punches Jamie in the

face. When Jamie is about to fight back, he stops himself
and admits, “I certainly had that coming.”

Edmund then apologizes. Jamie explains his behavior,

saying he feels depressed because this time he thought
his mother had kicked her habit. 

“I’d begun to hope, if she’d beaten the game, I could, too.”

He begins sobbing, then says, “And then this stuff of you
getting consumption. It’s got me licked. We’ve been more
than brothers. You’re the only pal I’ve ever had.”

Moments later they argue again. Then Jamie says he’s so

drunk he now has the courage to tell the truth: that he has
been a bad influence on Edmund. “And worst of it is, I did it
on purpose.”

He says he made drunkenness look romantic, made

harlots appear glamorous, and made work look like a
“sucker’s game”—all to subvert Edmund. Jamie says he
wanted Edmund to fail because he was always jealous of
him—“Mama’s baby, Papa’s pet.”

When Jamie dozes off, Tyrone comes in and says he

heard that last part of the conversation. 
“But don’t take it too much to heart, lad,” Tyrone says. “He
loves to exaggerate the worst of himself when he’s drunk.
He’s devoted to you. It’s the one good thing left in him.”

Tyrone pours himself a drink. Jamie awakens and argues

with his father. Mary comes downstairs in a daze. 

“It’s the damned poison,” Tyrone says. “But I’ve never

known her to drown herself in it as deep as this.”

Mary says she has just had a talk with Mother Elizabeth,
telling her she wanted to be a nun. But Mother Elizabeth
told her she had to test herself by going to parties and
dances. 

“That was in the winter of senior year,” Mary says. “Then in

the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I
fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a
time.”
The play ends.

Source for the plot summary: O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s

Journey Into Night. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1956..

..

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Themes
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Denial and Self-Delusion
.
When the four members of the Tyrone family are sober,
they generally refuse to acknowledge their own failures
and weaknesses. Instead, they deny their faults altogether,
choosing to blame another family member for them or to
argue that they are victims of uncontrollable
circumstances. Their self-delusions lead to petty bickering
and raging arguments, often punctuated with insulting
language. To escape discord and avoid facing their
failures, they take refuge in liquor or, in the case of Mary,
morphine. Under the influence of drugs, they tend to probe
the past and ruminate over what could have been or
should have been. Oddly, when they are primed with the
artificial courage of their drug of choice, they sometimes
own up to their flaws or forgive others for theirs. But such
conversational benefactions are almost always negated by
renewed verbal warfare.

Unfortunately, no one seems willing to take the necessary

measures to overcome addiction, although Jamie says he
might have been inclined to seek help if his mother had set
an example of sobriety. But, of course, his sincerity here is
suspect, for he is refusing to take responsibility for his
behavior. In effect, he is saying that he is still a drunk
because his mother is still a morphine addict. And so the
family self-destructs. At the end of the play, each member
of the family is an alien in a familiar world; the Tyrones live
together separately. 
.
The Haunting Presence of the Past
.
Mary continually dwells on the past. She could have been
a nun, she says, or a concert pianist, and she ruminates
over the circumstances leading to the death of Eugene.
She also regrets leaving the good home provided by her
father to marry a traveling actor. Jamie, Edmund, and Mary
frequently mock penny-pinching James Tyrone for
engaging a “quack” who prescribed morphine to alleviate
Mary’s pain when she was giving birth to Edmund. Tyrone
criticizes Jamie for his ne’er-do-well past and for setting a
bad example for Edmund. Meanwhile, Edmund feels guilty
about his birth, for it was the indirect cause of his mother’s
addiction. Mary sums up the situation with this memorable
line: “The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s the future, too.”
.
The Destructive Power of Addictions
.
All of the Tyrones depend on drugs to escape their
problems. James, Jamie, and Edmund take refuge in
alcohol and Mary in morphine. But instead of alleviating
their problems, the drugs exacerbate them. 
.
Loss of Faith 
.
The Tyrones lose faith in themselves and in the future. At
times they act as if inexorable forces—like the Fates or the
Furies in ancient Greek drama—are at work against them.
In addition, Jamie and Edmund lose faith in God and their
religion, partly because it is the religion of their father.
Tyrone himself is a lukewarm Catholic and Mary, a lapsed
Catholic..

Climax
The climax of Long Day's Journey Into Night occurs when
Mary comes downstairs near the end of the play in a daze
and says she has just had a talk with Mother Elizabeth,
telling Mother she wanted to be a nun. Mary's drug stupor
signifies what has been wrong with the family all along:
dysfunction, inability to communicate, use of drugs or
alcohol to cope, failure to face reality. Mary's morphine-
ridden body is the Tyrone family. Whether the other family
members can 

Symbols
.
Fog and Foghorn: Fog gathers as the day progresses, and
a lighthouse foghorn sounds periodically. The fog and the
foghorn represent (1) the efforts of the family members to
hide their faults, (2) the daze of the drug-addicted mind, (3)
the wall of ignorance that separates family members from
one another and from the truth, (4) the hazy, distant past.
Consumption: This disease (tuberculosis), characterized
by a wasting away of the body, afflicts Edmund. But it also
afflicts the other members of the Tyrone family,
symbolically, for they too are “wasting away.”
The Title: The "Long Day's Journey" of the title appears to
symbolize life; "Into Night" appears to symbolize the
movement toward death.
Paradox: the Ever-Present Past
Paradox is a controlling figure of speech in the play in that
the past seems to control the present—or, in a manner of
speaking, is the present. For example, Mary Tyrone
continually dwells on the past—in particular, the fact that
she could have been a nun or a concert pianist. At one
point, she remarks,  “The past is the present, isn’t it? It’s
the future, too." 

At the end of the play, in an apparent hallucination, she

says she has just told Mother Elizabeth that she wants to
be a nun. As for James Tyrone, he continually played the
same role in the Count of Monte Cristo during his stage
career. Yesterday's performance became today's
performance. Now that he is retired, he is still acting, telling
Mary that Edmund is in good health when he is suffering
from tuberculosis. He fears that if he tells her the truth, she
will resurrect another ghost of the past, her morphine habit.
Eventually, of course, she does relapse into her old habit.
For Jamie, too, the past is the present. He cannot shake
the thought that he was responsible for the death of his
infant brother, Eugene. So, more than two-and-a-half
decades after Eugene's death, Eugene's ghost haunts him.
Jamie turns to drink to soothe his guilt. Edmund,
meanwhile, repeats the past of his brother and his father
every time he takes a drink. 

..
Author Background
.
Eugene Gladstone O’Neill was born in a hotel room in New
York City on October 16, 1888, and died in a hotel room in
Boston on November 27, 1953. He was the second child of
Irish Catholic parents—James O’Neill, a prominent actor
who was a heavy drinker, and Mary O’Neill, who became
addicted to morphine while giving birth to Eugene.
Because his father’s acting troupe was constantly on tour,
O’Neill spent much of his childhood in hotels and on trains
with his mother looking after him. He attended boarding
schools and studied at Princeton University but was
expelled after a year for getting drunk and smashing a
window. In 1909, he married Kathleen Jenkins, who bore
him a son, Eugene, Jr., in 1910. 

Meanwhile, O'Neill worked as a secretary for a New York

mail-order company, then went to Honduras to prospect for
gold. However, the only thing he brought back with him
was malaria. He next worked as a theatrical manager but
soon abandoned that job to work as a sailor on a
Norwegian ship. During his travels, he lived for a time in
Buenos Aires, Argentina. There, he worked for
Westinghouse Electric, Swift Packing Company, and
Singer Sewing Machine Company before resuming the life
of a sailor on the trans-Atlantic American Line. Then he
returned to the U.S. to act in vaudeville. During this period
of his life (1910-1912), O'Neill drank heavily and often lived
as a derelict. While occupying the back room of a seedy
bar in New York City, he took an overdose of the sleeping
pill Veronal (diethyl barbituric acid), which nearly killed him.
It is believed that he may have been attempting to commit
suicide. 

In 1912, when he was twenty-four, he became a reporter

for the New London (Connecticut) Telegraph, a job that
lasted just four months. Later in the same year, he was
diagnosed with tuberculosis and entered a sanitarium in
Wallingford, Connecticut. During his treatment, he began
to write plays and read works by the great authors, notably
the Swedish playwright August Strindberg. From that time
forward, he devoted himself entirely to writing and over the
next three decades rose to prominence as the greatest and
most influential American dramatist of his time. 

Stark realism is the hallmark of many of his plays, and he

set a standard for other American playwrights—such as
Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller—
to follow. Ironically, it was his dysfunctional family and
turbulent upbringing that provided the subject matter and
themes for many of his greatest plays. In all, he wrote
more than sixty plays, winning four Pulitizer Prizes and a
Nobel Prize. In the last years of his life, O'Neill developed a
degenerative brain disease (misdiagnosed as Parkinson's
disease) that slowly robbed him of physical functions
without affecting his intellectual abilities. Consequently, he
suffered the indignity and torture of bedridden physical
incapacity while still mentally acute. He was buried at
Forest Hills Cemetery outside of Boston.
...