Long Day’s Journey into Night Themes

Because Long Day’s Journey into Night is a play about addiction and vice, O’Neill is interested in the ways in which his characters conceive of their own predicaments. Although most of the members of the Tyrone family effectively deny their shortcomings by refusing to acknowledge their substance abuse problems, they also seemingly accept their addictions in a morbid, fatalistic way. For instance, James Tyrone technically claims he isn’t an alcoholic, but he has no problem…

In Long Day’s Journey into Night, O’Neill showcases how hard people will work to avoid confronting their guilt. This dynamic is most evident in the way Mary tries to keep her family from focusing on her addiction. First and foremost, she takes attention away from her morphine habit by staunchly denying that she is headed toward yet another relapse. However, her denial isn’t enough to placate her worried family members, and so she accuses…

It’s easy to identify the strains of anger, hate, and resentment that run throughout Long Day’s Journey into Night, but readers and audience members often overlook the tenderness that the Tyrones have for one another. The characters can’t communicate effectively, fight constantly, and frequently accuse one another of malice, but they also always try to make amends. Indeed, their disputes are punctuated by sudden reversals, in which the family members take back the venomous…

In many ways, Long Day’s Journey into Night is a play about a family that can’t extricate itself from the past. The majority of the characters are obsessed with periods in their lives that have already ended. For Mary, this obsession manifests as a form of nostalgia, one in which she tries to escape her present reality, which is bleak and depressing. Unfortunately, though, her drugged-out reveries of living her past life only make…