long day's journey into night

Eugene O’Neill writes his play Long Day’s Journey Into Night with such a vivid insight to the workings of the Tyrone family that it will not surprise readers to learn that he bases the entire play off of nearly exact events in his own life. This play does not merely reflect the author’s experiences or beliefs; it presents them almost literally. O’Neill places particular emphasis on the character of Jamie in an effort to come to terms with the life of his own brother, James, and the influence of that life on his. “He and I were terribly close to each other,” O’Neill writes to a correspondent sometime in the 1930s, “but…he gave up all hold on life and simply wanted to die as soon as possible. He had never found his place. He had never belonged” (Hinden).

As a result, O’Neill includes the character sketch of James in several of his works in an attempt to memorialize his brother’s life; however, the stark presentation of Jamie in Long Day’s Journey Into Night overshadows all of the previously vague attempts. The playwright allows Jamie to exist in the play as James had in reality – a tortured, self-destructive individual wielding disproportionate influence on his younger sibling. Jamie, the character in the play, gloats over this advantage and power. Though in his own life he only encounters failure, in his brother Edmund’s he realizes the temptation of destruction. “Hell, you’re more than my brother,” Jamie tells Edmund, “I made you! You’re my Frankenstein” (O’Neill, 81). Jamie, as the oldest son, influences Edmund’s life most significantly while both parents confront and attempt to deal with their own set of problems.

Despite Mary and James Tyrone’s obsession with their own selfish issues, they both realize the danger of leaving Edmund’s upbringing solely to Jamie and comment on it steadily throughout the play. Tyrone presents his criticisms directly, often in front of Jamie himself, in a desperate attempt to steer Edmund in the other direction. By the end of the play, O’Neill reveals that even Jamie believes in his own ineptitude. “Think of me as dead – tell people ‘I had a brother, but he’s dead’,” he begs Edmund while in a drunken stupor (O’Neill, 166). In a sense, Jamie sacrifices his relationship with his brother in order to leave him free to prosper. “Greater love hath no man than this, that he saveth his brother from himself” (O’Neill, 167). O’Neill likely includes this sequence in the play to help him come to terms with the fact that his brother warned him off and he listened. Harbored feelings of guilt permeate the scene, presenting O’Neill’s sense of responsibility or culpability in his brother’s decline.

As O’Neill utilizes the characters in Long Day’s Journey Into Night to confront his own issues with the past, he takes measures to provide a sort of absolution for James’s wasted life and allow for people to see the good in his deceased brother (Hinden). While the character of Jamie certainly displays blatant disregard for dignity, responsibility, and possibility, he retains a degree of likeability. His drunken ramblings reveal his deep love and admiration for Edmund as well as genuine despair for his life. Jamie knows what opportunities he wastes, but his depression prevents any potential for individual growth. O’Neill’s presentation of this tortured soul inspires empathy for Jamie instead of hatred or disgust; therefore, this same courtesy extends to the memory of his brother.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night embodies more biographical aspects of O’Neill’s life than any of his other plays, especially in the area of characterization. The playwright draws such stark parallels between his experience and that of the Tyrone family that one feels like an intruder in a private scene. Family dysfunction reaches new heights within the play. O’Neill confronts issues with his own mother, father, and unrealized older sibling Edmund, but these issues seem to pale in comparison to the struggles that exist between himself and James. He transforms his brother James into the ghost that haunts the pages of this work to mirror the ghost that haunts him throughout the course of his life.


Works Cited:

O'Neill, Eugene, and Harold Bloom. Long Day's Journey Into Night. New York: Yale UP, 2002.

Hinden, Michael. “O’Neill and Jamie: A survivor’s tale.” Comparative Drama 35.3 (Fall 2001): 435.