I had spent my life on the outside, living in the margins of the pages I wrote.
my mind kept me safe, refusing to see things for what they were.
but as I stood there in the lobby, as the Friend of my Youth shot the Boss
things were different.
The world, as Cass had said, was of one piece.
Time brings all things to light, for no one can hide from the truth
like a great spider, it seeks you out, pins you down, forces you to own up.
One event, one moment in time, set off a chain of actions that spun wildly out of control
How did it come to this?
I had been used, like a puppet, like a tool, of no importance
my actions, I thought, meant nothing, for everything was nothing at all.
The world did not matter; words were empty and everything was left up to chance.
But that was not true. everything was everything, connected and dependent
branching out from one thing like a spiderweb.
I thought back to that one thing, the one event, the first time I met Willie in the back of Slade’s place.
It could have all been different.
Because of that one day, great men had fallen, lives had shattered and broken
I was responsible for Anne, the Judge, Adam, the Scholarly Attorney,
Their fates and mine were as interwoven as threads on a braid.
He pulled the trigger.
Confusion turned to disbelief, which turned to anger, sadness, and finally acceptance.
I had done what I had done, on my own accords
and therefore had to suffer the consequences
but finally I was free,
for i got to catch that midnight train, for all my sin was taken away.
Henry David Thoreau said, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately... To put to rout all that was not life... and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” I did not go to the woods; instead, I went to the rainforest to find myself. Looking back at my career choices over the years, I feel that I too have honored Throeau’s idea of finding my purpose, my vocation, my motivation, my life. If I died tomorrow, I would have no regrets and no lost opportunities; I believe I would have, at every chance, seized the day and made a difference.
At 15, I discovered my purpose when I traveled to Peru with my Spanish teacher and several other students. My bubble of ignorance and inexperience with world problems popped the moment I stepped out of Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru that June. Preconceived notions that I understood the plight and poverty of third world countries disappeared when I got the chance to see and experience firsthand the lives of the people behind the statistics and facts. While staying in the Amazon Rainforest, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to volunteer at the school at the San Pedro village, where I spent the day working and playing with the kids. Though they owned little more than the clothes they wore, their overwhelming joy was infectious, and I felt a call to find some way to change their lives the way they had changed mine. They had opened my eyes and given me a purpose in life. In the rainforest, one of my classmates unfortunately fell ill, but it provided me with the opportunity to visit the only medical clinic for miles along the Amazon River. The one doctor there was understaffed, underfunded, and underpaid, but he truly loved what he did. I had always wanted to work in the medical field and I saw in him the career I had always dreamed of, one where I could help others and myself. That experience was the most humbling of my life and one that I carried with me forever. From then on, I knew that nothing would be easy, but I have always enjoyed confronting challenges head on.
At 18, I discovered my vocation. I had the chance to return to Peru through Duke’s ENGAGE Program which allowed me to work with underprivileged villages in remote areas across South America. I spent the summer after my freshman year living with natives, working, building, improving, teaching, and learning together. Through these people, I gained much more than construction experience. That’s the funny thing about service. You go and do something to help others, but you end up helping yourself as well. I discovered things like faith and family do not always fit their black and white definitions. Rather, they blur in the grey areas, as we combine ideas from our different experiences and backgrounds. Success is a relative term: somedays it would be finishing a building in a village; others, just surviving the endless swarm of bugs. I realized that the world grossly underestimates the people in these countries who openly welcomed a college student to come live with them for months. They were proud people, who refused to let me and my classmates come in and do all the work, insisting that they too be a part of everything we did in their villages. Ultimately, I learned the most about happiness from the children who appreciated so much the little that I was able to give them through my time and work. The memories of those kids gave me the necessary motivation to continue in my pre-medical studies and courses at Duke, to survive graduate school, and to complete my internship and residency, so that one day I would be able to come back and give them something more.
Now, at 33, I have found my true passion, my life. I spend most of my year as a surgeon in a hospital in Raleigh and travel to Latin America for four months of the year to train doctors in clinics in underprivileged, hard-to-reach areas. Again, through Duke’s ENGAGE program, I, along with several other prospective medical students, dedicated my time and hard work towards creating a summer service opportunity. Students on this trip worked directly in hospitals in third world countries, much like the one I visited in Peru all those years ago as a teenager on a high school trip. Since then, I’ve returned multiple times to continue my work with the people who have made me a part of their family. It’s amazing to see how much things have changed here with each successive visit, as natives now can receive the adequate medical care they deserve. Ironically though, some things never change. I am now positive that I will never adjust to the sweltering heat of the rainforest. In fact, it’s days like these that make me miss the freezing cold North Carolina nights spent camping in Krzyzewskiville for Duke basketball tickets. I spend my days working on construction or in the hospital, participating in outdoors activities or instructing in the clinics. Finally, I can educate the people who taught me so much about life, although to me it seems like an unfair exchange for them. Although I enjoy my time spent in the United States, learning new procedures and saving the lives of others, it is here that I feel at home. In America, I can satisfy my need to learn, research, and experiment. Here, I can serve others while still doing what I love. Deep down, I know this is where I was meant to be.
Thoreau lived alone in the woods for years. How he managed that, I really cannot fathom. I know that I am who I am, and I am where I am today because of the people I met on my travels. Without their influence, I would have never made it this far in my career as a doctor, nor would I have the drive and motivation to succeed in all that I do. Years from now, maybe no one will remember who I am. But that is not what matters to me. What matters is that I fought passionately, and that I changed the lives of those around me. What matters is that I lived, and that I lived deliberately.
In A Long Day’s Journey Into Night O’Neill presents the fraternal conflict between Jamie and Edmund to express the projection of self-loathing to gratify or protect oneself. Jamie knows that his life will amount to little more than a continued downward spiral of alcoholism and promiscuity. Because of this, he seems determined to ensure that Edmund falls as well, so that he doesn’t look so bad. Though the parents have given up on Jamie, Mary still holds out hope that Edmund will one day break out of the familial ties that restrict him and accomplish something notable. “I’ll do my damnedest to make you fail. Can’t help it.I hate myself. Got to take my revenge on everyone else. Especially you” he says, because Jamie sees a threat to his wayward lifestyle. If Edmund ever achieves success in anything, Jamie would be forced out of his apathetic, isolated environment and would no longer be able to blame Tyrone for his failures. Jamie would have to accept his responsibility for where he is in life, so in order to prevent this, he attacks Edmund, breaking him down from all sides. Jamie encourages the belief that Edmund is responsible for Mary’s morphine addiction, while also trying to destroy Edmund’s somewhat naive and positive thinking with his pessimistic brutal truths. The paradoxical conflict reverses the typical sibling relationship to highlight Jamie’s miserable life and Edmund’s struggle to survive in a trying in environment.
Many authors utilize biographical undertones to depict true emotions and ideas in their works. This allows them to create atmospheres and relationships which readers can understand and relate to. August Strindberg, a Swedish realist playwright was one of the first modernists to use this technique in his works, reaching back into his own history as inspiration for the theater. It was Strindeberg who had the greatest influence on Irish immigrant and American playwright Eugene O’Neill. O’Neill’s strong biographical elements in A Long Day’s Journey Into Night allow the author to convey realistic feelings and beliefs through his characters.
Through O’Neill’s characters Mary and Tyrone, readers can gain insight into the lives of O’Neill’s own parents and their influence on his environment and development. Much like his own father, Tyrone is a miserly, cheap, has-been actor who gave up his career, selling out for money. Mary, in direct comparison to O’Neill’s mother Ella, becomes addicted to morphine after Edmund’s birth. Both Edmund in the play and Eugene in real life carry the blame and burden for this tragic occurrence. This responsibility shaped O’Neill as a person, as he felt it was his fault for what happened, causing his low self-esteem and fatalistic outlook on life. His cheap-steak father also contributed to O’Neill’s pessimistic environment, providing his son with no hope for a better future (American Decades.)Through Edmund, O’Neill can convey his hopelessness and alienation that were results of his family using accurate emotions and words because of his real life experiences with those subjects.
O’Neill uses parallelism to express his life’s events through the experiences of his character Edmund Tyrone. Both contracted tuberculosis and as a result were sent to sanitoriums. While quarantined, O’Neill decided to become a playwright, a decision influenced heavily by his study of poetry, another quality he shared with Edmund. Like O’Neill, Edmund left his family to travel on the seas, finding solace in solitude but was forced by unfortunate events to return home. The lives of the O’Neills and the Tyrones were all interconnected, leaving no chance for one to change unless they all did (American Decades.) Edmund had no opportunity to break out of the cycle of despair his family was trapped in, just as O’Neill was locked in a never-ending pattern of escapism and regret.
Ultimately, the greatest understanding of O’Neill’s life from A Long Day’s Journey Into Night comes through his namesake character, Eugene. O’Neill had a brother, Edmund, who died of measles when he was young. However, in the play, O’Neill switches names and it is Eugene who falls ill, contracting the disease from his brother Jamie (American Decades.) Eugene, the character, dies, symbolizing Eugene O’Neill’s metaphorical death at the hands of his real brother, James Jr. At the age of 34, Jamie knows his life is a failure, and he seems determined to see “Edmund” fail as well. “I’d like to see you become the greatest success in the world. But you better be on your guard. Because I’ll do my damnedest to make you fail. Can’t help it. I hate myself. Got to take my revenge on everyone else. Especially you,” Jamie says (O’Neill, 169) This represents O’Neill’s brother’s goal to ruin O’Neill’s life because of his own self-loathing. James Jr. provided a model of alcoholism and immorality for his younger brother to copy, attempting to destroy O’Neill’s dream of becoming a writer.
By using these characters, O’Neill projects himself into the play, backing the words and actions of his character with true experiences, and providing realistic expressions of conflicts that many readers can face. Unlike some authors such as James Frey, whose fabricated work A Million Little Pieces also deals with addictions and conflicts, O’Neill’s play represents reality and truth, allowing readers a better understanding of the struggles both he and his characters faced.
