Long Day's Journey Into Night essay

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.