Long Day’s Journey into Night Analysis

Nathaniel Burse

Ms. Hickman

Lit

5 October 2014

Long Day’s Journey into Night Analysis

Long Day’s Journey into Night is a drama in four acts written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill in 1941–42 but only published in 1956. The play is widely considered to be his masterwork. He won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his incredible work. The drama was written and broken into four different acts. Certain parts of the story makes life connections to the author’s life. The connection it makes to the author’s life is that like the character Edmund, he was a child of a Broadway actor. Eugene O’Neill was Irish-American and so were the Tyrones. Also just like James and Tyrone, he gave up a promising career as a Shakespearean actor.

The major character of this story Edmund. The reason why is because he really didn’t have any good health. His health was getting bad. He started developing a terrible cough and a lot of crazy other symptoms. He also was a major character because he had a major role for a play or something and Tyrone was extremely jealous because it felt like Edmund was stealing the spotlight.

The setting of the story mainly took place in the family room of the Tyrones' summer home during almost the whole entire story. The Tyrones’ house is based on Eugene O’Neil’s childhood summer home in London, Connecticut. The house itself is really important because it’s the closest thing the characters have to a home. It really doesn’t get the job done of providing an emotionally safe, comfortable, haven for the characters.

The themes of this story is guilt and blame, suffering, and memory and the past. These three themes are really important to this story. It’s guilt and blame because The characters in Long Day's Journey are absolutely obsessed with thinking over the past and either feeling guilty about what they've done, or blaming someone else for all the problems they face, suffering because the characters have basically nothing to do at all no fun or anything, and memory and the past because everyone in in the story has some major anxiety about the lost Good Old Days and about old mistakes that still show scars.