Long Day’s Journey into Night Essay on Mary

Long Day’s Essay into Night

The play, Long Days Journey into Night, follows the Tyrone family through a day of their lives. Each character is unique and plays a specific role in this tragic drama. Mary represents an inability to face up to reality; she would rather mask herself with drugs, and blame others for her problems.

Nothing is ever Mary’s fault; she torments her husband with her constant complaints and accusations. She blames James Tyrone for her drug addiction and unhappiness. James Tyrone is really trying his best to make Mary happy, but she is not grateful for his efforts. Mary even complains to James for not making their house a home for their family when she says, “I've never felt it was my home. It was wrong from the start. Everything was done in the cheapest way"(44). Mary cannot accept the fact that her twenty-year drug addiction to morphine is her fault. She constantly refers to James’ frugalness as the cause of her addiction and all of the other problems in their household. The truth is that Mary and her addiction is the root of many problems in the Tyrone family, but she continues to put blame on others. Not only does Mary blame her husband for her problems, but she also holds her two sons responsible for some of her troubles. Edmund is blamed for Mary’s drug addiction because it was during his childbirth when she was first given morphine. “I was so healthy before Edmund was born”(87) Mary states. Also, Mary blames Edmund for her rheumatism in her hands when she yells, “I never knew what rheumatism was before you were born! Ask your father!”(116). Her arthritis is nobody’s fault, but Mary insists on blaming Edmund. Jamie is the least blamed for his mothers problems, but sometimes she says it is his behavior that causes her morphine use. Through all this blame and anger at one another in the Tyrone household, Mary and her family seem to love each other. It is her drug use and blame that causes a lot of the conflicts faced by the Tyrone’s.

Throughout the play Mary is constantly on drugs and her unresolved problems fire her addiction. The morphine she used once during childbirth perpetuated a strong addiction to the drug and the start of some serious problems within her family. When Mary first married James they where happy together, but now she feels that she has given up the dreams of her life and she isn’t worth anything now. She was educated in a convent and had dreams of becoming a nun or a pianist. Inside Mary’s complex mind, I think that she believes if she had not married James, then her dreams would have come true. This fuels her addiction to morphine because the morphine allows her to escape to the past when she had those dreams in reach. Another stimulant to Mary’s addiction is the fact that her sons are not doing anything with their lives and she feels that her husband is cheap. Mary says, “Poor Jamie! How he hates working”(43). I didn’t think this was a sincere statement made by Mary, but instead it was sarcastic. Jamie is a bum who doesn’t have a steady job or girlfriend and his mother is really upset about that. She tries to mask those problems by taking a dose of morphine. She also accuses Edmund of following in his brother’s footsteps, which makes her want to take more morphine. Both Jamie and Edmund don’t want their mother on drugs, but they also don’t want to upset her. They are stuck in a pickle between pleasing their mother and helping her stop her addiction to morphine. The boys spy a little bit on Mary to try to make sure she isn’t taking morphine. Mary says to them, “Stop suspecting me! Please, dear! You hurt me!”(47). Then they give her some space and she probably takes her drug upstairs while they are in the living room. The same problem goes on with James. He cannot confront his wife on her addiction and when he gets