Lack of Respect

 One of the things that I do when I read is I feel like I’m part of the story to the point where I get genuinely frustrated with the characters, as if they were real. I don’t appreciate the static nature of this family, and I will take this post as an opportunity to preach about how and why they’re doing the whole “family” thing wrong.

Every time they get somewhere with their arguments, the Tyrones will find excuses to end the conversation. Whenever Mary starts up a healthy rant on her family’s mistakes, she is attacked by her self-consciousness and meekly rambles about her physical appearance. When she’s not doped up, she feels guilty about her addiction to the point where she has no confidence in her words. This, in turn, causes her family to doubt her (they already doubt her enough for the morphine), so the Tyrone men don’t seem to hear what she’s saying anyway. Instead of respecting her turn, they stare at her pityingly, and she asks them why they’re doing that instead of continuing her necessary lecture. 

Likewise, Jamie just takes his father’s insults with a shrug or simple dismissal. Tyrone just seems really irritable all the time, except when he has moments of pity for Edmund and his wife. He doesn’t know where he stands on any issue (e.g. he struggles to pick between Shaughnessy and Harker because, as we discussed, Shaughnessy represents Tyrone’s bitterness, but Harker represents Tyrone’s aspirations), so he is unable to establish himself as the solid patriarch. Honestly, Edmund seems to be the most rational of them all, but everyone feels sorry for him anyway because he has tuberculosis and his existence stems from the questionable need to replace a dead baby.

This is when I ask myself why I’m so fed up with this family and, more to the point, why this family doesn’t work. The Tyrones share a crippling lack of respect for themselves and each other that blocks their progress individually and as a whole. There is no storm of progress to force them into the future. From a Benjaminian (?) perspective, these people live among the “wreckage” of their past, in a claustrophobic space of dead air laced with the stench of decayed dreams and damning denial.

-Ly