Doomed From the Start: Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Her bitterness receding into a resigned helplessness.

‘I’m not blaming you, dear. How can you help it? How can any one of us forget?’
Strangely.

‘That’s what makes it so hard—for all of us. We can’t forget. ‘

                                                                        Page 49

            After reading the first two acts of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, what struck me most was the heightened sense of tension that overwhelms the Tyrone household. O’Neill makes no attempt to shield the audience from raging alcoholism and the mysterious, looming horror of illness, but he somehow still manages to leave us on the edge of our seats. We anxiously await an altercation, a confrontation—a moment where all will be revealed and all will be uncovered. But to the same extent that the audience craves an honest encounter with the Tyrones, O’Neill draws back, cloaking the Tyrone home in a shroud of mystery.

            O’Neill does give us a few short quips of honesty from each of the Tyrones—there are moments where their guises falter, if only for a moment. The quote above from Mary Tyrone is one such example. Mary shares a moment of pure, honest emotion with Edmund: "How can any one of us forget?" But the moment is fleeting, and just as soon as Mary reveals her true self, she retreats back into her disguise of merry frivolity.

            In some way or another, I am sure each of us can relate to the Tyrone’s situation. It is often the case that the households that are most perfect ostensibly are actually the most broken.  In any case, whether in family life or elsewhere, we all end up facing hardships that we would rather run away from than face head on. O'Neill uses the Tyrones to show the repercussions in the family of shoving problems “under the rug” instead of confronting them directly.