Escape from Reality

In class on Friday, Ameet raised a point that especially stood out to met after completing this week's reading: the literal fog that surrounds the house mirrors the metaphorical fog clouding the lives of the Tyrone family. As the fog around the house thickens, so does the alcohol and drug induced haze the characters bring upon themselves. Mary abuses morphine and the men in the family drink incessantly, presumably to escape the depressing reality of living in a household riddled with problems. For Edmund, the fog provides another method for escape, as he explains to his father:

The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was a ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost.

Edmund's familial problems are tied to the house they are staying in that summer. He seems to love when the fog obscures the house, and thus all the problems within, from his view. But his problems do not end there. He wants to escape reality completely, and the fog allows him to do so. Alone, in the fog and feeling like a "ghost within a ghost" he is finally able to find peace. Unlike alcohol, the fog is a true escape from reality.

It is interesting that he brings up the idea of "another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself," because this is exactly what his family achieves within their household. Through constant substance use, the family brings this obscuring fog into their own lives, trying to obscure the problems in front of them. Trying to drown their problems with alcohol and drugs evidently does not work for the family, as the abuse eventually becomes their problem.

For Edmund, the fog provides a true escape from reality, a fleeting moment of peace in an otherwise problematic and depressing life. Yet for everyone else, the fog is simply another failed veil for the problems they face.

-Andrew T.