Long Day’s Journey…

Eugene O’Neill was possibly one of the most depressing human beings who ever lived, and he proves this with his play Long Day’s Journey into Night, which is widely considered to be one of his best works ever. The play is autobiographical, therefore O’Neill enthusiasts/stalkers had a field day sucking up all this information about him and his twisted family. Now, Long Day’s Journey could be in contention for Most Ambiguous Ending of All Time, except for one tiny detail: O’Neill’s masterpiece was autobiographical. There must’ve been an ending; it was his life, and he’s dead now. There we go. End scene.

It can also be argued, though, that Long Day’s Journey was just a snippet of O’Neill’s life; therefore, it leaves the reader hanging and in some cases hungry for more. Eugene’s mother, Mary, is a morphine addict and is slowly but surely being driven insane. As an excuse for getting her fix, she uses her rheumatism-plagued hands as the reason why she needs more “medication.”

MARY: It was kind of you to keep my company this afternoon, Cathleen. I would have been lonely driving uptown alone.

CATHLEEN: Sure, wouldn’t I rather ride in a fine automobile than stay here and listen to Bridget’s lies about her relations? It was like a vacation, Ma’am. She pauses–then stupidly. There was only one thing I didn’t like.

MARY (vaguely): What was that, Cathleen?

CATHLEEN: The way the man in the drugstore acted when I took in the prescription for you. Indignantly. The impudence of him!

MARY (with stubborn blankness): What are you talking about? What drugstore? What prescription? Then hastily, as Cathleen stares in stupid amazement. Oh, of course, I’d forgotten. The medicine for the rheumatism in my hands. What did the man say? Then with indifference. Not that it matters as long as he filled the prescription.

Readers of the play and viewers of the film could be wondering how long it takes Mary to crack permanently and die. It’s also confirmed in the play that Edmund (this is Eugene’s character, he switched his name with his dead baby brother’s) is diagnosed with consumption and will have to go away to a sanitorium. His father, James (commonly referred to as “Tyrone”), assures his son and family that in six months to a year, Edmund will be back and healthier than ever. Does this really happen? After all, throughout the play so much stress was put on Edmund not drinking too much, but the last we hear from the O’Neill/Tyrone family, they’re sitting around in the dining room taking swigs of Tyrone’s whiskey while Mary tromps around dragging her wedding dress behind her. To a reader or viewer, this is definitely not the most preferable type of ending out there.

Another character that the audience grows concerned with is Jamie, Edmund’s older brother. He’s without a doubt the outcast of the family, listened to and taken seriously only by Edmund. His parents are ashamed of him and are convinced that he’s going nowhere in life.

TYRONE: Well, well, let’s not argue. You’ve got brains in that head of yours, though you do your best to deny them. You’ll live to learn the value of a dollar. You’re not like your damned tramp of a brother. Where is he, by the way?

EDMUND: How would I know?

TYRONE: I thought you’d gone back uptown to meet him.

EDMUND: No. I walked out to the beach. I haven’t seen him since this afternoon.

TYRONE: Well, if you split the money I gave you with him, like a fool–

EDMUND: Sure I did. He’s always staked me when he had anything.

TYRONE: Then it doesn’t take a soothsayer to tell he’s probably in the whorehouse.

EDMUND: What of it if he is? Why not?

TYRONE (contemptuously): Why not indeed. It’s the fit place for him. If he’s ever had a loftier dream than whores and whiskey, he’s never shown it.

There are a variety of choices for Jamie’s fate. (A) Does Jamie ever change his ways? He’s the only member of the family who addresses Mary’s problems head-on and it often gets him in trouble. (B) Will he soften his tone and words? (C) Maybe he’ll leave the family. (D) None of the above. Or there’s always (E): _________ where you can fill in your own preference for what happens to Jamie. This can be applied to all members of the O’Neill/Tyrone family, even though their fates are already set in stone. Escapades and controversies can be added along the way by readers/viewers with extremely active imaginations, but in the end they all end up the way they are now.

“I’m going to the movies!” Glass Menagerie analysis action.

Especially since we’re now knee-deep in amazingly depressing Eugene O’Neill’s work, it might be nice to take a quick break and go back to the less depressing, slightly less drug-addicted and lust-filled characters of Tennessee Williams. One of his most famous plays, The Glass Menagerie, tells the tale of a man named Tom, his crippled and painfully shy sister Laura, and their shrill-voiced, overprotective mother, Amanda. Williams based the character of Tom off of himself, so the play was described as somewhat autobiographical, although not to the extent that O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was. Let’s just hope that for Williams’ sake, his mother didn’t have a voice nearly as annoying as Katharine Hepburn’s in the film version of this play.

Tom is a dreamer who wants to get out of his mother’s house as soon as possible, but he feels guilty even thinking about leaving his family. His mother is desperate for Laura to find a gentleman caller and has Tom bring one home from his work. In a somewhat ironic twist Mr. Jim O’Connor, the potential suitor Tom brings home, was Laura’s high school crush. After some awkward moments, the two hit it off, only to be separated again by the fact that Jim has a serious girlfriend. Laura is heartbroken, Tom is stunned, and Amanda is convinced that Tom did this in order to make a fool of his family.

AMANDA: You didn’t mention that he was engaged to be married.

TOM: Jim? Engaged?

AMANDA: That’s what he just informed us.

TOM: I’ll be jiggered! I didn’t know about that!

AMANDA: That seems very peculiar.

TOM: What’s peculiar about it?

AMANDA: Didn’t you call him your best friend down at the warehouse?

TOM: He is, but how did I know?

AMANDA: It seems extremely peculiar that you wouldn’t know your best friend was going to be married!

TOM: The warehouse is where I work, not where I know things about people!

AMANDA: You don’t know things anywhere! You live in a dream; you manufacture illusions! Where are you going?

TOM: I’m going to the movies.

This is usually Tom’s excuse for leaving his hectic, eclectic family. He wants to get lost in the non-reality of movies, just like most of us do today. Maybe that’s a little reason why Williams wrote so much–it provided for him a temporary escape from reality, just like Tom and his movies. There’s also some foreshadowing action going on, when Tom engages Jim in a conversation about how he wants to leave his mother and sister. Not too surprisingly, the conversation is about movies.

TOM: Yes, movies! Look at them–All of those glamorous people–having adventures–hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them!…But I’m not patient. I don’t want to wait till then. I’m tired of the movies and I am about to move!

Looks like Tom’s gonna pull a stunt like his father did years earlier, deserting the family with no real hope of survival, emotional, monetary, or otherwise.  This is where the possibility of open endings comes in, once again.  There aren’t as many choices here.  Tom does end up leaving the family but feels haunted by Laura’s constant presence in his mind; does his act spell death for his family?  Will he end up in an asylum, maybe becoming inmates with Williams’ Blanche DuBois?  The reader can listen to Monty Python’s Spamalot and “Always look on the bright side of life,” believing that the confidence Jim instilled in Laura will carry over into college or the workforce, and she and Amanda will be able to begin a new life without Tom.  Jim could leave his steady girlfriend, Betty, and go back to Laura.  That’d be nice.  Or maybe more people would subscribe to Amanda’s magazine program–that’s unlikely, but there’s always hope.