848 O’Neill, Eugene
to fight addiction. Much as they are drawn to each
other, the brothers do not have a smooth relationship,
either. Jamie is sincerely devastated by his brother’s
illness, but he confesses he was jealous of his
brother’s position in the family, calling him “Mama’s
baby, Papa’s pet,” and “the family’s White Hope” and
admitting he wished bad things for Edmund.
But a family also has roots and history. Tyrone
proudly reminds them they are Irish Catholics, thus
insisting on their fortitude and faith, while Mary,
on the other hand, is haunted by the memory of her
dead father and infant son.
Family is at the core of this bitter, autobio-
graphical play. The Tyrones are strongly tied by their
mutual love and personal tragedies. They are a fam-
ily, but they cannot help being drawn apart by their
sense of guilt, their repressed aspirations and mutual
accusations.
Aloisia Sorop
GuILt in Long Day’s Journey into Night
Guilt is a highly traumatic feeling that betrays dis-
satisfaction with one’s own person or actions based
on some real or imaginary personal failures. Eugene
O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night is built
on feelings of guilt, self-pity, and mutual accusations.
The Tyrones experience such a shock to find that
the mother is on morphine again and the younger
son has tuberculosis that long repressed feelings of
guilt emerge and tell bits of the family’s story.
The most guilt-ridden person is Mary, the
mother. Disappointed with her marriage, longing
for the stability a home and friends can offer, she has
built a moral framework that generates long- and
short-term guilt. Her long-term feelings of guilt
regard her failure as a wife and as a mother and recall
events that happened long ago, such as marrying the
handsome James Tyrone, a successful actor, instead
of following her own artistic calling. Guilt also
pervades her thoughts concerning the death of her
infant son, Eugene. This event was so devastating
that she became depressive and considered herself
unworthy to give birth to her third son, Edmund,
a sickly and sensitive child, now a promising intel-
lectual. Though slow in accepting the seriousness of
Edmund’s tuberculosis, Mary blames it on herself
and considers it a punishment for her sin.
Mary’s short-term feelings of guilt relate to her
recent relapse to morphine and her growing aware-
ness that her family are watching her. She lies to
them as she lies to herself. She prefers to ignore
unpleasant realities and wallow in memories of the
past.
James Tyrone’s feelings of guilt mix with self-
pity. His remorse is limited because he will not
admit that his stinginess caused Mary to be treated
with morphine by a cheap doctor after Edmund’s
birth. Tyrone is repeatedly reproached by his family
that, though now a rich man, he remains closefisted
and is still haunted by the image of the poorhouse.
Mary also blames him for her empty life when she
was young and accompanied him on his tours, and
for his obvious jealousy of her babies.
Self-pity is more powerful in Tyrone than feel-
ings of guilt. He admits to Edmund, when drunk,
that his poverty-stricken childhood put its imprint
on his character and even spoiled his chances of
becoming a great actor by pushing him toward
immediate financial success in cheap popular roles.
Jamie, a cynical drunkard and womanizer, is
also tormented by feelings of guilt. He failed as an
actor, and he has always been jealous of Edmund for
being the favorite child. He admits he taught him
bad things, in spite of his great love for him, only to
reduce the difference between them. Edmund, in his
sensitive and poetic way, voices his remorse that his
mother became an addict because of him. He openly
accuses his father for his obsession with money
which caused his mother’s addiction and, under the
present desperate conditions, prompts him to choose
a cheap state sanatorium for his sick son.
The feelings of guilt are associated with exterior
and interior factors of oppression. Outside, there is
the fog coming from the harbor. Mary’s relapse to
morphine is paralleled by her coming to terms with
the fog. If the foghorn kept her awake all night, the
next day she increases the dose of morphine and
gradually grows fond of the fog. Unlike her, Tyrone
is symbolically deaf to the foghorn. But Edmund,
too, loves the fog, which offers him refuge from
reality: “It was what I needed. The fog was where I
wanted to be.”
The house, too, is dimly lit, as if it were a projec-
tion of the Tyrones’ hazy conscience. When drunk