Long Day’s Journey into Night 849and remorseful, Tyrone turns on three bulbs in the
chandelier to show his repentance, but only for a
short spell. The remedies sought by the Tyrones to
ease their feelings of guilt show their inability or
refusal to correct their mistakes. Mary chooses to
forgive her husband and seek oblivion in morphine.
In spite of his commitment to his family, Tyrone
prefers self-pity and vague remorse. Jamie finds
wasting his life on drinks and women a sort of self-
inflicted punishment for his fratricidal thoughts,
which he seals with a full confession to Edmund.
And Edmund, the poet, has a poet’s remorse—gra-
tuitous and ineffectual since he is only guilty of hav-
ing been born. Guilt turns into a way of living for
the characters in this modern drama.
Aloisia Sorop
memor y in Long Day’s Journey into Night
Memory is so inherent a part of our personality that
people tend to forget how much of our life relies
on remembering things. Memory can be a friendly
companion or a haunting visitor; it depends on how
tuned in we are to our own consciousness.
Mary Tyrone, the mother in Eugene O’Neill’s
Long Day’s Journey into Night, apologizes for remem-
bering out loud. Recollection, reminding, and obliv-
ion are the different manifestations of memory
experienced by the four Tyrones. The whole play is
actually constructed on the interplay between past
and present caused by the persistent interference of
memory in the characters’ lives.
James Tyrone, the father, is a formerly successful
actor, now retired, whose memories of his difficult
childhood have turned him into a closefisted man.
He keeps reminding the others of it by being stingy
with the family’s money. But he becomes uneasy
whenever his wife or sons remind him of his role in
Mary’s turning into a drug addict because he had a
cheap and incompetent doctor treat her, or the fact
that although he is now a prosperous estate owner,
he chooses a cheap state sanatorium for his tuber-
cular son.
Jamie, the elder son, is the black sheep of the
family, a failed actor, heavy drinker, and womanizer.
Edmund, the younger son, is a promising journalist
who has to face several problems on the day of the
play’s action in August 1912. He becomes aware of
his mother’s slow return to addiction, and he receives
the news of his serious condition, tuberculosis. He
also has the bitter revelation that his elder brother,
Jamie, both loves and loathes him for his favored
position in the family. The two sons are too young
to find their memories burdensome, but they are
so intricately linked to their parents’ lives that they
resent the latter’s games with memory.
The character most exposed to the effects of
memory is Mary Tyrone. She married James out of
love but does not have a happy life. She never had
a proper home to raise her children but had to join
her husband on his tours, and as a result, one of her
boys died of measles in infancy. After Edmund, their
youngest son, was born, she was treated with mor-
phine and consequently became an addict. She has
just returned from a sanatorium, but to her family’s
dismay, she gradually and stealthily returns to her
addiction. She uses recollections of happy times as
remedies for present pains. Her gradual retreat into
the oblivion induced by morphine is caused by her
desire to detach herself from the upsetting present.
On the other hand, Mary cannot help remem-
bering several painful moments in her life such
as her father’s death of tuberculosis (then called
consumption) and, the most devastating memory,
the death of her infant son, Eugene. She associates
memory with feelings of guilt and remorse. When
Tyrone asks her if she cannot forget, she answers
that she can only forgive but not forget. Her reply
reveals the bitterness at the core of her heart: She
considers him responsible for most of the tragedy in
her life, past and present.
As the play progresses, Mary is more and more
under the influence of morphine and subconsciously
drawn into her memories. She treats the things that
remind her of her repressed aspirations differently:
She avoids looking at her old and bony fingers,
which could have made her into a pianist, but she
produces her wedding gown out of a trunk. She
wants both to forget and to remember, and she is the
only character who passes through the whole range
of instances of memory. She starts by recollecting
things, painful things in particular; then she seeks
oblivion in drugs and resigned forgiveness. Fail-
ing this, she seems to accommodate reminiscences
of her former life, a fragmented past that mingles