Long Day's Journey into Night

Often in a work, either conscious or subconscious, an author’s personal life experiences or beliefs present themselves. For Eugene O’Neill, many of his works contained pieces of his life, usually revolving around what transpired with his family. Most of these were present in the relationships between the different characters within his plays. The tragedies that he or members of his family went through in his life provided inspiration many of the characters of his plays. Though O’Neill escaped the many downfalls of his other family members, their experiences and his interaction with them provided material to create characters that had full, dynamic personalities. The most common figure who developed into characters in O’Neill’s works was his brother, Jamie O’Neill. His brother’s destructive ways often manifested themselves in the works. In Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, O’Neill utilizes his experiences with his brother to create a portrait of him and his relationship with Eugene.

In Long Day’s Journey into Night, O’Neill does little to attempt to mask the comparison of Jamie to his real life brother. Many of the actions committed by Jamie Tyrone mirror the actions of Jamie O’Neill. A prime example comes from the fact that Jamie actually did infect his younger brother, Edmund, with measles when he entered into the child’s room against instructions (O’Neill and Jamie: A Survivor Tale). Much like the Jamie in the play, O’Neill’s brother followed a destructive path that followed a road to alcoholism. Like in the play, Jamie struggled to find his niche in life and spent much of his life searching for it in places that no meaning could be found. Part of Jamie Tyrone’s struggle in the play comes from the ‘death’ of his mother, as Mary at that point is just a shell of her former self. This reflects how Jamie O’Neill’s life continued after the death of his mother. “…but after my mother’s death in 1922 he gave up all hold on life and simply wanted to die as soon as possible” (O’Neill and Jamie: A Survivor Tale). This statement from Eugene O’Neill proves that their mother’s death devastated and demoralized Jamie. This devastation ended up affected the relationship between Jamie and Eugene.

Like the relation between Jamie Tyrone and Jamie O’Neill, O’Neill does little to disguise the similarities of the relationship of the brothers in the play with those of with his brother. Just like Edmund does in the play, after the death of their mother Eugene begins to separate himself from the ways of Jamie to avoid following his path. In turn, this caused a falling away from Jamie. In reality, Edmund’s future commitment to a sanatorium alludes to the break in the relationship with Jamie. In Eugene O’Neill’s life, after he was released from the sanatorium he cut himself loose from influence from Jamie (O’Neill and Jamie: A Survivor Tale). In the end this shows the tedious relationship which was formed between him and his brother.

As seen, Eugene O’Neill’s personal experience had an extensive outcome on his works as well as his life. These few examples were not the only present in Long Day’s Journey into Night. Another example of this was the fact that his mother was actually a morphine addict (O’Neill and Jamie: A Survivor Tale). Overall it becomes quite easy to lose track of who represents what in his life as he uses the same names of family members but in many cases mixes them up to give each character a symbolic meaning. In the end, though O’Neill masterfully uses his experiences to create works that readers can connect to, even if not on the extreme level of some of his events.

Hinden, Michael. “O’Neill and Jamie: A survivor’s tale.” Comparative Drama 35.3 (Fall 2001): 435.