Long Day’s Journey Into Night beyond the fiction

Long day’s journey into the night is a play written by Eugene O’Neil and published posthumously in 1956. This play has to do with family problems caused by a variety of reasons. As we might notice while reading the play, from the very beginning of the story problems and tension take place on the scene. As we read it, many different difficulties start to converge in the development of a story. A mother who is probably, a morphine addicted; a son affected by tuberculosis according to the symptoms he has; another son with alcoholic problems and a father characterized by being stingy. To my mind, the saddest part about this story is that, virtually no member of this family try to make a change in order to have a better family relation and life. They choose to play dumb as nothing really happens.

Despite the fact that O’Neill’s characters in the play are supposed to be fictional, as we are reading and above all, if we know a bit about his life, it is possible to notice the fact that what is told in the play is nothing less than his own story of life. When I read the play I thought this is a very sad and tragic story, however when I was told that it was based on O’Neill´s story of life, that play got even sadder.

There are several aspects of this play that seem interesting to me and at the same time called my attention. One of those was the fact that at least to me what O’Neill tried to do by adapting his life to a play, was to forget for a moment that his story of life had happened that way. Perhaps, he wanted his story to be fiction from the very beginning. A tragic story which when curtains go down on stage, will be part of an outstanding play and performance, instead of being part of real life.

Another important aspect about this play, is the fact there is an open ending which does not limit us to give the story the final we want to. In a way, we could guess this story will even worse, nevertheless we have to consider that maybe thing might go right in time. The true ending of this play is up to the reader.

Finally, the last relevant aspect about this play, has to with the fact we, as readers, tend to feel identified with the story. No all families have such problems, however many of them have had to be through tough times. In many families, addictions of any kind as well as unexpected and mortal diseases become a huge problem in order to have a good and peaceful life. However, unlike this story, we can decide to make a change if we expect that our difficulties go better in the future.

Sources

O'Neill, E. (1956). Long Day’s Journey Into Night. London: Yale University Press.