The Disorienting Journey:Identity Dilemma In Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night

O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night is his creative autobiography, a study by himself of his "birth" as a writer from amidst the painful family experiences of his youth; O’Neill set the play tellingly in1912, the year he left home to recover in a tuberculosis sanatorium and to embark on his career as a writer. Urged by an ethnic responsibility, O’Neill reproduced in his late plays the identity crisis of the first-generation Irish-Americans, whose suffering and struggle lays foundation for the success of their descendants.The present study will approach Long Day’s Journey into Night in terms of identity crisis and power discourses. Drawing upon the theory of identity, power and discourse, this thesis is aiming to decipher the loss of identity imposed on those outcast people and the reasons why these should happen. It concludes that power permeates the entire society and decides one’s identity. O’Neill’s concerning of identity issues is due to the political environment of racism faced by the Irish immigrants, due to his childhood of incessant moving family background caused by his father’s actor career, and due to the faithless social context resulted from crazy industrial civilization. Therefore what he tries to do is to explore the meaning of life under the cover of identity crisis. His tone is not one of despair but one of hope. His ultimate message is life rather than death. Chapter one is to expound the theory of identity, and power discourse, finding their inner relationships, analyzing these influence to identity crises under the background of industrial civilization in O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night.Chapter two is to analyzing the identity dilemma faced by the four main characters in the play.Chapter three is focus on the loss of culture identity, from the aspects of ethnic faith, religious belief and family belongingness, which are the essential reason for the characters identity dilemma.The conclusion points out O’Neill’s characters fail to realize the power that they have as human beings to control their own lives, which make them losing their identity. To rebuild their identity in such a chaotic living environment, they need to mold, shape and change themselves.