Family Problems In Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Eugene O’Neill (1888—1953) is an outstanding playwright who makes outstanding contributions to American Drama and is considered to be the founder of American theatre and "father of American Drama." He wins four Pulitzers in his lifetime and is the only American playwright who has been awarded the Nobel Prize till today. O’Neill is very much interested in depicting family problems and conflicts. Long Day’s Journey into Night is widely considered to be his masterpiece. This autobiographical drama focuses on family problems of a common Irish immigrant family in America at the turn of the20th century, presenting us with a vivid depiction of a common family in a common day with common family problems.Long Day’s Journey into Night shows us an ordinary American middle-class family which is respectable on the surface but obsessed and tortured within. It concentrates on the family problems that are often inevitable in some families, such as drug addiction, alcoholism, generational conflicts, mental and physical illness. It describes three basic relationships in a family:husband and wife, parents and children, and children and children. It vividly depicts the couple Tyrone and Mary’s struggling in the whirlpool of love and hate; the distorted and helpless relationship between parents and children; the most intimate but envy embedded relationship between the two brothers:Jamie and Edmund. All the family members are extremely in lack of a sense of security and belonging. In a common sense, family members should have the most intimate relationship, but in the Tyrones, family members are most alienated ones. Their life is full of accusation and hatred:Tyrone rebukes others’ ingratitude and feels ashamed of the children’s not bringing honor and grace to him; Mary complains of Tyrone’s stinginess and inconsideration; Jamie criticizes the uncomfortable family and parents’preference for Edmund. Edmund is indignant at the parents’ self-seeking and being self-centered and negligence of the family care.Art comes from life and is imprinted by its time. Long Day’s Journey into Night is more than a picture of the Tyrones but transcends the specific and attains the universal. Through it we can sense people’s loss under that materialistic era in which Mammonism and hedonism take precedence over anything else and money seeking becomes the only aim for most people. But after acquiring wealth they are suddenly and astonishingly aware that love and happiness have gone too far away from them. They have to reconsider what they are living for and what exactly is important for human beings during their whole life.This thesis aims to study family problems and find out the causes for these problems in this drama. It includes six sections:The introduction offers a brief account of research background, literature review, purpose and organization of this thesis; meanwhile, it offers a brief introduction of O’Neill and Long Day s Journey into Night.Chapter One studies the relationship between husband and wife in Long Day s Journey into Night and how Tyrone and Mary struggle in the whirlpool of love and marriage.Chapter Two focuses on the relationship between Tyrone parents and their children in this drama and probes into the parents’ influence on their children. From the author’s point of view parents are very important to their children and they are mainly responsible for the children. Everyone is shaped mostly by their early family life. If the parents neglect their children, disaster will be brought about to them even when they grow up.Chapter Three deals with the relationship between the Tyrone brothers in which the author tries to explore what a healthy relationship between brothers is like and how they should handle the complicated and distorted feelings of love and hatred.Chapter Four tries to find out the social influence on family life, such as the Mammonism, religion, etc., and it gives us a hint about how the human beings overcome their flaws and weakness to have a good family life.The last part is the conclusion. Only love can bring "unselfishness" and "goodness" which are much helpful for family problems, not only of Tyrone’s but also ours. Only when the relationship between husband and wife is harmonious, only when there is sufficient love between parents and children, and only when brothers and sisters are tightly united, can a family achieve happiness.