Long Day's Journey into Night

The number of pages was overwhelming to look at but I thought the story was an easy read. It was a very interesting story overall because there was a lot of turmoil and drama with Mary who is addicted to Morphine was sent to a sanatorium for treatment. This ultimately doesn’t help her though to the disappointment to her family. Then Edmund has tuberculosis, so this family has gone through a lot in a short amount of time.

The main theme throughout the story was this family not being able to let go of the past or to accept their problems and to confront them. Mary addiction is mainly because of Jamie's stinginess and his unwillingness to pay for proper care. Most of these arguments continue throughout the play. This story is about the Throne family slowly deteriorating over the years. There is also a theme of alcoholism that is displayed, and after I did some research on the background of O’Neil I found out that the character Edmund was suppose to be him. His mother was a morphine addict like Mary as well. O’Neil even had an older brother that died in infancy and so did Edmund. There are many parallels between this story and O’Neil’s life.

Tyrone: Yes, this time you can see how strong and sure of herself she is. She’s a different woman entirely than other times. She has control of her nerves or she had until Edmund got sick. Now you can feel her growing tense and frightened underneath. I wish to God we could keep the truth from her, but we can’t if he has to be sent to a sanatorium. What makes it worse is her father died of consumption. I thought this summed up the whole story, by how Mary still had her morphine problem and there was undoubtedly an alcohol problem circling the family. This shows how lies were told in order to make things not seem as bad as they were but in the end it became a never ending cycle.