mini research paper

Eugene O’Neill can be considered an unseen narrator in his play A Long Day’s Journey into Night (Mann 1). He wrote the play later in life because of this, he had time to reflect and think about the impact his family had on him as a person and most importantly as a writer. Throughout O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey into Night the characters often find themselves in situations which are nearly identical to O’Neill’s own personal life experiences, because of this the play can be viewed as a biographical reading in which events and personalities presented in the work have roots in the authors own history.
In the play Mary and James Tyrone clearly parallel O’Neill’s own mother and father, Mary and James O’Neill- their names just begin the similarities between the characters and his parents. O’Neill’s mother was of Irish decent; she grew up Catholic and went to a Catholic school. She had a very strong talent for music and while in New York met then actor, James O’Neill backstage after seeing one of the plays he stared in. The two fell in love and married. Mary left her dreams behind as she followed James on his acting tours. While away with James, Mary’s oldest son Jamie infected their other baby with measles and after his death Mary developed an addiction to morphine (Stilling 1). Mary O’Neill’s story is nearly the same exact one that Eugene O’Neill depicts as Mary Tyrone’s. O’Neill’s father James’s life story is also almost identical to that of James Tyrone. James O’Neill was an Irish immigrant who loved Shakespeare and eventually became a very popular actor. After his marriage to Mary and start of their family together James bought exclusive rights to the play The Count of Monte Cristo which grossed him a large amount of money but left him with feelings of “regrettable abandonment of his dream of becoming a great Shakespearean actor in Booth tradition” (Stilling 1).
The Tyrones and O’Neills both have eldest sons named Jamie. Jamie Tyrone and Jamie O’Neill both felt responsible for the death of their younger brother and throughout their lives, both real and fictional, struggled with the guilt left from this experience. Mary Tyrone leaves no question that Jamie was directly responsible for the death of baby Eugene; in a letter that Eugene O’Neill once wrote he questions Jamie O’Neill’s intentions and responsibility in the death of their brother Edmund (Hinden 1). Both Jamie Tyrone and O’Neill were role models for their surviving brother influencing him in the ways of literature, alcohol and sex. At the end of the play Jamie is a drunken mess fixed in his ways, and Edmund is struggling with the need to break away from the destructiveness of his brother and the immanence of being sent to the sanitarium. What will eventually become of Edmund is left unknown but it is known that when Eugene O’Neill returned from his stay at the sanitarium he managed to distance himself from his brother Jamie, become a successful writer, marry and even stop drinking; “as Jamie destroyed himself, Eugene thrived” (Hniden 2). From the knowledge of O’Neill’s past experiences we can infer that Edmund’s future, left untold in the play, will turn out similar to his own; his flourishing as Jamie’s crumbles.
This incredible use of autobiographical elements in this play leaves the reader with a better knowledge of O’Neill’s past and its impact on his life. While Edmund Tyrone represents O’Neill in his younger naïve years when he was unable to realize how his mother, father, both brothers, and the experiences associated would shape who he would become the O’Neill which narrates the novel is grateful as he can now recognize how his family and familial anguish helped him to become the writer he was at the time he wrote the play (Mann 1). The Tyrones take on the four names of O’Neill’s family that influenced his life, that at one time caused him much pain and strife, but finally after much time had passed Eugene was able to “… face my [his] dead at last and write this play, write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones (O’Neill 1).”


Works Cited
Hinden, Michael. "O'Neill and Jamie: a survivor's tale." Comparative Drama 35.3 (2001): 435. Literature Resource Center. Lee County, Fort Myers. 18 Sept. 2008.
Mann, Bruce J. "O'Neill's 'Presence' in Long Day's Journey into Night." Drama Criticism 20 (2003): 15-30. Literature Resource Center. Lee County, Fort Myers. 18 Sept. 2008.
O'Neill, Eugene, and Harold Bloom. Long Day's Journey into Night. New York: Yale UP, 2002.Stilling, Roger J. "Eugene O'Neill." Nobel Prize Laureates in Literature, Part 3 331 (2007). Literature Research Center. Lee County, Fort Myers. 18 Sept. 2008.