Long Day's Journey Into Night

Book Summary by: Edke

Original Author: O'Neill

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The Character of Mary in O’Neill’s Drama Entitled ‘Long Day’s journey Into Night’
The mother, Mary, is not a

realistic and down-to-earth member of the family. Pretending to be happy and feeling at home is the most difficult for her. Not being satisfied with her life at all, she is living in a dream by raking up the past to compensate her inner sorrow.
Just like Tyrone and the two brothers, she is trying to steer clear of facing the others and looking into their eyes deeply, because that would be personal and a sign of authentic relationship. Instead, she becomes embarrassed and nervous catching the others looking at her, and automatically thinks of her appearance, as if their communication could only be about the surface. (‘Why do you look at me like that? Is it my hair coming down?’)
When someone looks at her on closer inspection without her being aware of it the person is a spy-that’s what she thinks. It seems that she really shudders at the thought of having a deep conservation with the others and wants to hide herself with her own thoughts and feelings. Therefore, she prefers being in a fog. (‘It hides you from the world and the world from you… No one can touch or find you any more.’)
What she really dislikes is a sound which makes her out of her weariness and makes her ponder over life. In this case, that’s the foghorn. ‘It’s the foghorn I hate. It won’t let you alone. It keeps reminding you, and warning you, and calling you back.’ (Here, I think the foghorn fulfils the same function as the continually repeated croaking of the crow in Poe’s poem titled ‘The Raven’).
Pretence and not talking about inner pains is typical of the Tyrone family. It is an unconscious rule, and when someone does not obey it, the others feel uneasy. It’s Mary who breaks it in most of the cases, and when once she expresses her bitterness about how difficult it is to pretend to feel at home and she is worried about Edmund, the reaction of Tyrone is: ‘For the love of god, why couldn’t you have the strength to keep on?’ I would add: keep on pretending that it is a real home and everyone is happy at it, Edmund does not have any serious matter just a summer cold, and so on.
Mary is not content with her life because she feels, just like everyone, that they do not live life to the fullest. Therefore, she is haunting the past before she got to know James Tyrone. According to her account she was happy and found her life at the convent meaningful. Now she misses something. ‘What is it I’m looking for? I know it’s something I lost… something I miss terribly.’
The whole family suffers from the lack of happiness. There is not faith, hope, real friends around them. In their separation they have a fend for each other, but their family life is also a pretence like at theatre. So when Mary finishes the drama she is introduced by Jamie: ‘The Mad Scene. Enter Ophelia!’