Structural Analysis of the Play, Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill

The characters of Sheila and Eric are important in the play as; Priestley introduces them to be coming from a trouble-free, spoiled and wealthy family background where there are no problems, although later we find out that this is not the case.

As Deane asserts, the play is in many respects an intelligent and enlightening metaphor for the situation in Northern Ireland. The aims of raising cultural awareness and dispelling socio-political apathy in the North were central to

A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, by Eugene O’Neill, is a deeply autobiographical play. His life was rampant with confusion and addictions in his family. Each character in this play has a profound resemblance, and draws parallels and connections with a member of his own family. The long journey that the title of the play refers to is a journey into his past. Fog is a recurring metaphor in the play; it is a physical presence even before it becomes a crucial symbol of the family’s impenetrable confusion. It is referred to in the text as well as stage directions in this play. It sets the mood for the play in all its somber hues.

Throughout the short story "Long Day's Journey `into Night" the author, uses the Tyrone family to show much the past interferes with the future. The woman of the household, Mary, has the most problems. Not only does she despise her husband for never giving her a proper "home", but she also felt like he was the cause of her getting addicted to morphine by not getting her a better doctor to deal with her pain after the birth of Edmund. When it comes to the children, Jamie, and Edmund, they resent their mother for being an addict and their father for always being so cheap. The patriarch of the family, Tyrone, is resentful because missed out on getting his big break from acting.

They say that opposites attract and this holds true for the relationship between William and Hester as they learn more about one another. The husband and wife came from different upbringings. William is born with a strict father among the “Back Creek Folk”, while his wife is considered “one of the Gap people” with flexible, supportive parents. The way their parents raised them influences the way they act. William is a hard worker who speaks very little, but his wife Hester does enough talking for the both of them. Hester is a strong woman and manages the family farm very well. She is able to make decisions quickly without William’s input. The farm is considered to be most prosperous in Mcpherson County. The couple’s three sons work on the

Maureen Walls- she is the youngest child of the family. She is the most difficult character to understand in the family. She would always be at her friends’ houses while living in Welch. Maureen becomes confused and she stabs her mother. She is the most fragile child of the family. She went to live to California living away from her family at a younger

The play itself is set in a large house owned by a rich factory owner, Mr. Birling. Mr. Birling has a wife and two children, Sheila and Eric. The family are having a small party because they are celebrating the engagement of Sheila, Birlings daughter, to Gerald Croft. Gerald is the son of a great man who also owns a factory and Mr. Birling sees this as a chance to get into the big

Although, the play explores Australian history from sixty years ago and younger audience perhaps might not grasps the context, it holds a deep sentimental value and exposes brutal truths and perpetual errors in humanity which is confrontational even nowadays. Good Works centres around two Irish Catholic family the wealthy

Set in Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire in 1901, an empty stage invites the viewer to use his or her imagination to understand the actions. During the first moments, the paperboy makes his deliveries just as the milkman. Meanwhile, at the two family houses, the women, Mrs. Gibbs who is African-American, prepares the breakfast for her two children, Rebecca and George. Simultaneously, her neighbor, Mrs. Webb is doing the same for her children and at the ring of a bell the children are sent to school. These activities are repeated almost every day in both of the houses. Following, the two neighbors gossip while sitting on Mrs. Webb’s yard and peeling beans. Because the stage is empty, the sound effects play a major part in creating a scene that can be easily understood. The noise of glass bottles when the milkman approaches or the whistles of the train are indispensable additions to the scenes. Every now and then, the stage manager interrupts the action to provide some fact either about the town itself, or about its inhabitants; therefore, she is outside of everything that happens. Still, the stage manager had a few of rolls as a member of the town that helped to support the play. Apparently a small town where everyone knows each other, Mrs. Webb’s daughter and Mrs. Gibbs son begin to show some interest in each other, and end up getting married three years later. The marriage ends with Mrs. Webb’s daughter Emily dying while giving birth to a child, at which point she still figures in the play, but as a spirit. Alongside, there are several other spirits that are shown, like that of he own mother-in-law, for instance. At this point, Emily goes on a self-reflection journey about the meaning of life, and as she goes back to her twelfth birthday, the sight of her family, specially her young mother both hurts her and helps her realize the beauty

Rosamond is looking forward to the future, to be free from her stepmother and experience love besides that between father and daughter. The story is loaded with cruel and horrible acts. Mike Fink tries to kill Jamie and Clement for bags of gold; Clement's first wife dies after seeing their son thrown into boiling water by Indians, Kentucky Thomas is killed leaving his ugly wife to marry Clement, an Indian girl is raped and killed by Little Harp, and Rosamond is raped by Jamie. All of these acts are overpowered, however, by the humor of the characters. The three main characters represent clear opposites in their own characters. Rosamond is beautiful and pure but could not tell the truth to save her life. Clement is a planter who is restless and loves to travel. Jamie is a criminal as well as a bridegroom. Their outside appearance can undermine the opinions of others. "If being a bandit were his breadth and scope, I should find him and kill him for sure," said he. "But since in addition he loves my daughter, he must be not the one man, but two, and I should be afraid of killing the second. For all things are double, and this should keep us from taking liberties with the outside world, and acting too quickly to finish things off. All things are divided in half-night and day, the soul and body, and sorrow and joy and youth and age, and sometimes I wonder if even my own wife has not been the one person all the time, and I loved her

The suspense in this story is the death of the narrator’s daughter, Gracie. That is why she becomes the reason to remember how family ties are important. The central character of the story is the narrator. The conflict of the story is that the narrator’s brother, Sonny, is in jail for taking and selling heroin (Baldwin, 489). The narrator displays his brother Sonny, who is also antagonist of the

In a nutshell she was just a young girl, then got married and died. The message I personally got from the play was to live life to the fullest because I personally wouldn’t want three relatively short acts to describe my life from start to

The author lets us experience the conflict and choose the sides of the family that best describe our own sense of belonging. We become accommodated with the protagonist early on, it is the one dreaming for a better life...fortunately, dreaming about success is the motivation that keeps this family sleeping at night and working during the day. Its a story of a dysfunctional family that works together for a common cause, and

The only other dynamic character is Laird, her little brother. At the beginning of the story he is very young and obeys his big sister, no matter what she tells him to do; at the end, he too has grown up somewhat and no longer accepts her authority unquestioningly. He puts an end to their bedtime singing ceremony when he tells her, "You sound silly," and tells on her when she lets the horse escape. Laird is the only character beside Henry Bailey that is given a name. His name, a Scotch form of the title "Lord," demonstrates his importance to the family, as the only boy, and his place in society, which will have more respect for him than for his sister. Yet, in the story it is evident that the narrator is just as good a worker as her brother-far better, because of her advantage in age. It is only because she is a girl that her mother expects her to be a help inside the house, not outside of it. The other characters are the narrator's father, her mother, and the hired hand, Henry Bailey. Henry is someone whom the children admire for his "ability to make his stomach growl at will, and for his laughter, which was full of high whistlings and gurglings and involved the whole faulty machinery of his chest," and for other characteristics that adults might find vulgar, but that are wondrous and exciting to the children. The father is a creative, inventive man and a hard worker, who keeps his thoughts to himself but, in the narrator's opinion, can be depended upon. The mother is a

In the play, Mary is a beautiful woman and lives the life like any other girls of her time; but she is emotionally attached to her sons and her family when she marries into the Tyrone family. She is also getting old, so she keeps going on her days worrying about her change of appearance. She suffers from a morphine addiction and she is psychologically wounded because of her past. She tries many times to break free but she could not stop as she spends time with her family. She has gone through many struggles but she cannot move on with her life. She keeps looking back into the past; and she regrets marrying into the family because of the dreams she had to sacrifice such as becoming a nun or a concert pianist.