Essay about The Ending to Eugene O'Neil's Long Day's Journey Into Night
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The Ending to Eugene O'Neil's Long Day's Journey Into Night
It is understandable that so many people in our class did not find the last act of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night a satisfying one; there is no tidy ending, no goodbye kisses or murder confessions; none of the charaters leave the stage with flowers in their hands or with smiles on their faces and none of the characters give explanatory monologues after the curtain falls, as we've become accustomed to by reading so much Shakespeare. O'Neill, though, isn't Shakespeare and Long Days Journey Into Night is as different from, say, A Midsummer's Night Dream or Twelfth Night than a pint of stout ale is from a glass of light chardonney. It is because of the uniqueness…show more content…
Even Jamie, who is berated time and time again for his loose tongue, stammers, as he has things that he has left unsaid and that no one is really aware. In many ways, the first three acts of the play are little more than just this - four characters stammering, letting emotions build themselves up inside of them; the first three acts are a prelude to the drama that unfolds in the final act of the play. In the beginnings of the play we are given the extreme circumstances surrounding the family that day: Edmund is to be diagnosed with consumption, Mary is to fall deeper and deeper into an addiction from which she supposedly recovered, and each of the characters is to unravel under the strain that all the stammering has placed upon them. We are given the impression that the events of the fourth act has never happened before; for example, even though he has lived with his father for more than twenty years, Edmund has never heard him speak the way he speaks to him in his final act, when his father tells him of how miserable he is now and how he was so muh happier as a struggling, young actor than as a commerial success. Up until the final act, Edmund has gone with Jamie and fancied Tyrone as little
Even Jamie, who is berated time and time again for his loose tongue, stammers, as he has things that he has left unsaid and that no one is really aware. In many ways, the first three acts of the play are little more than just this - four characters stammering, letting emotions build themselves up inside of them; the first three acts are a prelude to the drama that unfolds in the final act of the play. In the beginnings of the play we are given the extreme circumstances surrounding the family that day: Edmund is to be diagnosed with consumption, Mary is to fall deeper and deeper into an addiction from which she supposedly recovered, and each of the characters is to unravel under the strain that all the stammering has placed upon them. We are given the impression that the events of the fourth act has never happened before; for example, even though he has lived with his father for more than twenty years, Edmund has never heard him speak the way he speaks to him in his final act, when his father tells him of how miserable he is now and how he was so muh happier as a struggling, young actor than as a commerial success. Up until the final act, Edmund has gone with Jamie and fancied Tyrone as little
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