Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
My first experience of this play was of an audio recording. It did not make an especially deep impression on me, and I was on the verge of writing a review saying as much, when another reviewer alerted me to the literary importance of the stage instructions. Chastened, I decided I ought to actually read the play before I made a fool of myself, and I’m glad I did. O’Neill, after all, never intended for this work to be produced as a play. It is, rather, like Goethe’s Faust a kind of closet drama, more effective on the page than on the stage.
The play is a masterful depiction of addiction and familial dysfunction. Indeed, I found it to be almost clinical in its psychology. O’Neill was clearly writing from personal experience. He ably captures the mixture of love and resentment that an unhealthy family bond can give rise to—perpetual annoyance, an endless buildup of grievances, non-stop bickering, all built on an unshakable foundation of love. And the characters of this play do love one another, quite dearly, even if they are stuck in a vicious cycle of blame and abuse.
Woven into this dreadful dynamic is addiction. Every member of the family is an addict, and all display the tell-tale signs. They search for excuses—good new or bad news, loneliness or companionship, special occasions or recurrent problems—to justify their habit. And then there is the deferral of responsibility, most exemplified by the mother in this play, who manages to blame everything in her life—her husband, her sons, her doctors, her upbringing—except herself for her morphine addiction. Yet of course the self-deception is never really believed. This awful truth is always there, burning underneath, a gnawing feeling that the substance will never quite deaden.
These contradictions—of great affection and resentment, of excuses and self-knowledge—are so starkly on display in this play that I think even the most brilliant actor would struggle to do it justice. The shifts of tone are too abrupt, the push and pull of conflicting feelings and truths are too violent. But, somehow, it works when read. On the page, a jostled, confused, and depressing mess becomes something orderly, transparent, and deeply tragic. A potentially pathetic group of boozers and dope fiends are transformed into symbols of aching humanity.
Considering that this play is strongly autobiographical, it is frankly amazing to me that O’Neill was able to create such a masterpiece. To confront what must have been a painful and traumatic time in his life and turn it into such a drama—a drama that pulls no punches, and yet condemns no one—is deeply impressive. As this play amply demonstrates, life too often conquers art. Routine deadens us to it, money woos us from it, addiction numbs us to it, so that we lose both our sensitivity to its beauty and the time and energy to create it. But sometimes, art conquers life. And this play is an example of that.
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