David T. Yancey
Mrs. McGuire
American Studies
26 August 2003
The tragedy Long Day’s Journey
Into Night, a play written by Eugene O’Neill, tells the story of a small
middle class family in the early nineteenth century. All of the characters have numerous tragic
flaws that eventually lead to the family’s collapse. The man of the family, James Tyrone, is an
extremely frugal individual that is consumed with pride. His wife, Mary, suffers from a morphine
addiction acquired from long term medication after a painful childbirth, and is
in denial. The eldest son, Jamie, was ejected
from several different schools and is without a job due to his lack of
motivation. The fourth and youngest
member of the family, Edmund, suffers from Tuberculosis. As a result of his excessive pride and his
parsimonious ways, James Tyrone is the main cause for the disintegration of the
family.
One of James Tyrone’s prime tragic
flaws was his obsession with thrift. Everyone
in his family tried to keep him from being so frugal, his son Jamie even said
(talking about taking Edmund to a sanatorium), “Well, for God’s sake, pick out
a good place and not some cheap dump!”
When James originally found out that Edmund was sick, he took Edmund to an
inexpensive doctor that was incompetent.
If he would have spent a bit more and gotten a qualified doctor,
Edmund’s sickness would not have been as so severe. Also, throughout the book, the family
complains about the poor condition of their house, saying that it is “a summer
dump in a place she (Mary) hates and you’ve refused even to spend money to make
this look decent.” Clearly if James
Tyrone would have been a little bit less economical, Edmund would not be as
sick and the family would be a lot happier.
Another one of Mr. Tyrone’s’ tragic
flaws is his hubris, or excessive pride. Though self pride can be healthy, in
James’ case it injured him profoundly. Instead of accepting his family’s
problems and dealing with them directly, James chose to ignore them and either
forgot about his family’s many problems by getting drunk frequently or blocked
them out of his mind. For instance, James’s wife, Mary, had a constant battle
with an addiction to morphine. Though James sent her to a rehabilitation clinic
to help her get rid of her problem, they were never fully put to rest and she
continued her abusive habits throughout the play. Rather than try to stop his
wife’s downfall, James refused to accept the problem and knowingly allowed her
to use the addictive pain reliever. I
think that if James would have just “swallowed his pride” and actually addressed
his wife’s problem and helped her stop, she could have overcome her addiction
and become a constructive force in her family.
As a result of his excessive pride
and parsimonious ways, James Tyrone is the main cause for the disintegration of
the family. If he were to remedy these
flaws early in the play, he could have helped or maybe even prevented two of
the most important problems in the play, Edmund’s sickness and Mary’s
addiction. If he were a little less
miserly, he could have paid for better healthcare for his son. If James would have been less prideful, he
could have helped defeat Mary’s heartbreaking addiction, but then, of course,
Eugene O’Neill’s play would not then be a masterpiece of tragedy.
Works Cited
O’Neill,
Eugene. Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Yale University: Yale University press,
1956.
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