Long Day's Journey into Night Flashcards
O’Neill - Mary
[in letter to Sisk] Defined Mary by her ‘contradictions’ and her ‘ability to retreat into dreams’
Emphasises Irishness
Bogard - universality?
“O’Neill does not try to convince the audience that the world of the Tyrones is a microcosm”
Extends beyond domestic drama as it goes “behind life”
Bogard - the suffering of the playwright
‘The suffering of the playwright is more real than that of his characters. The audience shares them both’
O’Neill ‘used stage as his mirror’
Bogard - society
‘He knew his answer to the larger question was to be found by self-analysis. The two problems of the society and the self…were the same sickness’
Brustein
O’Neill used ‘drama as an escape…where chaos is ordered and the meaningless made meaningful’
O’Neill: God
“the relationship between man and man does not interest me…I am interested only in the relation between man and God’’
O’Neill: struggle
“Life is struggle, often, if not usually, unsuccessful struggle; for most of us have something within us which prevents us from accomplishing what we dream and desire”
Hinden
Edmund’s ‘symbolic death’
Travis Bogard - whisky/morphine
‘Whisky and morphine….remove all disguise’
Judith Barlow on Edmund
‘‘O’Neill designed the play very carefully so that Edmund hears the other character’s accounts of how they erred’ - he is the audience’s representative on stage (and also O’Neill’s?)
Tino Tiusanen - quotations
‘‘the quotations are still another modification of masks: by reciting a poem it is possible for the characters to express feelings not otherwise revealed’
Tino Tiusanen - realism
O’Neill ‘danced in the chains’ of realism
Patrick Maley - Mary
‘‘By addressing her family’s challenges with language aimed at wiping all problems away, Mary treats her utterances as speech acts, expecting them to exert a performative force in the social context of her home.’
Normand Berlin - family
The family are ‘Everyfamily’, and the audience also become part of this ‘family’ unit
