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Summary Eugene O'Neill Long Day's Journey into Night Notes
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EUGENE O'NEILL - Long Day's Journey into NightWednesday, 17 March 2021 08:36
Performance script:
• Dialogue (no narrator)
• Stage directions
• Staging information (setting, costuming)
• Paratext (title, dedication, cast list, any other info.)
Intention for play: deep pity, understanding and forgiveness of four
Tyrones.
Characters based on O'Neil's family: (autobiographical link)
1. James Tyrone - James O'Neil (1920)
2. Mary Cavan Tyrone - Mary Ellen Quinlan O'Neil (1922)
3. James Tyrone Jr - James O'Neil Jr. (1923)
4. Edmund Tyrone - based on author
Relationship driven vs plot driven due to limited # of characters
Scenes:
• Act 1 - living room of summer home at 8:30 am, August 1912
• Act 2 - Scene 1 - same day, around 12:45; scene 2 - same day, 30 min
later
• Act 3 - same day, around 6:30 pm
• Act 4 - same day, around midnight
○ Link to title, literal journey into night
○ August: end of summer, decline, decay ; 1912: sinking of Titanic,
pre-WW1
Set Layout
, Bookcase on rear wall:
• Literary Influence:
○ Romanticism (19th Century e.g. Higo, Dames) ;
○ Realism (late 19th Century Balzac, Stendhal);
○ Naturalism (Zola)
• Politically:
○ On the left (Marx, Engles, Kropotkin, Striner)
• Philosophically:
○ Question religion ( Schopenhauer, Nietzsche)
• New playwrites: socialism, human rights and women's rights
• New poetry of 1890's and early 1900's/"decadent" (Swinburne, Rossetti,
Wilde, Ernest Dowson, Kipling)
Whose bookshelf?
- Jamie and Edmund on left of political spectrum
- Shakespeare's portrait reflects Tyrone's tastes but also is a pre-cursor to
names on bookshelf
- O'Neil has read all authors and has influenced his writing
- Other bookcase on left wall belongs to Tyrone with history books etc.
Family Dynamics
- Set after breakfast
- Characters:
○ Mary: 54, face is Irish, "thin and pale", white hair, uses no rouge
(promiscuous), "extreme nervousness" (hands are constantly moving),
hair is arranged with "fastidious care" [link to Act 4]
○ James Tyrone: 65, "stamp of his profession is unmistakably upon him",
"simple, unpretentious man", pride in his voice, clothes are threadbare,
never been sick "a day in his life", "commonplace shabby", "no nerves",
"earthy peasant", "sentimental melancholy" and "flashes of intuitive
sensibility".
Comparison to Mary; physical appearance, sickness, nervousness
etc.
Display of affection is uncommon
- Scenes are set around meal times (Acts 1,2 and 3)
Act 1
- Attack, counter attack, attack and withdrawal throughout the play
- Tensions between father and sons
○ "touch the old man" i.e. Money = debates
Stylistic features:
- Stage directions
- Tone of voice
- Colloquial ordinary language, even slang
- Realistic conversation
- Shifts in emotion
- Undertones
End of Lecture 1.
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