Prominent Theme of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night
Short Essay #2: Long Day's Journey into Night
The Basics:
Students will be asked to write a paper on a prominent theme of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night.
Details:
The following elements will be expected of the essay:
Students should choose one theme of Long Day's Journey into Night. This can include themes of escape, home, substance abuse, or another theme the student identifies.
Students will make a claim about the work that they will then work to prove. This "claim" is an argument about the interpretation of the piece. Students will argue for an interpretation of the play. Some arguments might include an answer to one of the following questions:
How is Mary's addiction to morphine similar to or different from the men's addiction to alcohol?
In what way is the "present" of the characters' lives a prison?
How does the theme of domesticity affect a specific character in the play?
These are just a few of the many ways students can begin to formulate an argument for their paper.
Argument:
In the final bullet point, the student is asked to argue for an interpretation.
This argument requires that the student develops a theory of what is going on, states that theory clearly at the beginning of the paper, and works logically throughout to prove that theory.
This also requires the student to provide evidence from the play to back up their contentions. This does not mean the student directly quotes entire sections in their paper. It means that the student will identify a small portion or passage that helps to prove their point.
After choosing adequate evidence from the text and citing it properly in MLA style, the student is responsible for explaining how it proves the thesis.
Technical aspects:
The essay should be at least 800 words.
The essay will be written in MLA format. If you do not have experience with this, there are MLA handbooks in the library for checkout.
The essay requires a “work cited” page, listing O'Neill's play and the place from which you took it (for a great many of you, that will be the Norton Anthology—see the MLA handbook for proper documentation).
The essay will be in Times New Roman font, 12-point, black ink, with one-inch margins. Your name, the class, and the name of your professor and the Teaching Assistant should be in the top left corner of the first page only.
Student Name
Class Name
Professor Name
Teaching Assistant
November 3, 2023
The Inescapable Shadow of the Past: Familial Bonds and Personal Ruin in Long Day's Journey into Night
Eugene O’Neill’s magnum opus, "Long Day's Journey into Night," is a masterclass in the dissection of the family dynamic and its profound impact on the individual trajectories of its members. In the microcosm of the Tyrone family, O’Neill presents a detailed map of personal despairs, a collective psychology of entrapment, and a relentless cycle that each family member perpetuates and is victimized by. Accordingly, the subsequent sections of this essay delve into the depths of the Tyrone family's dynamics to argue that their collective and individual pasts have entrapped them in a seemingly endless cycle of ruin and despair, foreclosing the future they might have had.
At the heart of the Tyrone family lies Mary, whose retreat into morphine addiction is less about seeking pleasure than about anesthetizing pain and returning to a past where her current sorrows were inconceivable. Unlike the men of her family, whose alcohol-induced stupors serve as temporary reprieves from their inadequacies, Mary’s drug use is a poignant attempt to reclaim a lost identity—that of a young, hopeful woman unmarred by life’s disappointments. This was illustrated with Edmund's anger against Tyrone, blaming her for what happened to Mary by saying…