Paper 108: The American Literature

 ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ as O’Neil’s personal Catharsis

Hello everyone this blog is as an assignment of paper no 108:The American Literature 

*Personal Details 

Name:- Khushi Goswami

Batch:- M.A.Sem 1 (2024-2026)

Enrollment no:- 5108240001

E-mail Address:- khushigoswami05317@gmail.com

Roll no:- 8

*Assignment Details

Topic:- Long Day’s Journey Into Night As O’Neil’s personal catharsis

Paper :- 108 The American Literature

Subject Code: 22401

Submitted To:- Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, MKBU, Bhavnagar

Date of Submission:- 17 April,2025

*Table of Content

1. Abstract

2. Keywords

3. Introduction

4. Concept of Catharsis

5. Autobiographical Resonance: Life Reimagined as Art

6. Themes of Emotional Entrapment and Psychological Struggle

6.1. Addiction and Escapism

6.2. Time, Memory, and Regret

6.3. Illness and Death

7. The Act of Writing as Therapy

8. Delayed Publication: A Sign of Deep Personal Stakes

9. Universality through Personal Pain

10. Reading Catharsis through Critical Lenses

11. Dialogues of Catharsis and Emotional Breakdown

12. Conclusion

Abstract:-This paper explores Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night as an act of personal catharsis, investigating how the playwright transforms deeply rooted familial trauma into artistic expression. Drawing on autobiographical parallels, the play’s character construction, symbolic motifs, and emotionally charged dialogues are examined to reveal the process through which O’Neill confronts his personal history. The assignment also incorporates critical perspectives from leading scholars such as Stephen A. Black, Travis Bogard, Harold Bloom, and Robert Brustein to contextualize O’Neill’s work within the broader tradition of confessional theatre. A detailed scene-by-scene analysis highlights how the structure and language of the play mirror the emotional purging associated with catharsis. Ultimately, the study affirms that Long Day’s Journey into Night is not merely a tragedy but a therapeutic document, through which O’Neill reconciles with his past, immortalizing grief while seeking redemption through art.

Keywords:- Eugene O’Neill,Long Day’s Journey into Night,Catharsis,Autobiographical Drama,Confessional Theatre,Family Trauma,American Modern Drama,Therapeutic Writing,Tragic Realism,Harold Bloom,Travis Bogard,Stephen A. Black,Symbolism in Drama,Psychological Theatre,Memory and Identity.

Introduction:- Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night is one of the most personal and emotionally naked works of American drama. Composed in 1941 but not published until after his death in 1956, the play is a grim depiction of a single day in the life of the Tyrone family—a day filled with blame, addiction, regret, and despair. The people and their tragic entanglements reflect O'Neill's own family members and experiences so accurately that the play moves beyond conventional autobiographical fiction and into what can only be called a work of personal catharsis. Stolen from Aristotle's definition of emotional purging through tragedy, catharsis in this case is not a reflection of the audience's response, but rather the playwright's O'Neill's emotional purging and self-confrontation through the act of creation.

In this essay, we shall analyze how Long Day's Journey into Night works as O'Neill's catharsis by considering the following areas: meaning and essence of catharsis in a contemporary context; the autobiographical similitudes; emotional themes and dramatic design of the play; O'Neill's purpose in delaying its publication; and writing's power of transformation to cure trauma.

The Concept of Catharsis:

Catharsis first appears in Aristotle's Poetics, where he suggests that tragedy purges the audience of pity and fear through emotional identification with the suffering of the protagonist. The idea has since developed to encompass the release of pent-up emotion by the creator through artistic expression. In contemporary psychology, catharsis also describes the process of releasing, and thus relieving, intense or suppressed emotions.

For Eugene O'Neill, the composition of Long Day's Journey into Night seems to have this very function. It is not just a dramatization of things; it is a way of facing and working through lifelong emotional weights—the death of his mother to morphine addiction, the resentment of his father's artistic concessions, the agony of his brother's self-destruction, and his own battle with sickness and alienation. The drama becomes a forum where O'Neill was able to finally "speak" what was not said in life, giving form to unresolved suffering.

Autobiographical Resonance: Life Reimagined as Art

To read the play as catharsis, one must first acknowledge its overtly autobiographical structure. Each of the Tyrone family members finds a direct counterpart in O’Neill’s own life:

Character                    Real-life Counterpart
James Tyrone= James O’Neill Sr. – successful actor who became typecast and obsessed with money


Mary Tyrone= Ella O’Neill – Eugene’s mother, who became addicted to morphine after childbirth


Jamie Tyrone= James Jr. – Eugene’s older brother, known for alcoholism and personal failures


Edmund Tyrone= Eugene O’Neill himself – introspective, poetic, and plagued with tuberculosis


The autobiographical structuring is not conjectural; O'Neill himself recognized the parallels. He referred to the play in a letter to his publisher as "a play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood." Such a statement reflects the degree of emotional engagement involved.

In addition, even facts such as Edmund's diagnosis with tuberculosis correspond to O'Neill's own experience in a sanatorium. Jamie's own alcoholic fall is mirrored by James Jr.'s. Mary's addiction to morphine is recounted in gruesome detail and compassion—proof that O'Neill was not simply writing characters, but digging up family specters.

Themes of Emotional Entrapment and Psychological Struggle:

Beyond character parallels, the play’s thematic content reflects O’Neill’s inner emotional life. Each theme of addiction, regret, guilt, memory, failure, and longing mirrors the playwright’s own psychological landscape.

1. Addiction and Escapism

Mary's return to using morphine all day mirrors O'Neill's trauma of witnessing his mother use. Her flitting between consciousness and delirium demonstrates the fine line separating reality and delusion, a fine line O'Neill himself quite possibly crossed on an emotional basis when coping with his family breakdown.

The fog in the play represents this escapism. Mary escapes into remembrances such as the fog surrounding the house, obscuring the present. O'Neill employs the theme of fog literally and metaphorically, implying his own conflict with obscured family stories, guilt, and mourning.

2. Time, Memory, and Regret

All four characters are obsessed with the past. James Tyrone mourns missed opportunities; Mary remembers her life prior to addiction; Jamie broods on his defeat; Edmund doubts his existence. Time in the play is cyclical, not linear. It ensnares rather than advances.

This compulsive going back to the past reveals O'Neill's own struggle with closure himself. In the play, he is not merely creating a story but revisiting and reinterpreting painful memories. It's like rewriting history to try to make sense out of it, to arrive at some kind of closure.

3. Illness and Death

Edmund's tuberculosis and his philosophical musings about death introduce O'Neill's existential issues. His brush with death due to the same disease informed his philosophy, and the play is an echo of his struggle with mortality and purpose. Edmund's hypersensitivity and desperation may be interpreted as a young O'Neill working through trauma in a literary proxy.

The Act of Writing as Therapy:

The act of writing becomes O'Neill's process of healing. By placing his family's pathology on the stage, he is compelled to re-live, examine, and ultimately embrace their flaws and his own scars.

What sets Long Day's Journey into Night apart from a confessional diary is the deliberate layering of dialogue, dramatic irony, and circular structure. The characters are richly drawn, multidimensional, and exquisitely human. Revenge and pity are not O'Neill's goals, but comprehension. The play's emotional integrity implies a writer trying to cure, not tell.

The form of the play also allows for catharsis. The one-day time frame heightens emotional tension. The dusk-to-night setting mirrors a journey into the darkest recesses of the self. Each act peels away another layer of illusion, revealing raw vulnerability just as therapy would over time.

Delayed Publication: A Sign of Deep Personal Stakes

O'Neill's directions concerning the posthumous publication of the play are significant to understanding its use as personal catharsis. He stipulated that Long Day's Journey into Night was not to be published or staged until 25 years following his death. Though this desire was eventually ignored by his widow, the initial instruction demonstrates how profoundly intimate the play was to him.

This delay indicates that O'Neill composed the play not for critical success or theatrical staging, but as an act of personal compulsion. It was his attempt to reconcile unresolved grief and guilt—particularly his troubled relationship with his brother Jamie, who succumbed to alcoholism in 1923, and his attitudes toward his parents.

Unlike most of his previous plays, which concerned great themes or innovative structures, Long Day's Journey into Night is agonizingly close to home. It was a confession that O'Neill might not have had the personal courage to witness performed during his lifetime.

Universality through Personal Pain: 

Catharsis for the Audience Too

Although the play is personal, its strength is in its universality. O'Neill's suffering, when converted to art, is available to others who have experienced family dysfunction, addiction, or emotional disconnection. The characters are not heroes or villains—they are damaged human beings attempting, and failing, to connect.

So O'Neill's catharsis is our catharsis. The play encourages us to look within our own family histories, our own regrets, and our own unspoken words. This two-fold level of catharsis—personal to the playwright, communal to the audience—is what makes Long Day's Journey into Night a work that continues to resonate with us.

Reading Catharsis through Critical Lenses: 

Harold Bloom, in Modern Critical Views: Eugene O'Neill, claims:

“It is not so much a tragedy; it is a private confession, dramatized for all time.”

Bloom's remark highlights the intensely confessional character of the play. It's O'Neill's interpretation of a very long, unreleased letter to his family, composed in dialogue instead of prose. (Blooms)

Dialogues of Catharsis and Emotional Breakdown

Act IV:- This act is the emotional peak. James, Jamie, and Edmund are all intoxicated. The three men speak freely, accusing and confessing. Edmund confronts his father's stinginess. Jamie admits to attempting to corrupt Edmund. James confesses his career regrets.

Jamie to Edmund:- “Don’t believe in me. Don’t believe in anything.”

This is one of the rawest lines on the contemporary stage. Jamie's admission that he wants Edmund to fail because he loves him warped into bitterness is O'Neill's own feelings of guilt for his brother's destruction. It's something O'Neill would never be able to confess in life, but only in literature.

Edmund:- “The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. It's as if it didn't exist... as if I didn't exist.”

This address by Edmund is a religious soliloquy. It is a statement of existential alienation, the longing to vanish into numbness. It's also an echo of O'Neill's initial flirtation with nihilism, despair, and philosophical depression.

Conclusion

Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night is more than a play, it is a confessional ceremony. Through it, he acts out his own sorrow, addresses the failures of his family, and appropriate narrative control of his emotional legacy.

By turning his family drama into drama, O'Neill engages in what one could refer to as artistic exorcism where unvoiced suffering is identified, made flesh, and acted out. This is the nature of catharsis not merely release, but transcendence.

References : 

Blooms, Harold. “Bloom's Modern Critical Views: Eugene O'Neill. Ed. Harold Bloom.” SCRIBD, 16 April 2015, https://www.scribd.com/doc/262051642/1?utm_source= . Accessed 15 April 2025.

O'Neill, Eugene. Long Day's Journey Into Night. Yale University Press, 2002.

Words: 1900

Images:1

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