Eines langen Tages Reise in die Nacht. Schauspiel in 4 Akten. (Sondereinband) by Eugene O'Neill

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Nov 13, 2008

Cepellos rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

Read in July, 2007

recommended to Cepellos by: Professor Taaffe
recommends it for: people who like PAIN in their books!!

A cyanide pill with a caramel center.

To quote the Wikipedia entry on this work;
"The action covers a fateful, heart-rending day from around 8:30 am to midnight, in August of 1912 at the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrones - the autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his older brother, and their parents at their home, Monte Cristo Cottage.

Two major motifs are alcoholism and Mary's addiction to morphine. Both are recurring motifs throughout th...more

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Mar 04, 2008

Headcount rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

You wont like this book unless you have some stodgy English professor explain all the allegorical motifs that come at certain times. However, I found this to be a masterpiece. Not to be a spoiler, but the wife is addicted to Morphine and her sons are alcoholics. Uplifting story it isn’t, but the way it is crafted and acted out was way ahead of it’s time. This might be the one time you can watch the video and then read it. Either way, this was one Eugene’s best including the Ice Man Cometh.

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Jul 01, 2009

Carolyn rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

Long Day’s Journey Into Night reminded me to some extent of Tobacco Road, although the circumstances portrayed in the former did not seem as set in stone as in the latter. Certainly each character is shaped to a great degree by their past, and it becomes both a place to take refuge in and a time to blame present circumstances on. As Mary’s morphine use becomes heavier, she retreats further back into idealized memories of her girlhood and her marriage to Tyrone. Her dead child haunts her a...more

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Oct 24, 2009

Jason rated it:

(review of other edition)

Read in October, 2009

From Act 1 Eugene O'Neill jerks away the patchwork veil from the face of a family to reveal the anatomy of the skin, every pustule, all the carbuncles, discoloration and scars, the embarrassing halitosis, wax and hairs—the attributes that, up close, make us ugly human beings. Long Day's Journey Into Night is a naked insight to the brutal, unyielding properties that trap families into dysfunctional, vengeful, malignant relations.

Guilt, criticism, paranoia, competition, blame, hat...more From Act 1 Eugene O'Neill jerks away the patchwork veil from the face of a family to reveal the anatomy of the skin, every pustule, all the carbuncles, discoloration and scars, the embarrassing halitosis, wax and hairs—the attributes that, up close, make us ugly human beings. Long Day's Journey Into Night is a naked insight to the brutal, unyielding properties that trap families into dysfunctional, vengeful, malignant relations.

Guilt, criticism, paranoia, competition, blame, hate, distrust, addiction. This family is like all others! The play exposes a painful calculus between characters, alliances form then change, issues smolder, and rage and reaction to past events is way out of proportion to the origin and manner in which they occurred. The family—like yours or mine—is stuck in a ritual of manuevers around each other's accusations. Truths are distorted; responsibility shrugged; failures are indiscriminately attributed. O'Neill shows us one day, in a single room, the complex lives in a family. Like real life it's hard to uncover single events that started the cascades of destructive family behavior. It's the paradox of the chicken or the egg.

What originally infected the marriage? Was it James's miserliness or Mama's weakness to morphine? Was it James's drinking or Mama's nervousness? Was there, at first, moderation in James's drinking, or did Mama drive him to alcohol? Why did the second child die? Was it a jealous sibling, a frugal father, or a forgetful mother; betrayal, inaction or negligence? Who's the sucker? A tight-wad ninny that repeatedly falls for real estate scams, a neurotic mother that hides from neighbors, or a prodigal son who drops career for drink?

O'Neill uses 4 characters, 16 hours, and a parlor to compress the story. There's rising tension from page 1. The characters are trapped, and with years of pent up emotion and issues that perhaps can never be resolved, they become embroiled in a replay of the most painful and explosive vindiction. I think a normal person would have walked away in a shout. But no, the strength of the play is that O'Neill takes it farther. He explores the human threshhold and tries to discover an end, if there ever was such a thing. It takes the reader past a point of retreat, and plows into unknown places where we would never go in real life. This is more than a family fight. This is the brink. You don't come back from this place unchanged. There are charges that once delivered, can never be unsaid. Distilled to its essence, Long Days Journey Into Night says this: I hate you; I tried to kill you; we're all mucked up because of you and you and you; I no longer love you; you can die; you've destroyed my dreams.

After reading, I could only side with one character, Edmund, the youngest son, the least hateful, the least repugnant, the shortest in this life to really become mean. Yet, ironically, he'll most likely die from consumption. Perhaps the irony was O'Neill's construction. I'm left realizing that the most precious in life is fleeting. The world is hard, life is harsh. And yet, from this 23 year old I get the most beautiful image of life:

You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon of the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself--actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way.

James Tyrone-dad
Mary-mom
Jamie-son, 33
Edmund-son, 23
1912

***Please VOTE***

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Feb 19, 2009

Ayne Ray rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

Considered Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece, this play was, at the request of the author, not to be released until 25 years after his death due to its brutally painful insight into a dysfunctional family that was modeled after his own. (However, since his immediate family died several decades before the author, his wife allowed its publication a few years after his death.) The story takes place in a single day, following a mother, father, and two sons as they deal with the emotional fallout of the...more

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Jun 25, 2009

Alli Fertile rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

bookshelves: drama, favorites, undergraduate

Read in March, 2008

Crushing, brilliant, so human, but not without hope. Long Day's Journey into Night is a masterpiece, and well deserving of that title. The story of a dysfunctional, substance-addicted family, it is a simple plot, it just follows them throughout the day, with the mother becoming more and more stoned as the day wears on. Perhaps the most haunting part of the play is the feeling that this day could be any given day, and that if the characters were to go to bed and wake up in the morning, a similar ...more

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Feb 03, 2010

Steve rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

bookshelves: 2010, plays

Read in February, 2010

Wow, these people were messed up. But, like any writing, the autobiography here is not relevant to the play as a work of art.

As far as that goes, this is brilliant. One gets the sense that, as it was said of Chekhov's plays, nothing happens and everything happens. All of the important action has already happened by the time Act One happens; the rest is just re-telling it and re-living it. The audience is given no reason--other than that there is a play about it--that this day is any...more Wow, these people were messed up. But, like any writing, the autobiography here is not relevant to the play as a work of art.

As far as that goes, this is brilliant. One gets the sense that, as it was said of Chekhov's plays, nothing happens and everything happens. All of the important action has already happened by the time Act One happens; the rest is just re-telling it and re-living it. The audience is given no reason--other than that there is a play about it--that this day is any different from any other until Act Three, when Edmund is diagnosed with tuberculosis.

I once heard a playwright say that, "when your scenes start getting shorter as the play goes on, you know you have a problem." O'Neill's scenes get longer as the play goes on, with Act 4 as one 30-page long scene. O'Neill ramps up the intensity as it goes on and the play climaxes on the last couple pages with Edmund striking his brother Jamie. The denoument is Mary's morphine-induced, insane monologue in which she seems to think she is young again.

The play is about the slow revelation of the Tyrone family's story to the audience. This demonstrates the play's power--no exposition is required. The audience is something of a voyeur, walking in at a bad moment and

LDJIN is replete with symbols, especially the fog, the fog horn, the wedding dress, and others. O'Neill finds deft ways of sneaking in profound moments into otherwise boring ones. Mary rambles on, but reveals a lot in the midst of otherwise stupid jabberings. She tells us of her past, of her loss of her Catholic faith, of her fatalism ("No one is to blame for what life has done to us.") Edmund [O'Neill's alter ego:] pregnantly says, "[Mary:] moves above and beyond us, a ghost haunting the past, and here we sit pretending to forget, but straining our ears listening for the slightest sound, hearing the fog..." (Act IV) as his mother stirs upstairs (literally moving above them). Elsewhere, Tyrone's line, "Whose play is it?" in reference to a card game jumped out at me. Whose play is LDJIN? There is no single, obvious main character. The Tyrone family might be said to be one protagonist.

Mary and Edmund express their appreciation for the fog; Mary later says it "makes everything sound sad"; the fog horn is compared by O'Neill in the stage directions to a whale, then later Cathleen compares it to a Banshee, an Irish omen for (an Irish?) death.

Edmund asks, "who wants to see life as it is?" And says, about his walking through the fog, "Everything looked and sounded unreal...That's what i wanted--to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself." He also is derided by Jamie for being a follower of the invalid Nietzsche (O'Neill carried a copy of a Nietzsche book everywhere he went). Edmund is an intellectual yet no better than anyone else in the family because he has the same desires, though expressed in different ways. He may say things poetically but he says essentially the same things as his fellow insane Tyrones. They all crave death and don't seem to know it (or else they'd be dead). They don't want to see life as it is; they don't want to live in the real world. That may be a better definition of insanity than "doing the same thing twice and expecting a different outcome." Sanity is being in touch with reality, and there is hardly any sanity through which to enter this play. Instead, the audience is a fly on the wall, watching the aftermath of a tragedy (not the tragedy itself) and being powerless to stop seemingly inexorable events ("there's nothing any of us can do about what life has done to us").

It has been said of Strindberg that what makes him an perennially relevant playwright is that he stripped himself bare on stage, allowing all the world to see his neuroses and fears. This is O'Neill's striptease act, gradually unveiling his horrible childhood, a childhood and patrimony I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. O'Neill is perennially relevant.

[Update: I saw the 1962 movie version and I highly recommend it. Amazing acting by Hepburn and Robards (as usual) and the others.](less)

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Aug 31, 2009

Tom rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

Read in October, 2008

There is a story that after Eugene O'Neill died, as they were cleaning out his room, they found the typewriter that he used to write this play. Its keys were worn down to the numb, numbs that were filled with dried blood.

The theory being that while O'Neill finished his last full realized (there were others discovered and published posthumously) and most personal play, he was chewing through his nails and pounding on the keys, a mere glimpse into the depth and pain which he so brillia...more

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Feb 08, 2010

Cathy rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

Read in February, 2010

Drunk and high people preaching and arguing are annoying in real life and they aren't less so because Eugene O'Neill wrote them. I found the inebriated, incessant alternation between fighting and sentimental musings (which make up the entire play) to be tiresome and boring. That being said, the characters are kind of interesting and despite the extreme nature of the family's issues, I think most readers can relate to the notion of love/hate relationships in family and the fear/regret in missed o...more

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Mar 14, 2009

Cindy rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

bookshelves: 999, plays

Read in June, 2009

The Tyrones - mother, father, and two sons - spend a day more or less together in the country. Within the course of that day, we see all sorts of nasty little secrets that were only suggested in the first act.

This is the first O'Neill play I have read, and I have to say that I found it excellent. Not much fun, but really well done. The theme, to me, was that of excuses, excuses. The entire family has someone - someone else, that is - to blame for being the way they are. Mary blames h...more

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Nov 22, 2008

Jil rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

bookshelves: play

Read in April, 2009

recommended to Jil by: every theatre book/teacher ever
recommends it for: August: Osage County lovers; theatre enthusiasts

I’ve been telling myself for the past three years, “It really is about time that you read some O’ Neill, Gillian…”, because not having read any O’Neill signified a huge and gaping flaw in my theatre self-education.

So I decided to fix this tragic problem, picking the play that is so often compared to one of my faves, August: Osage County. Let me tell you, reading Long Day’s Journey into Night made me think of Tracy Letts as a big ol’ copycat, though still a talented on...more I’ve been telling myself for the past three years, “It really is about time that you read some O’ Neill, Gillian…”, because not having read any O’Neill signified a huge and gaping flaw in my theatre self-education.

So I decided to fix this tragic problem, picking the play that is so often compared to one of my faves, August: Osage County. Let me tell you, reading Long Day’s Journey into Night made me think of Tracy Letts as a big ol’ copycat, though still a talented one. The similarities of the core components were shocking (pill-addled mother, alcoholic dad, the dysfunctional and unattractive house as the claustrophobic setting); had August: Osage County been billed as some modern-day reworking of the O’ Neill classic, it’d be one thing, but instead it seems like Letts borrowed liberally from a work that still stands strong fifty years after having been written.

The one thing about this play that did seem to need serious revision was the stage directions. When faced with the first full page (of many) of italicized stage-directions, I tried to chant to myself: “Violence, violence, violence. Strength of choice forces creativity.” But really, O’Neill seemed like he wanted to write a novel instead of a play; describing Mary: “Accentuated by her pallor and white hair, her dark brown eyes appear black. They are unusually large and beautiful, with black brows and long curling lashes.” Honestly, unless you have a casting director of gold, how is that information supposed to help anyone? I get that it, and the numerous other stage directions like it, are supposed to illuminate the characters and their personalities, but isn’t the whole point of theatre that it creates exposition through dialogue and visuals, not the written word? It feels to me like the exact opposite of Shakespearean scene-setting: O’Neill avoids giving clues about the characters through their speech, but the effect is that the reader has a much richer experience of the Tyrones’ world than the audience member. I know that I’m spending an immense amount of time shitting all over a master, but he spends TWO PARAGRAPHS telling us what books are on the shelves. This imbuing of the scene with hyperrealistic detail ends up being incredibly redundant: we know the characters are literary and what they read because of all the poems and books that they quote!

One thing that I found myself considering throughout this play was plasticity of the page—I was, for a while, distressed that italicized indications of emotion for characters were placed on a line of their own, as it seemed to break up their speech. As the play went on, though, this actually ended up being an incredibly effective way to demonstrate the wild mood swings of every member of the family: the frequent breaks brought attention to how each character, in the course of a single speech, could oscillate between “excited”, “in an expression of intense suffering—with bitter hatred”, and “passionately.” Even thinking about this too much, though, made my hackles rise: O’Neill is leaving no room for actors to interpret lines for themselves! Everything is spelled out! I considered this in the context of Gestalt principles we learned about in art this year – how things are more cognitively pleasing for us if we have to fill in some gaps for ourselves. As readers, O’Neill doesn’t let us do this, but as audience members, things are much less explicit and thus more interesting.(less)

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Feb 20, 2008

Andrea Kemper rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

bookshelves: 101-great-books, plays

Read in March, 2004

recommended to Andrea by: Dr. Ron Deeter

For those unfamiliar with the plot, the play takes place in one day during which a double crisis rekindles smouldering grudges and recollections of the Tyrone family's troubled family history. Crisis one centers on Mary Tyrone, the convent-bred mother who is teetering on the brink of once again losing her long battle with morphine addiction; an addiction which she and her alcoholic older son blame on the chronic miserliness of the head of the household, a hack actor. Crisis two, which has exacer...more

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Nov 19, 2007

Katy rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

bookshelves: classics, irish, plays

Read in November, 2008

recommends it for: lovers of classic American family drama

The sadness and desperation in this play are somewhat overbearing, yet simultaneously fascinating. Of course, I've always found modern American playwrights' fixation with family interaction interesting, but the combo of O'Neill's focus on addiction and the parallel to his own life kept me glued to the page. I think the scariest (or the most intriguing, depending on your point of view) aspect of O'Neill's writing is that no matter how comparatively sunny your family life may be, you can find a bi...more

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Jun 14, 2009

Angela Zenuni rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

bookshelves: 11th-grade

Read in November, 2008

I chose to read this book I enjoy reading plays that deal with family issues. This play revolves around the tragedies of the Tyrone family. It mostly deals with life and death; the family's desperate attempt to stay healthy and together. The family deals with Edmund, the son with tuberculosis and Mary, the daughter with a drug addiction. The men in the family also develop alcoholism as ways to cope with their surroundings. I highly recommend this book even though it was a sad, slow read.

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Oct 15, 2007

Baiocco rated it:

(review of isbn 0300046014)

bookshelves: plays

recommends it for: People Who Hate Their Family. People Who Love Their Family

I'll tell you, this play is some sort of sadness. Family's can be painful as it is, but O'Neil's unrelenting portrayal of the haunted Tyrone family was so close to his own family story that he demanded the play not to be released until he was dead, and with good reason because it is an at times excruciating study of a tragic family failing, cloaked in denial and secrecy, exposed to it's most honest details, faults and tenderest connection family flesh and blood. That Oneil was able to journey ...more

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Feb 26, 2010

Jessica rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

Read in March, 2010

O'Neil masterfully captures the monotony of addiction by having his characters repeat the same arguments and emotional outbursts over, and over, and over again. The only reason the play ends, as far as I can tell, is that the characters are now too soused to continue. This makes a great point about addiction, but is the equivalent of watching 15 episodes of A%E's Intervention back to back. If addiction is uncontrollable repetition, narrative about addiction is controlled repetition, and has s...more

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Jul 10, 2008

Ro Cepellos rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

bookshelves: hurts-so-good, memoir-autobiography-biography

Read in August, 2007

recommended to Ro by: Professor Taaffe, adjunct professor at Manhattanville College in
recommends it for: anyone interested in drama or Irish literature / authors.

A cyanide pill with a caramel center.

To quote the Wikipedia entry on this work;
"The action covers a fateful, heart-rending day from around 8:30 am to midnight, in August of 1912 at the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrones - the autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his older brother, and their parents at their home, Monte Cristo Cottage.

Two major motifs are alcoholism and Mary's addiction to morphine. Both are recurring motifs throughout the p...more

Like this review? yes

add a comment

Dec 15, 2009

Katerlio rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

Read in December, 2009

o'neill is one bleak dude - really empathetic writer, with a gift for setting a scene, but bleak. also, as one might expect, there is a lot of whiskey. i also wish he had managed to skip saying "dope fiend" for a little longer - he does such a good job of setting up the character and the relationships, but that term has not aged well. sounds a bit silly. he sidles around it for a good 3/4 of the play, then tosses it off.

worth reading - the stage directions are succinct and...more

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Feb 18, 2009

Alisha G rated it:

(review of isbn 0300093055)

Knowing that the play is heavily autobiographical makes it hard for me to think about it objectively as a work of art. Somewhat paradoxically, though I felt genuine sadness for the family, it was hard to feel concerned for them. The conclusion of the story was already played out in real life--so what good was it to revisit one day in their history and hope for anything better? That said, the play itself is excellent.

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May 09, 2008

sab rated it:

(review of isbn 0300046014)

Read in May, 2008

recommended to sab by: inspired after catching a glimpse of a PBS special on E. O'Neill

I recognize that this is an incredibly well crafted play and a highly courageous work for O'Neill to have even put together. (I love the dedication letter to his wife at the beginning!) My rating doesn't represent the quality of the text at all but more so as to how *I* deal with it. As much as I like a dark read, the tone is so frustrated (as it should be), it was hard for me to sit still. The situation is so sad and such a tangle of mess! I recently heard someone refer to it as a ki...more

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