longdaysjourney

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Te'Aira Law -- O'Neill Essay

posted by Brady Kelso at 2:46 PM

1 Comments:

  • Te’Aira Law
    February 27, 2005
    Period 1

    “Mary” Go Round

    The play Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill is in fact one long day. The events that occur throughout this dragging day make the coming of night ever so much more desirable. Mary Tyrone’s character is essential to the dynamics of the play. Her physical appearance, psychological depth, and development attribute to the sequence and the structure of the entire play.
    Mary Tyrone is an aging woman. She constantly refers to how beauty she was in the past. Mary is very insecure about her crippled hands from rheumatism. She once viewed her hands as her most beautiful feature but now they bring her shame. Mr. James Tyrone often refers to Mary as plump as a result of the weight she gained at the sanatorium. She also views her new found plumpness with disdain. Mary Tyrone looks at her aging and crippled features with disgust. These features are essential to the play because they cause her insecurity and self pity. If Mary’s hand’s were never crippled then she would have never taken morphine thus never became a dope addict. If she had never become a dope addict then there would be less drama and strife in the play and she would not have been a mirror image of Edmund because she would not be depressed as he is.
    Mary has the most psychological depth of all the characters. It may seem that she wears her feelings on her shoulders but this is not so. There is so much more to Mary then she displays. She contains much built up aggression and resentment. She fears of being an inadequate mother and wife because of her spoiled upbringing and words her mother spoke to her. She harbors animosity for Jamie because of the participation he had in his baby brother, Eugene’s, death. She also resents herself for Eugene’s death because she was on tour and not at home to keep Jamie from walking in on the baby, when he had the measles. Although Jamie was young Mary feels that Eugene’s death was done deliberately. Mary also resents giving birth to Edmund and feels that he’s cursed by his illness and she’s cursed as well because she lost her health and began to have pains. Because of these events in her life Mary feels hopeless. She feels like she has no control over her life. Life does things to her that she can’t escape and can’t control. So she wallows in self pity and hopes to find a light at the end of the tunnel.
    Mary’s wallowing in self pity develops only after she begins the drugs. In the beginning of the novel she is seen as vibrant and lively with plenty to say and not as much of a drama queen. But when Mary begins the drugs she looses all physical identity. She is in the fog once again. She can not be helped because she can not be seen. The foghorn that she hates so much is what she truly desires. She needs the foghorn to bring back the Mary that James fell in love with. The foghorn is reality and the fog is her retreat. Her development is a reverse. She goes right back to where she began. This reversal is significant to the play because it brings down the whole atmosphere of the play. The more depressed and drugged she becomes the more depressed and drugged the other characters become. It’s a rippling effect.
    Mary Tyrone’s physical characteristics create her psychological depth. She’s insecure about her appearance and insecure about life which she can’t control. Mary’s psychological depth is her undoing. The pain she feels within causes her to use drugs and develop into the drug addict that she once was. Thus, causing inner pain in all those she encounters. Mary’s life is a merry go round that just won’t end. No matter how far she strays from her past she always comes right back.

    By Blogger Brady Kelso, at 9:44 PM  

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