Introduction:
Famed playwright Eugene O'Neill was born on October 16, 1888, in New York City. His masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night (produced posthumously 1957), is at the apex of a long string of great plays, including Beyond the Horizon (1920), Anna Christie (1922), Strange Interlude (1928), Ah! Wilderness (1933) and The Iceman Cometh (1946). O'Neill died on November 27, 1953, in Boston, Massachusetts.
Theme of the Play:
1)Oedipus Complex
2)Hatred
3) Incest
About Play:
The play opens with chorus praising the Mocharacter of General Ezra
Mannon: "This town's real proud of Ezra." while his wife is criticized
as unworthy of him: "Which is more'n you kin say for his wife. Folks all
hates her! She ain't the Mannon kind. French and Dutch descended, she
is. Furrin lookin' and queer." Soon, we are well aware that the
daughter, Lavinia, is not happy with her mother's deeds. She seems to
hate her mother, Christine, and is in deep association with her father.
Though every daughter loves her father yet her affection for Mr. Mannon
is a way too deep and lustful.
She is subject to the Oedipus complex of
loving her male parent; however, her father is completely unaware of her
strange and unethical feelings. In the very early part of the play we
come to know that Christine and Lavinia are at odds with each other. We
know that General Ezra Mannon and his son Orin are on the front,
fighting for their nation. While back home, the fights between the
daughter and mother reveal that Christine has been in an affair with a
person named Adam. While Peter, a cousin of hers, loves Lavinia.
He
wants to marry her but she won't marry him because: "I can't marry
anyone, Peter. I've got to stay home. Father needs me" Well, her father
returns home just to die at the hands of her mother; Christine poisons
her husband. Lavinia is full of loathing for her mother but she can't
prove anything. Christine confuses the doctor so that no investigation
is instigated. Upon the news of father's death, Orin returns from war.
We have another shock in store for us because Orin seems to love his
mother like Lavinia loves her father.
Lavinia tries her level best to
convince Orin of her mother's act of murder but he would not believe
her. Soon, Lavinia finds out details about Adam and takes advantage of
the feelings of Orin's jealousy. Orin kills Adam and Christine commits
suicide. This leads to another dirty situation wherein Orin is in lust
of his sister, Lavinia. He wants Lavinia not to marry Peter and stay
with him to fulfil his incestuous lust but Lavinia insults him to the
extreme that he is guilty and shoots himself.
This leaves Lavinia to a
lonely situation where she is in deep psychological fixations. She wants
Peter to marry him instantly and love her. But while Peter loves her
deeply and passionately, she feels caught in the memory of the dead. The
dead seem to haunt her mind and her feelings. She decides to remain
alone in the house of the dead to pay for her sins: "And there's no one
left to punish me. I'm the last Mannon. I've got to punish myself!
Living alone here with the dead is a worse act of justice than death or
prison! I'll never go out or see anyone!"
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