Wednesday, April 3rd

Long Day’s Journey and Thirst – Reconsidering Long Day's Journey in light of Thirst; parallel and divergent characters and themes

Assignment for Wednesday, April 3rd

Re-read scenes in Long Day's Journey Into Night: 

Act 1, pp. 22 - 26 (Edmund tells the Shaughnessy story)

Act 2, Scene 1, pp. 53 - 55 (Cathleen & Edmund)

Act 3, pp. 99 - 109 (Cathleen & Mary)

Act 4, pp.  149 - 157 (Tyrone & Edmund)

Reflection Prompts

1. How does O'Neill use "the Shaughnessy story" to suggest how the Tyrone family experiences ethnic and class distinctions in American society?  How does Cathleen's appearance in Long Day's Journey offer further evidence of the Tyrone's experience of ethnic and class disctinctions in American society?

2. How does the character of Cathleen in Thirst affect your response to Cathleen in the two scenes in which she appears in Long Day's Journey Into Night?

3. Noone's essay suggests reasons to sympathize with James Tyrone. What do you think of Noone's assessment that Tyrone "is made to feel like an outsider in his own home" (122)?  Is Noone's argument compelling? 

4. How does Tyrone's monologue in Act 4 affect your sympathies with him? In what ways does Tyrone's description of his experience as an immigrant let him "off the hook" for anything he says or does in Long Day's Journey Into Night? What impact does the monologue have for you?

5. Noone has said of Long Day's Journey Into Night in relation to Thirst that "if we find despair in the living room, we should find hope in the kitchen" (Noone 131). O'Neill once said of his intentions in writing drama: “What I am after is to get an audience to leave the theater with an exultant feeling from seeing somebody on the stage facing life, fighting against the eternal odds, not conquering, but perhaps inevitably being conquered. The individual is made significant just by the struggle.”  Eugene O'Neill (quoted in Gelbs, Life 638).  How are these remarks by these two playwrights reflected in their respective plays?