Wednesday, May 1st

Long Day's Journey Into Night: continuing discussion of thematic issues and characters: Edmund and Mary

Assignment for Wednesday, May 1st

Read Chapter 8, "Long Day's Journey Into Night," from Student Companion to Eugene O'Neill, by Steven F. Bloom

Read the Foreword by Jessica Lange from Eugne O'Neill, Long Day's Journey Into Night: Critical Edition, Edited by William Davies King, Yale University Press, 2014. If you don't have this edition of the play, click here or below.

Re-read and re-watch (on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkZ-3hBPQwQ&t=5037s) the following scenes in Long Day's Journey Into Night (see approximate starting timestamps immediately following page numbers):

Edmund:

 Act 2, Scene 2, pp. 77 - 81 (48:52), pp. 94 - 97 (1:05:05); Act 3, pp. 119 - 123 (1:36:02); Act 4, pp. 133 - 138 (1:48:33), pp. 142 - 148 (1:56:01), pp. 154 - 157 (2:11:25)

Mary:

Act 1, pp. 43 - 51 (20:24); Act 2, Scene 1, pp. 69 - 72 (40:22); Act 2 Scene 2, pp. 89 - 91 (59:43),  p.98 (1:09:54); pp. 123 - 126 (1:40:50)

Reflection Prompts

1. How does Jason Robards Jr.'s performance in the Act 4 scene between Jamie and Edmund affect your perception of the character? Is he more or less sympathetic? What do you make of Edmund's reactions? What truths does O'Neill capture about sibling relationships in his depiction of the relationship between Jamie and Edmund?

2.  Given the autobiographical nature of the play, how can the depiction of Edmund be seen as a "portrait of the artist as a young man"? How does Edmund represent the paradoxes of "hopeless hope," a central concept in O'Neill's view of the human condition? 

3. In her "Foreword" to the 2014 Yale University Press edition of the play, Jessica Lange's observations argue for the centrality of Mary in the play. How do her observations align with your impressions of Mary?

4. How does Katharine Hepburn's portrayal of Mary Tryone match up with your perception of the character? Is she more or less sympathetic? Are any of Lange's perceptions about Mary evident in Hepburn's performance in the 1962 film? 

5. In his dedication of the play, O'Neill says that he wrote it with "deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones." Do you feel equal measures of these towards all four?