➡️ paper no: 108 The American literature
💠 Assignment paper no.108
This blog is an assignment paper no. 108 The American literature. In this assignment I am dealing with 'Tragic Inheritance and tragic Expression in long days journey into night.'
🔷 Personal information:
Name: Gohel Dhruvika G.
Paper no: 108 The American literature
Subject code: 22401
Topic name: 'Tragic Inheritance and tragic Expression in long days journey into night.'
Batch: M.A sem 2
Roll no: 04
Enrollment no: 5108240012
E-mail address: dhruvikagohel252@gmail.com
Submitted to: smt, S.B Gardi Department of English MKBU
💠 About author:
(Eugene O'Neill)
Eugene-ONeill (1888–1953) was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. Born in New York City, he was the son of James O’Neill, a successful stage actor. Eugene's early life was marked by instability, including family struggles with addiction and illness—experiences that deeply influenced his writing.
He began his career in the theater after working various jobs and spending time at sea, which inspired some of his early plays. O’Neill was a pioneer of modern American drama, introducing realism and psychological depth to the stage. His most famous works include The Iceman Cometh, Mourning Becomes Electra, and Long Day’s Journey into Night, the latter considered his masterpiece and based heavily on his own family.
O’Neill won four Pulitzer Prizes and remains a central figure in American literary and theatrical history. He died in 1953 in Boston, Massachusetts.
💠 Introduction:
Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night stands as one of the most intimate and devastating portrayals of familial disintegration in modern American drama. The play is deeply autobiographical, mirroring the playwright’s own tormented family life, and it operates on both a personal and mythic level. In his critical essay, “Tragic Inheritance and Tragic Expression in ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night,’” J. Chris Westgate explores the complex interplay between inherited affliction and the expressive structures that give voice to that affliction. This assignment seeks to examine how O’Neill’s characters are not merely victims of circumstance, but inheritors of deeply rooted psychological and emotional legacies that manifest in tragic ways. Drawing on Westgate’s insights and textual evidence from the play, this essay will analyze the nature of tragic inheritance and the modes of its dramatic expression, showing how O’Neill crafts a deeply emotional and artistically rich tragedy that blurs the lines between personal confession and universal suffering.
💠 The Nature of Tragic Inheritance
At the heart of Long Day’s Journey into Night is the notion that suffering is not isolated but passed from generation to generation. This tragic inheritance is not limited to physical traits or financial burdens; it encompasses emotional wounds, behavioral patterns, and psychological dysfunctions. Westgate describes this as a kind of "familial doom," where each character is bound to a fate shaped by the past. The Tyrone family’s descent is not sudden but cumulative—a slow unraveling born of years of pain, addiction, and unresolved trauma.
James Tyrone Sr., the patriarch, embodies the consequences of poverty and missed opportunity. His obsession with money stems from a childhood spent in deprivation, and this frugality becomes a source of resentment and division within the family. His decision to pursue commercial theater over artistic integrity, a choice made out of financial necessity, echoes throughout the play as a symbolic failure—a betrayal of his potential that is now projected onto his sons. Thus, the inheritance is not only monetary but psychological, infecting his children with a sense of disillusionment and bitterness.
Mary Tyrone, the mother, inherits and perpetuates the cycle of denial and addiction. Having been introduced to morphine after Edmund’s birth, she now clings to the drug to escape the reality of her family's dysfunction. Her addiction is presented not as an isolated personal failing but as a symptom of deeper emotional voids, many of which stem from her rigid Catholic upbringing and a sense of alienation within the family. Westgate emphasizes that Mary’s relapse is both a tragedy and a return to form, signaling the inevitability of her descent and her role in perpetuating the family’s collective misery.
💠 Inherited Trauma and Its Effects on the Children
Jamie and Edmund, the Tyrone sons, suffer the most direct effects of their parents’ legacies. Jamie, the elder son, is a disillusioned alcoholic whose cynicism masks deep emotional wounds. He idolized his father in childhood but came to view him with contempt as he grew older. The disappointment in his father's failures and his mother’s addiction turns inward, leading him to sabotage his own ambitions and relationships. Jamie’s destructive tendencies are not simply choices but inherited responses—coping mechanisms learned from a household steeped in repression and dysfunction.
Edmund, O’Neill’s stand-in for himself, is both the most reflective and the most fragile. Struggling with tuberculosis and the existential despair of a budding poet, Edmund represents the sensitive soul crushed under the weight of family expectations and emotional chaos. Westgate highlights how Edmund’s illness and intellectualism place him in a unique position within the family. He sees through the lies and illusions that others cling to, but his awareness does not bring liberation. Instead, it isolates him further, making him a tragic figure who inherits not only his mother’s illness but also his father’s bitterness and his brother’s self-loathing.
💠 Dramatic Expression of Tragic Themes
O’Neill’s genius lies not only in his characterizations but also in the dramatic techniques he uses to express tragedy. The play unfolds over a single day, symbolizing the inescapability of time and the cyclical nature of suffering. Each act draws the characters closer to emotional collapse, not through dramatic external events, but through conversations, silences, and revelations. Westgate notes that O’Neill structures the play as a slow, spiraling descent, where each repetition and echo underscores the characters’ inability to change.
Dialogue plays a crucial role in this expression. Much of the play consists of characters speaking past one another—delivering monologues disguised as conversations. This lack of true communication reflects their emotional isolation. For example, Mary repeatedly retreats into memories of her youth, describing her convent days and piano aspirations as a way to escape the present. Her nostalgic monologues are lyrical and haunting, contrasting with the harsh realism of the family’s arguments. This duality—poetry and realism—mirrors the tension between longing and despair that defines the tragic experience.
Silence is equally powerful. O’Neill often allows scenes to end in unresolved silence, leaving emotional wounds exposed and unhealed. These silences speak volumes about the Tyrone family’s inability to confront their shared pain. Westgate asserts that these moments of quiet are not empty but “loaded with emotional resonance,” serving as a kind of tragic punctuation that deepens the audience’s sense of inevitability.
💠 The Structure of Tragic Decline
The play’s structure mirrors the tragic arc seen in classical tragedies. It begins in relative peace and ends in emotional ruin. The first act introduces the family’s fragile hope—Mary appears to be recovering, Edmund’s illness is being addressed, and the family is together. But by the end of the play, all illusions are shattered. Mary is fully consumed by her addiction, Edmund confronts the reality of his illness, Jamie admits his desire to corrupt his brother, and James Sr. retreats into defensiveness and regret.
Westgate suggests that this decline is not just narrative but thematic. The play moves from light to darkness, from denial to confrontation, from illusion to painful truth. O’Neill uses setting and lighting to emphasize this descent. As the day progresses, the fog outside grows thicker, mirroring the characters’ emotional entrapment. Mary’s recurring mention of the fog and her retreat into it becomes a metaphor for her psychological withdrawal. The fog horn that sounds periodically adds to the sense of isolation and doom, reinforcing the tragic atmosphere.
💠Conclusion
Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night is a harrowing exploration of familial suffering, addiction, and the inescapable weight of the past. Through the concept of tragic inheritance, O’Neill shows how pain is passed down, often unknowingly, from one generation to the next. Each member of the Tyrone family is both a product and a perpetuator of this legacy. J. Chris Westgate’s analysis provides a critical framework for understanding how this inheritance is not only portrayed in content but expressed in form through language, structure, silence, and dramatic tension. Ultimately, the play is not just a story of one family's downfall but a meditation on the human condition itself. In confronting the Tyrone family's tragedy, O’Neill invites the audience to reflect on their own inheritances emotional, psychological, and existential and the ways in which they shape the course of our lives.
💠 Refrences:
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