Analysis of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day’s Journey into Night Essay

Mary had been interviewed to the point where she shut down and couldn’t answer anymore questions. She sat in silence when detectives would investigate her, unable to tell them what happened. Mary eventually fell guilty and started her journey to baby jail where she began a sentencing. The other juvenile delinquents and CO’s, or guards, of baby jail mistreated Mary because of the accusations people made. Mary’s back story consisted of murdering a baby and now that’s how people characterized and treated her, like a murderer.

* Why did Mary defy Mr Neal? What did she achieve? What role does the character of Mary play in the text?

As Mary’s story unravels, she continues to suffer long hours of work, starvation, and separation from her family. She reads her holy bible and is constantly reminding herself that God is with her and will see her through these trials. Her spirits are lifted her master agrees to sell Mary to her husband, and her mistress begins the journey with her, but before long the mistress decides not to go any further and they turn back. Not long after, she starts to loose hope that she will ever be reunited with her family. She becomes discouraged, and her spirit

When she enters the bedroom, her voice changes from present to past tense and she starts to reminisce and begins to talk about her mother and aunts. She seems happy to remember her mother’s room and introduces her aunts to the audiences. Mary delivers her dialogue saying that the dressing table and the small elephant statue figures are all same. When Mary gently touches her mother’s photo, she delivers a sad tone. Her performance conveys to the audiences that she misses her mother. The tone of her voice represents that she is a gentle, innocent and a loving child. Her verbal and non-verbal interactions conveyed the viewers with a message that she is an orphan.

Mary tells Cathleen how she loves the fog, which can be interpreted as her love for the morphine that removes her from any type of coherence. Mary was on a path to recovery and now has slowly lapsed into her state of addiction once again. She likes this state because “ It hides you from the world and the world from you. No one can find or touch you any more” (O’Neill 773). For Mary, this fog is representative as an alternative or refuge from reality. Her relapse into addition causes clouds her judgment and impairs her sight. She can hide herself in the fog so that her family can be oblivious to her addiction.

Mary begins the story as a doting housewife going through her daily routine with her husband. She is content to sit in his company silently until he begins a conversation. Everything is going as usual until he goes “ slowly to get himself another drink” while telling Mary to “sit down” (Dahl 1). This shocks Mary as she is used to getting things for him. After downing his second drink, her husband coldly informs her that he is leaving her and the child. This brutal news prompts the first change in Mary, from loving wife to emotionless and detached from everything.

Mary has three distinct personalities throughout the story. In the beginning of the short story, “Lamb to the Slaughter” she seems like a devoted wife to her husband, Patrick. For instance, “The room was warm and clean, the curtains drawn, the two table lamps alight-hers and the one by the empty chair opposite. On the

Women, like black slaves, were treated unequally from the male before the nineteenth century. The role of the women played the part of their description, physically and emotionally weak, which during this time period all women did was took care of their household and husband, and followed their orders. Women were classified as the “weaker sex” or below the standards of men in the early part of the century. Soon after the decades unfolded, women gradually surfaced to breathe the air of freedom and self determination, when they were given specific freedoms such as the opportunity for an education, their voting rights, ownership of property, and being employed.

Mary’s importance is evident in Act 1 through her role in the group of the girls. Miller does this to show what little power she has within the group at the start of the play, compared to the end,

Throughout the short story "Long Day's Journey `into Night" the author, uses the Tyrone family to show much the past interferes with the future. The woman of the household, Mary, has the most problems. Not only does she despise her husband for never giving her a proper "home", but she also felt like he was the cause of her getting addicted to morphine by not getting her a better doctor to deal with her pain after the birth of Edmund. When it comes to the children, Jamie, and Edmund, they resent their mother for being an addict and their father for always being so cheap. The patriarch of the family, Tyrone, is resentful because missed out on getting his big break from acting.

Throughout the entire story, Mary is a very interesting character. She faces many issues in dealing with her husband’s news that he is leaving her. She reacts based on her instincts and kills her husband and this shows her cold heartedness. In the end she has to create an alibi to cover up her devious crime in which she has to manipulate the police into eating the evidence. Mary is a very unique complex character and she has, through her actions conducted a devious crime in which she will be proven innocent. Through the use of Many Maloney’s character, as well as irony and suspense, the author was able to maintained the interest of the reader throughout the entire short story.

Women were viewed inferiorly compared to men. They were expected to do all household chores, bear children, and obey their husband’s wish

Mary is a very confused girl who is easily manipulated, as is seen by Abigail. Mary is

By the novel, Mary discusses several issues related to relationships which terrorize aspects of her personal life, including birth and childhood, the death of her mother, her miscarriage and new child and her coming across with the events which occurred in the summer of 1816 (see notes).

First, Twyla introduces Mary from the beginning of the story, as her mother claiming that she was put in St. Bonny’s, because mother have been all night dancing. Twyla reveals that she