The Tyrone

’s New Insight Essay, Research Paper

Greed, drugs, and jealousy may sound like a preview for the next hit movie, but they are just the ingredients of the tragic epiphanies of the four Tyrones in A Long Days Journey into Night. In A Long Day s Journey into Night, by Eugene O Neill, the four Tyrones experience intimate moments of insight into their lives. Mary, James Sr., Jamie, and Edmund, each experiences an epiphany that lets the character understand a major aspect of his or her life that he or she never fully understood. At the very end of the play, Mary realizes that she has lost her faith. After bingeing on morphine for the night, she walks downstairs searching for something, asking herself what she has lost. She realizes that she has lost her faith and it has led to her misery. She says, …I knew she heard my prayer and would always love me and see no harm ever came to me so long as I never lost my faith in her. [176] Reconciling again, she says, Then in spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time. [176] These quotations show Mary s realization that she has lost her faith to a love that did not last.James Sr. experiences an epiphany when he realizes that he could have been a great actor if not for his greed. He sold out to the temptation of easy money and to play in The Count of Monte Cristo year after year. He regrets doing this when he says, That God-damned play I bought for a song and made such a great success in-a great money success-it ruined me with its promise of an easy fortune. [149] This quote blatantly shows his realization that he could have been a great actor. However, his greed gave that life away to have easy financial success year after year.

In the play, Jamie comes to terms that he was always jealous of Edmund. Since Jamie s lifestyle was so appalling, he tried to make Edmund look just as bad by romanticizing his lifestyle to Edmund. Jamie influenced Edmund to lead a life of unemployment, drinking, and visiting whores to bring Edmund down to Jamie s level of existence. He says, Never wanted you succeed and make me look even worse by comparison. Wanted you to fail. Always jealous of you. [165] Jamie realizes that he has brought Edmund down just to make himself look better.Edmund also undergoes an epiphany of unending grief during this play. Mary and Edmund discuss when Edmund discovered his mother s addiction. He says, Jamie told me. I called him a liar! I tried to punch him in the nose. But I knew he wasn t lying. God, it made everything in life seem rotten! [118] Stage direction tells the reader that tears swell in Edmund s eyes at this time. This shows the reader that the addiction made everything seem rotten when he first found it, and it also makes everything seem rotten as he remembers it.Tragically, each member of the Tyrone family experiences an epiphany of great sorrow in Eugene O Neill s play, A Long Day s Journey into Night. Mary realizes that she has lost her faith and cannot find it. James Sr. comes to the understanding that his greed took away the dream of being a great Shakespearean actor. Jamie realizes his jealousy and contempt for Edmund. Poor Edmund realizes that his mother s addiction makes his life rotten. These epiphanies in the Tyrones lives show only more of Eugene O neill s tragic life story.