John Henry Raleigh
O'N EILL'S LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
AND NEW ENGLAND IRISH·CATHOLICISM
Eugene O'Neill's
Long Day's Journey into Night
has been
rightly praised as his finest play (and tragedy) as well as perhaps
the finest play (and tragedy) ever written on this continent. It does
not have much competition, to be sure, but whatever competition it
may
have-Winterset, Death of a Salesman,
O'Neill's own early
tragedies, and the like-is so completely outdistanced that there is
no point in making comparisons and contrasts.
Long Day's Journey
stands by itself. All the power in characterization and the compassion
for humanity that everyone knew O'Neill always had and which
always showed itself, even if fitfully under such lugubrious surfaces
as
Lazarus Laughed,
comes out clearly, cleanly, and unambiguously
in
Long Day's Journey.
And the considerable talent for humor that
manifested itself in
AIt, Wilderness!
is here joined to a somber plot;
so that we have the final paradox that this darkest of tragedies is
continually breaking out into wild comedy.
O'Neill's severest critics have never denied him,
in
a word–
"Power"; and this is his most "powerful" play. In all his other "pow–
erful" plays, there are always touches or stretches of staginess and
awkwardness. But
Long Day's Journey
is clean, almost pure, one
might say.
The first question to be asked is where does this clean power
come from? It comes, first of all, from the autobiographical sources,
as he tells us in the preface, the "old sorrow, written in tears and
blood," and the final strength and courage "to face my dead at
last and write this play." After biblical and Greek-Civil War descents
into past history
(Lazarus Laughed
and
Mourning Becomes Electra),
after travels in the Orient
(Marco Millions),
after primitivism
(The
Emperor Jones
and
The Hairy Ape),
after racial imbroglios
(All
