The Real Addicts Angelyn Elisabeth Dodson College

At first glance, Eugene O’Neill’s gut-wrenchingly poignant and heartbreakingly raw play, Long Day’s Journey into Night, appears to tell the story of Mary Tyrone’s morphine addiction and how her family responds to the situation. Often, however, we find that great works of literature are not so one-dimensional as that. There is another important aspect to this piece - the alcoholism of Mary’s husband, James and their two sons, Jamie and Edmund. On the surface, the men’s consumption of alcohol appears to be no more than a couple of emotionally drained men attempting to the take the edge off, as it were. But after a closer and more thorough reading, something becomes quite apparent: the men are addicts as equally as Mrs. Tyrone is. In fact, the claim might be made that they are, in fact, drunkards who are much further lost in their addiction than is the drug-addicted woman who is their wife and mother, especially because they have not admitted to their problem; they have not even entertained the thought that this likelihood exists.

The play takes place on the day of Mary Tyrone’s relapse and, seemingly, it revolves around that. However, there is something else going on - alcoholism. When read with a slightly more cautious eye, it...