A Long Day’s Journey – O’Neil

In the play A Long Day’s Journey into Night, psychology plays a huge role in changing each character as the day moves into the night. As I read the book, I noticed that Mary and her addiction to morphine effect the sanity of not only herself but the rest of her family. As the day moves on and she takes more and more, more alcohol is drank and the truth begins to come out about Mary’s past dreams (perhaps regrets).

Mary

I had two dreams. To be a nun, that was the more beautiful one. To become a concert pianist, that was the other.

She pauses, regarding her hands fixedly. Cathleen blinks her eyes to fight off drowsiness and a tipsy feeling.

I haven’t touched a piano in so many years. I couldn’t play with such crippled fingers, even if I wanted to. For a time after my marriage, I tried to keep up my music. But it was hopeless. One-night stands, cheap hotels, dirty trains, leaving children, never having a home.

Although deep down Mary knows that she has an addiction, she continuously blames her “crippled fingers” on everything, including the usage of the medications. She tries to convince her family as well as herself that it’s not an addiction.

Edmund

For God’s sake, Mama! You can’t trust her! Do you want everyone on earth to know?

Mary

Know what? That I suffer from rheumatism in my hands and have to take medicine to kill the pain? Why should I be ashamed of that?

When it comes to Edward, Jamie, and Tyrone the main problem is alcoholism. They try to deny, or forget, the fact that Mary hasn’t truly gotten better by drinking more. Although they all try and say something to Mary at one point in the play, she never admits it. Instead, she blames them for her problems, especially her husband, Tyrone.

Mary

“And I still love you, dear, in spite of everything. But I must confess, James, although I couldn’t help loving you, I could never have married you if I’d known you drank so much. I remember the first night your barroom friends had to help you up to the door of our hotel room, and knocked and then ran away before I came to the door. We were still on our honeymoon, do you remember?”

In my opinion, the true meaning for Mary’s addiction is never fulfilling her real dreams which never included anything she ended up with, including her husband and children. She truly wanted to be a nun and with all the problems and sicknesses she faced (Edward’s sickness and her father’s death of the same illness), the more it seems she wishes she had stuck to her dream.

Mary

…I told her I wanted to be a nun. I explained how sure I was of my vocation, and that I prayed to the Blessed Virgin to make sure, and to find me worthy [...]

But Mother Elizabeth told me I must be more sure than that, even, that I must prove it wasn’t simply my imaginations. She said, if I was so sure, then I wouldn’t mind putting myself to a test by going home after I graduated, and living as other girls lived, going out to parties and dances and enjoying myself; and then if after a year of two I still felt sure, I could come back to see her and we would talk it over again. [...]

That was the winter of senior year. Then in the spring something happened to me. Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time.

Glass

The psychological problems in The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams are everywhere. The most obvious, to me, is the major insecurities that Laura deals with daily. She is constantly compared to her mother when it came to “gentleman callers” and had to deal with Amanda, her mother’s, lectures about how she needs to be more outgoing with men. Even though her mother knows that Laura being crippled causes most of her insecurities, she wants Laura to live life as best as possible, even if that means making her step out of her comfort zone.

Amanda – Resume your seat, little sister – I want you to stay fresh and pretty – for gentleman callers!

Laura – I’m not expecting any gentleman callers.

Amanda – (crossing out to kitchenette. Airily) Sometimes they come when they are least expected! Why, I remember one Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain- (Enters kitchenette.)

Tom – I know whats coming!

Laura – Yes, but let her tell it.

Tom – Again?

Laura – She loves to tell it.

Amanda returns with bowl of dessert.

Amanda – One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain – your mother received – seventeen! - gentleman callers! Why, sometimes there weren’t enough chairs to accommodate them all! We had to send the nigger over to bring in folding chairs from the parish house

Also, Tom almost goes insane from the daily nagging of his mother. He has to provide for himself and the two women, and it’s too much stress for him to handle. He hates working in the warehouse, and coming home to his mother just puts him over the edge.

You think I want to spend fifty-five years down there in that- celotex

interior! With- fluorescent- tubes! Look! I’d rather somebody picked up a

crowbar and battered out my brains- than go back mornings! I go! Every

time you come in yelling that God damn ‘Rise and shine!’ ‘Rise and shine!’ I

say to myself, ‘How lucky dead people are!’

Tom, unlike his sister Laura, cannot find it in himself to deal with his mother. He does love her, and shows that in his apology, but although Amanda only wants what’s best for her children she drives her son away to the point of disowning himself from the family.