Long Day's Journey Into Night

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussions of addictions to drugs and alcohol as well as references to attempted suicide, suicidal ideation, and child loss.

“JAMIE. Boredly. What’s all the fuss about? Let’s forget it.

TYRONE. Contemptuously. Yes, forget! Forget everything and face nothing! It’s a convenient philosophy if you’ve no ambition in life except to—

MARY. James, do be quiet.

She pulls an arm around his shoulder—coaxingly. You must have gotten out of the wrong side of the bed this morning.

To the boys, changing the subject. What were you two grinning about like Cheshire cats when you came in? What was the joke?”

The early characterization of Jamie and Tyrone is that they are at odds, with Jamie usually shrugging and giving up on conversing with his father. Mary, like the rest of the family, changes the subject to avoid the fight. Here, it is ironic that Tyrone criticizes Jamie for changing the subject, when he does the same thing to Mary, and Mary makes an odd choice by changing the subject to the joke, which is bound to upset Tyrone. Part of the problem here is that there is no subject they can discuss without fighting.

“MARY. A look of contemptuous hostility flashes across her face. Doctor Hardy! I wouldn’t believe a thing he said, if he swore on a stack of Bibles! I know what doctors are. They’re all alike. Anything, they don’t care what, to keep you coming to them.

She stops short, overcome by a fit of acute self-consciousness as she catches their eyes fixed on her. Her hands jerk nervously to her hair. She forces a smile. What is it? What are you looking at? Is it my hair—?”

Mary’s distrust of doctors relates to the mental health conditions that she has had in the past and that she continues to have. Her self-consciousness and deflection of her hair is symptomatic of her anxiety, and she is aware that her excitement seems like a potential danger to her husband and sons. She deflects to her hair, even when the topic is doctors, to avoid discussing her actual situation.

“JAMIE. Sneering jealously again. A hick town rag! Whatever bull they hand you, they tell me he’s a pretty bum reporter. If he weren’t your son—

Ashamed again. No, that’s not true! They’re glad to have him, but it’s the special stuff that gets him by. Some of the poems and parodies he’s written are damned good.

Grudgingly again. Not that they’d ever get him anywhere on the big time.

Hastily. But he’s certainly made a damned good start.

TYRONE. Yes. He’s made a start. You used to talk about wanting to become a newspaper man but you were never willing to start at the bottom. You expected—

JAMIE. Oh, for Christ’s sake, Papa! Can’t you lay off me!”

The family’s struggle can be encapsulated in Jamie’s wavering in this passage. He at once wants to put Edmund down to assuage his own feelings of failure and to praise Edmund as an example of the family’s success.