Reality And Live In An Illusion example essay topic

Symbolism in Long Days Journey Into Night In Eugene O'Neil's Long Days Journey Into Night symbolism is used on many occasions. The three prominent symbols, the fog, the foghorn, and Mary's glasses, represent the characters isolation from reality. The symbols in Long Days Journey Into Night are used to substitute illusion for reality. Although Mary is the character directly associated with living in illusion, all characters in the play try to hide from the truth in their own ways. At the beginning of the second act, O'Neil notes a change in setting which has taken place since the play opened. No sunlight comes into the room now and there is a faint haziness in the air.

This haziness or fog obscures ones perception of the environment, and it parallels the attempts of each member of the family to obscure or hide reality. Tyrone, for example, drinks whiskey to escape his son's criticism of how cheap he is. The reference to fog always has a double meaning in the play, referring both to the atmosphere and to the family. Much of the activity carried on by the Tyrone family is underhanded and sneaky, they are always attempting to put something over on somebody and obscure the truth. This brings us to the second symbol, the foghorn. Mary says she loves the fog because 'it hides you from the world and the world from you,' but she hates the foghorns because they warn you and call you back.

This escape is similar to the morphine she takes, and the foghorns are the family's warnings against her addiction. When they discuss the mother, Edmund resents Jamie's hinting that she might have gone back to her old habit; and Jamie is angry with Edmund for not staying with her all morning. Although they both think that she has started using Morphine again, they do not want to have to admit it. Because the men in the family all try so hard to deny the truth and blame each other or the mother for her affliction, it appears that they all feel some guilt and some responsibility for what has happened to her, and to themselves. Even when confronted with the truth (that the mother is using drugs), they all still try to act as if everything was all right, to deny reality and live in an illusion. Mary's glasses symbolize her inability to see things clearly.

She frequently misplaces them, and really doesn't want to find them because that would force her to face reality, which she desperately tries to hide from. Hearing the mother moving around upstairs, Tyrone tells Edmund he shouldn't pay too much attention to her tales from the past. The father says, 'remember she's not responsible,' and Edmund replies that it was the father's stinginess that's responsible. When Tyrone tells Edmund to take his mother's comments with a grain of salt, we see an example of how two people can look at the same thing but 'see' the thing very differently.

The mother considered her former home 'wonderful,' her father 'noble,' her convent days the 'happiest,' her piano playing 'outstanding,' and her desire to become a nun 'sincere. ' But the father says that she was mistaken, that she didn't see things as they really were. O'Neil probably felt that these memories were the illusion the mother needed to make reality tolerable; as she remarked earlier, her medicine kills the pain so she can go back to the past when she was really happy. These symbols in this play were very effective; providing the hazy atmosphere and confusion, or the obscured reality. They were integral parts of the play, because they were the root of the family's conflict and confusion. O'Neil rarely misses an opportunity to show in the conversation and the action of the Tyrone family the conflict which each feels internally regarding the others.

It appears that none of them can do or say anything without hurting the others; usually on purpose.