Abortion

How do you feel about the parent’s reaction about the daughter’s pregnancy?

Don’t Waste Your Life Looking In The Past

“The helplessness of family love to sustain, let alone heal, the wounds of marriage, of parenthood, and of sonship, have never been so remorselessly and so pathetically portrayed, and with a force of gesture too painful ever to be forgotten by any of us.” –Harold Bloom. In the play, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, by Eugene O’Neill, we see how the past has a fatal and hopeless effect on the Tyrone family. Each family member is tolerating his or her own problems or addictions and undergoes a bitter past in their life, that they try to over come through out the play. Between the contrast of each character, O’Neill captures that it is so serious that normal family mechanisms and relationships cant keep up.

The protagonist, Tyrone still holds his past to this day. His father left him at a young age, and growing up was literally survival. He explains, “It was those in those days I learned to be a miser, once you’ve learned a lesson, its hard to unlearn it.” (Eugene 192) He has managed to support his family, barley, and started making enough money through
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a lot of effort. Tyrone’s past is making life difficult for the rest of the family and himself. His refusal to spend money is loosing opportunities for his family, paying for the recovery of his dying son, Edmund, is one, and it is making everyone live a difficult, unstable life, of suffering and unhappiness.

Mary’s past was fortunate. She had a loving family and was happy at convent school. In spite of this, after having another child in her own family, Edmund, her happy past was shattered as she started to suffering from the addiction to morphine. The suffering of this addiction, is not only destroying Mary physically and mentally, but has everyone to blame in the family but herself, and ruining the relationships of the house. While her addiction is breaking her family apart, everyone else is guilty of lying to themselves and others. Edmund tries to deny the fact that his mother is back on drugs, while Tyrone denies that he is a miser and a drinker, as he explains “I never in my life had to be helped to bed, or missed a performance.” (Eugene 98)

The only way the members of the Tyrone family can sustain the helplessness of family love, and heal the wounds of marriage, parenthood and sonship is too forget the past and move on and stop living in guilt and blame. At a certain point, Tyrone starts begging Mary to forget the past. “How can I?” she says, “The past is the present isn’t it? It’s the future too.” (Eugene 75) The men of the family, Tyrone and Jaime, who have an issue with drinking and money, tend to not fall back into their past, but are absent-minded
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to all the other problems that are going on in there lives. Jaime clarifies “What’s wrong with being drunk?