Characters+of+a+Long+Day's+Journey+into+Night

In Eugene O'Neill's "A Long Day's Journey into Night" there are multiple characters with major or minor roles spread sporadically throughout the depressing play.

MAJOR ROLES


 * //James Tyrone//** was left orphaned after his father left them and returned to Ireland where he soon met his end, as his premonition had warned. Being the man of the family early on, he learned the value of a dollar one thanksgiving when the whole family got enough money for all of them. Since then he was what one would call stingy and very uptight about his money, buying prperty after property but only going as far as second rate management. He is married to Mary Cavan Tyrone a previously perfect schoolgirl who aspired to be a nun or a concert pianist. He is a handsome man of sixty-five years of age, but because he uses [|stemulance], looks ten years younger.

//"About five eight, broud-shouldered and deep-chested, he seems taller and slenderer because of his bearing, which has a soldierly quality of head up, chest out, stomach in, shoulders squared. His face has began to break down but he is still remarkably good looking-a big, finely shaped head, a handsome profile, deep-set light-brown eyes. His grey hair thin with a bald spot like a monk's tonsure." ACT 1, Pg. 13//


 * //Mary Cavan Tyrone//** is the mother to both Edmond and James Tyrone Jr. and wife to James Tyrone. She is timid, and almost always flustered and emberrased of her crippled and warped hands. being hit by rheumatism after the birth of Edmond her health has slowly deteriorated but got better but then again worse when Edmond turns out to be sick with the //cold//. Disillusioned she questions why she ever married James as it broke the path to her being a nun or a concert pianist. she also seems to be in an alternate dimension as she tends to see things differently, and at the end goes through a mental breakdown and believes once again she was a young school girl.

//"Mary is fifty-four, about medium height. She still has a young, graceful figure, a trifle plump, but showing little evidence of middle-aged waist and hips, although she is not tightly corseted. Her face is distinctly Irish in type. It must of once have been extremely preety, and is still striking. It does not match her healthy figure but is thin and pale with the bone structure prominent. Her nose is long and straight, her mouth wide with full, sensitive lips. She uses no rouge or any sort of make-up. Her high forehead is framed by thick pure white hair. Accented by her pallor and white hair, her dark brown eyes appear black. they are unusually large and beautiful, with black brows and long curling lashes." ACT 1, Pg. 12//


 * //James Tyrone Jr.//** is the oldest son to both James Tyrone and Mary Cavan Tyrone, in his early thirties he is blamed for being a sloach, and mediocre actor riding on the fame of his father. Also the cause of Eugene Tyrone's death, Eugene being Mary's and James second son who died of measles when he was two years old. Ultimately he tells Edmond that he was always trying to keep him down and that since he was a failure he would try his hardest to make him crack. He feels a type of best friend love fopr his little brother, since he ultimately shaped him to be who he was, a man who avoided females except for prostitutes and alcohol. Throughout the novel he is seen as a very corrupt individual enjoying the pleasures of the flesh through the payment of prostitutes and the over consumption of alcohol. He was said to be very intelligent yet he was always expulsed or he dropped out of the colleges.

//"He has his father's broadshouldered, deep-chested physique, is an inch taller and weighs less, but appears shorter and stouter because he lacks Tyrone's bearing and graceful carriage. He also lacks his father's vitality. the signs of premature disintigration are on him. His face is still good looking, despite marks of dissipation, but it has never been handsome like Tyrone's, although Jamie resembles him rather than his mother. he has fine brown eyes, their color midway between his father's lighter and his mother's darker ones. His hair is thinning and already there is indication of a bold spot like Tyrone's. His nose is unlike that of any other member of teh family pronoucedly aquiline. Combined with his habitual expression of cynicism it gives him countenance a Mephistophelian cast." ACT 1, Pg 19//

//**Edmund Tyrone**// is the youngest son to James and Mary and is coflicted with comsuption. Sick throughout the novel he is seen to be the most sane member of the Tyrone household and also the one that other people try to manipulate to their point of view. Sick with consumption, he is seen going to Doc Hardy's office, getting drunk with alcohol and also finally understanding his father and the reason for his stinginess. In the end both his father and himself got along better, and almost in a level became the best of friends as they decided to go into a good sanatorium.

//"Edmund is ten years younger than his brother, a couple of inches taller and wiry. When Jamie takes after his father, with little resemblance to his mother, Edmund looks liek both his parents, but is more like his mother. Her big, dark eyes are dominant feauture in his long, narrow Irish face. His mouth has the same quality of hypersensetiveness hers possesses. HIs high forehead is hers accentuated, with long dark brown hair, sunbleached to red at the ends, brushed straight back form it. But his nose is his father's and his face in profile recalls tyrnoe. Edmund's hands are noticeably like his mother's, with the same exceptionally long fingers." ACT 1, Pgs 19-20//



MINOR ROLES


 * //Cathleen//** is the house maids, is seen throughout the novel helping out and spordically getting into trouble for being boisterous, lazy and a flirt. We learn a little about her when both Mary and herself go trecking to the pharmacy to buy her medicine for her rheumatism pain, being the drug known as morphine. They bond after Mary talks about her past and how she met the handsome matinee idol and fell head over heals in love.

//"She is a buxom Irish peasent, in her early twenties, with a red-cheeked comely face, black hair and blue eyes-amiable, ignorant, clumsy and possessed by a dense, well-meaning stupidity." ACT 2, SCENE 1 Pg.51//


 * //Bridget//** is the house's cook, not much is known about her except that her food taste's the same wether she is in a good or bad mood. she also tends to be slightly lazy as it is said in the final ACT. When she finishes the food late, and only made enough for one as suggested by Mary.

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