Summary+of+Long+Day's+Journey+into+Night

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Here is a small summary of the pla. Hope it doesn't get too repiitious.
The play begins with Mary and James Tyrone, an upper class Irish couple in the U.S. coming out of the dining room after breakfast. The year is 1912, and the Tyrone family is staying at their summer home. Mary has just gotten out of a sanatorium, and has seemingly been cured of a lifelong morphine addiction. As the couple enters, Tyrone remarks on Mary's healthy adding of weight and her cheerful attitude since she's returned to them. James Tyrone Jr. and Edmund Tyrone, their two sons, enter soon after. Edmund is clearly in bad health, and coughs frequently. Edmund is a young writer, while his brother works with their father's acting troupe during the year. James Junior is actor, like his father, and showed brilliance in college and as an actor, but since then has gone astray and lives only for whores and whiskey.
 * ACT 1:**

As the play opens, the rest of the family expresses concern over Edmund's obvious illness. Mary believes it is just a cold, but cynical Jamie suspects it is something much worse. Tyrone hushes Jamie and the two of them reassure Mary that it is nothing more than cold. Throughout the play it becomes apparent that Jamie and Tyrone know what Edmund's sickness really is, but continually keep the truth from Mary so as not to upset her. Mary also knows that Edmund really does have more than a cold, but refuses to admit it herself. After Mary and Edmund leave, the two men speculate that Edmund might have consumption (tuberculosis). Jamie attacks Tyrone's prudence with money, saying that his little brother would have been cured if Tyrone had paid for a good doctor in the beginning. Jamie criticizes Tyrone for being a penny-pincher and choosing doctors based on cost, not quality. Tyrone claims that Jamieoesn't know the value of a dollar, as Tyrone had to work himself up from poverty when he was little. Tyrone also criticizes Jamie for being lazy and living off him every summer, and for squandering his education by getting kicked out of several colleges.

Tyrone and Jamie then discuss Edmund's skills as a writer. They both believe that he is an excellent writer, but Tyrone believes that his older brother is setting him down the wrong path and Edmund will become a failure like Jamie. Jamie counters that if Tyrone hadn't been a penny-pincher and hired a cheap quack to cure Mary's pain after birthing Edmund, she wouldn't have been given morphine and wouldn't of become addicted to it. Tyrone and Jamie agree to not let Mary suspect that Edmundhas consumption. This agreement along with Mary's refusal to accept that Edmund has consumption shows a lack of communication among the family, and Mary's desire to live in a fantasy world. Mary enters and the two men change the subject, saying they were going to trim the hedges. Mary knows they are lying to her, and the two men stare at her because she is talking strangely. Jamie and Tyrone leave to trim the hedges, and then Jamie enters in a coughing fit. Mary fusses over Edmund, calling him the baby of the family. She chastises him and Jamie for "disgracing" themselves by consorting with "loose" women. Edmund warns her to be ready if his sickness is something worse than a cold, but Mary denies any possibility of that. Mary says that Edmund and Jamie are always "cruelly suspicious" of her, but she concedes that they have no reason to trust her, as she has broken so many promises in the past.

Scene 1** The scene opens with Edmund sitting alone onstage reading a book. It is a quarter to one. Cathleen, the cheerful, ignorant Irish maid, enters and flirts with him. Edmund tells her to go fetch Jamie and Tyrone, who are out working outside. Jamie enteres first. He reveals to his younger brother that he may have something worse than malaria, and Edmund is filled is depression. Mary enters, and it is apparent that she has broken her promises and is back on morphine. She chastises Jamie for always finding faults in eveyone but himself, but then expresses her view that **"[Jamie] can't help what the past has made him. Any more than your father can. Or you. Or I."** This fatalistic view about the past and predestination is her excuse for her family's faults and her own morphine addiction. Edmund goes outside to get Tyrone to come in for lunch and while he is out, Jamie stares at Mary suspiciously, knowing that she is back on morphine. Mary refuses his accusations, staying in stubborn denial. Tyrone and Edmund enter. After Jamie and Edmund leave, Tyrone realizes that Mary is back on morphine as well, and it crushes his spirit. The scene opens with the Tyrones just having finish lunch. When they walk out of the dining room, it is clear there is division among them, one manifestation being Tyrone not touching or looking at Mary. Tyrone gets a call from the family doctor Doctor Hardy, saying that Edmund has an appointment that afternoon. Mary bursts out that Hardy knows nothing about medicene and is just some cheap quack Tyrone hired. She exits, and Jamie suggests that she has gone to get more morphine. The two other men explode at him, saying that Jamie needs to be less pessimistic. Jamie simply says that the other two need to stop deluding themselves and admit the truth. Tyrone argues that the two boys have lost their Catholic faith, especially Edmund, who reads from Nietzsche and Marx. The two boys counter that Tyrone doesn't go to church much either, but he says that he prays everyday. After Edmund leaves the room, Tyrone tells Jamie that Edmund has consumption, "no possible doubt". Jamie cynically believes that Tyrone has the Irish belief that consumption is fatal, so he won't pay for a proper sanitorium for Edmund to get cured in if he's goin to die anyway. Jamie promises to come to the doctor's office with his brother and father.
 * ACT 2:
 * Scene 2**

Mary enters again after Jamie leaves. She pleads with Tyrone not to leave her so soon but to keep her company, because she gets so lonely. Tyrone suggests that she take a ride out in the car he bought her, but she says that there's no point as she has no friends. She talks about a scandal involving Tyrone and a mistress when they first got married, which made most of her friends leave her. Tyrone tells her not to delve into the past, but being on morphine, she continues. She talks about how she became addicted to morpine after Edmund was born, and she blames Tyrone's stinginess in hiring a cheap doctor for her addiction. She talks about how after Eugene, her second baby died, she promised never again to have a baby but gave in and had Edmund. Edmund was born weak and fragile and Mary believes that God made him so to punish her for not taking better care of Eugene. Tyrone tells Mary not to focus on the past but she replies **"Why? How can I? The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future too. We all try to lie out of that but life won't let us."** This again expresses Mary's fatalistic view of life and a central theme of the play; the importance of the past in present. Edmund enters again and asks Tyrone for money, which he gives him. When Edmund says that Tyrone is wary to give him money because he thinks he will die and it will be a waste, Mary burst out that Edmund shouldn't be so pessimisstic. Edmund bitterly tells her to get off the morphine. Mary gets on the defensive, denying that she does it, but admits that she has lied to herself numerous times throughout the years, and she can "no longer call my soul my own." Edmund, Jamie, and Tyrone leave to go see Doc Hardy, leaving Mary who feels very lonely.

The act opens with Mary sitting and talking with Cathleen the maid. It is close to 6 pm. Mary has Cathleen there just so she has someone to talk to. Mary and Cathleen went to town in her car, where Cathleen bought Mary more morphine from the drugstore. Mary talks about her youth as a pious Catholic schoolgirl in a convent. She says she once had two dreams, to be either a nun or a professional concert pianist. Those dreams dissappeared however, when she met and fell in love with Tyrone after seeing him in a play. She says that after they were married, she never felt comfortable with the "theater crowd". As Cathleen leaves to get dinner, Mary becomes bitter, reminiscing how she used to be so happy before she married Tyrone. Just then, Tyrone and Edmund come home. Both of them are drunk, but they both realize that Mary has taken a large dose of morphine, and become gloomy and resigned. Mary laments about Jamie's failures in life, and both she and Tyrone warn Edmund that his brother will **"poison life for you with his damned sneering serpent's tongue!"** When Tyrone goes outside to unlock his private stash of whiskey, Mary calls him stingy, but tells Edmund to forgive his stinginess because he was forced to drop school and work for his family's food at the age of 10. Edmund reveals to Mary that he has consumption, something she has been trying to put off as a cold for some time. When he tells her she refuses to believe him. Edmund calls Mary a **"dope fiend for a mother"** and exits. Just then Tyrone walks in with more whiskey, and Mary blurts out that Jamie will die. She blames herself for his sickness, and wishes she had never given birth to Edmund. Cathleen announces that dinner is served, and Mary goes upstairs because she says she needs sleep. Tyrone knows that she has gone to get more morphine, and the thought that she takes this drug so she can escape from her family and home fills him with grief.
 * ACT 3:**

The act opens at around midnight in the Tyrone home. Tyrone is sitting alone playing cards, and is very drunk. Edmund stumbles in from taking a walk in the fog along the beach. He and Tyrone have a brief argument about saving electricity. Tyrone relents a little on his "prudence" and turns on all the lights in the house. Edmund tells him that he enjoys walking in the fog, even though it is bad for his health. He enjoys being enveloped in a different world, **"where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself."** Like Mary, who uses morphine to escape her dreary life, Edmund surronds himself with fog so he can be physically and mentally separated from his real life. Edmund and Tyrone then have an argument over Edmund's taste in literature, with Tyrone trying to force his taste in Shakespeare onto Edmund. Throughout the play it is apparent that Tyrone wants his sons to take after him in achieving great success, and he wants them to share his habits. Except for drinking alcohol, the boys do not follow their father very closely. Upon heairng Mary walking around upstairs, Edmund blames Tyrone for Mary's morphine addiction because he hired a cheap quack to take care of her, and for never providing an adequate home for her that would make her want to mentally "stay" with her family. Entering upon another argument, Tyrone agrees to send Edmund to the best sanatorium his money can get him. Playing cards, the two men share their experiences in life. When they hear Jamie coming home, Tyrone steps outside because he does not want to see him. Jamie is drunk as well, and tells Edmund how went to visit a fat prostitute out of pity that noone else would see. Jamie then reveals his deepest secret to Edmund, that he has always been jealous of him and has strived hard to make him fail like himself. Jamie warns Edmund not to follow the example that he sets for him, saying that "I'll do my damnedest to make you fail." Jamie tells Edmund that he hopes Edmund will be a success in life, and then passes out. Tyrone the walks in, having heard the whole thing, and cruelly says that Jamie was a waste. Jamie wakes up and argues with Tyrone briefly, and then they both pass out. The two are awakened again by the sound of Mary playing the piano in the adjacent room. Mary comes out with a pale face and holding her old wedding dress in her hands. She has taken so much morphine that she is hallucinating and believes she is back in her childhood. It is clear at this moment that the reason Mary takes morphine is so she can escape from her undesirable circumstances and be transported back to her happier past. Mary talks about wanting to become a nun, and how she was told to live outside the convent for a while so she could make a proper decision. She says that when she did that, she met and fell in love with James Tyrone "and was so happy for a time." The play ends with those lines with Mary standing up and the men sitting motionless in their chairs.
 * ACT 4:**