Chloë Krueger, Fall 2009
In Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, a family of four struggles to reach each other through the shroud of absence each has encircled around them, they desperately try to reach each other but their final inability to exist to one another eventually leads to the downfall of the individual character along with the family. David McDonald, in his article “The Phenomenology of the Glance in Long Day’s Journey into Night,” poses the argument that the four acts in the play roughly correspond to his proposed four stages of “unveiling absence” and Jean-Paul Sartre’s (leading French existentialist philosopher) four ontological states of being. This realization, materialization or concretization of the absence within each character by each character is termed by McDonald as Sartre’s “death gaze.” When directed, this gaze or acknowledgement of absence eventually leads to each character’s eventual downfall – their own rapidly increasing absence.
Firstly, McDonald establishes the difference between absence, the disintegrating presence of a character and ‘divine absence’ which is the state of ‘fluctuating between being and nothing’ or as Sartre describes it ‘a being-which-is-not-what-it-is-and-which-is-what-it-is-not’ (343-344). Then McDonald defines his four stages of absence. The first stage, corresponding to Sartre’s phase of Being-In-Itself, is the stage of Presence; this phase is “dominated by visibility. The central figure being observed remains integrated within itself, seeing and being capable of being seen and as yet unaware of itself as a mere appearance in the eyes of the other” (345). The second phase of absence is the stage of Appearance (Sartre’s phase of Being-For-Itself). This stage is marked by a duplicitous doubling of the character and a separation from the self (345). The third stage is that of Transference, the phase of Being-For-Others. This stage is established through the alienation and isolation of a character and even the transference of guilt, shame or identity to others to escape the self and thereby establish personal isolation. The last stage is that of Absence or Being-In-And-For-Itself; this stage is initiated by isolation and becomes a “‘wrenching away’ and a return into the self as The Other. This makes an absolute departure or absence from the eye of the outside observer” as the character is liberated from the observation of others, reaching transcendence or unadulterated absence (345). In this way the four stages of absence match the four acts of the play in succession and are the catalyst for the eventual fall into absence of the other characters.
Each of these four stages corresponds, in large part, to the actions of the characters as well. The characters each engage in these four stages successively, but the men of the household, the father James Tyrone, the eldest son Jamie and the youngest son Edmund do not match the progress of Mary, the mother and wife to the Tyrone men. As such, Mary, the primary focus of the men, becomes alienated from them in their common progression from presence to absence. This alienation has a cyclical effect furthering Mary’s own absence and therefore that of the Tyrone men until the family’s mutual collapse and fall into pure absence or a transcendence.
The first act of the play relates to the stage of Presence. In this stage Mary and the Tyrone men are undeniably present, relating and seeing each other. Mary is the central focus as both the sons and the father are constantly watching her, if warily. When comments are made they are centered on physical appearance (McDonald, 346). James mentions Mary’s figure as his sole fixation, “Just what I’ve been telling her, Jamie. She’s so fat and sassy, there’ll soon be no holding her” (O’Neill, 20). Accordingly, in the first act, her preoccupation, along with her sons is also one of physicality – she continually mentions her ugly rheumatic hands and joints while her sons teasingly mention James’ aging appearance, terming him the “Old Man.” This phase of presence is accentuated by the stage directions O’Neill gives – he continually describes Mary as fidgeting with her hands, “Her hands flutter up to her hair” constantly when they are not dancing across the surface of the table (20). It is these physical descriptions and focus thereof that establishes the presence of the characters within the first act.
However, this stage of presence is not long lasting. McDonald also claims that the first act is one not only of presence, visibility and physical acknowledgment but also of the “death-gaze” proposed by Sartre (345). This gaze is the concretization of the personal absence of another and is first directed by all the Tyrone men toward Mary, “She stops short, overcome by a fit of acute self-consciousness as she catches their eyes on her” (O’Neill, 27). They all fear Mary will again start abusing morphine, a fear perpetuated from past experience; the symptoms of which manifest in a detachment or indifference to her life and family. Therefore her actions are constantly scrutinized for perceived signs of presence turned to absence (McDonald, 345-346). Ironically, it is this gaze designed to keep Mary from absence that pushes her into absence.
The Tyrone men begin to focus their “‘uneasy probing look’ into the other [May] and the guilt of being caught looking and seeing nothing in each other but the absence of the self – an absence that binds the guilty together […]” inevitably pushes Mary into absence. The presence of Mary, which is oppositional to the total absence of character, creates in itself an absence. The Tyrones continually look for the behavioral evidence of drug abuse but finding nothing, in actuality they see an absence – an absence of the symptoms they look for tirelessly. Therefore the presence of Mary results in her inevitable absence from her family. Therefore, Mary feeling this divide between her and her family, tries to escape from this fate by using morphine, once again. As the men see nothing but absence, constantly fixing her with the death gaze, she begins to inevitably embody that absence. Meanwhile, as Mary slips into the absence dictated by the assuming Tyrone men, all three are bound together as the guilty. In the stage of presence they do not objectifying each other, they escape scrutiny and therefore remain isolated from Mary. After Mary leaves the room James and Jamie share a mutual bond, as inescapable as Mary’s fall into absence, “His son looks at him, for the first time with an understanding sympathy. It is as if suddenly a deep bond of common feeling existed between them in which their antagonisms could be forgotten” (O’Neill, 37). This creates an even more impassable divide between Mary and the men which then leads to the destruction of the male characters and Mary’s further descent into absence.
The second act represents the stage of appearance, primarily Mary’s appearance. McDonald claims that the scene “develops through a succession of perceivers perceiving the change and duplicity of Mary” (348). She enters the room and “her eyes are brighter, and there is a peculiar detachment in her voice and manner, as if she were a little withdrawn from her words and actions” (O’Neill, 61). This indifference in Mary’s attitude confirms all their fears – after one look both Jamie and James are able to tell that Mary has once again started using morphine. Edmund, slow to condemn Mary finally is made to realize that his mother has started to slip into the absence that marks her drug addiction. Again it is this separate stage of absence and Mary’s alienation that leads to the absence of James, Jamie and Edmund. They can all see that she has started using morphine but she continually denies any mention of the subject – portions of her dialogue switch from being distant and indifferent to denying all implication to her affliction. This demonstrates the duplicity and separation with which Mary approaches her family.
Mary: Why do you stare like that?
Jamie: You know.
Mary: I don’t know.
Jamie: Oh, for God’s sake, do you think you can fool me, Mama? I’m not blind.
Mary: Looks directly at him now, her face set again in an expression of bland, stubborn denial.
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Jamie: No? Take a look at your eyes in the mirror. (O’Neill, 65)
This action and denial further alienates her from her family, they begin to condemn her with anger. Mary states “Please stop staring! One would think you were accusing me – James! You don’t understand” (O’Neill, 71). James angrily responds “I understand that I’ve been a God-damned fool to believe in you” (O’Neill, 71). In this way Mary is pushed farther and farther away from her family who begin to distance themselves from her. This distancing makes her withdraw more in her “absence” seeking solace and refuge from her condemning children and husband. Then men suffer the pain of failure – failure to save their wife and mother from her problems. This deep knowledge of the inability to save Mary and the dashing of their hopes for her recovery leads them into a state of decline. This initiates the Tyrone men’s fall into absence and therefore the downfall of the family. This refuge in her absence inevitably draws Mary’s family, in misery, into their own absences, in addition seeking solace from their pain. The men are still represented in the stage of presence but soon begin to rapidly decline into total absence, but never alongside Mary, making absence-seeking more and more prominent among the family members.
The last portion of act two and act three represent the stage of transference. McDonald states “The sequence of transference in Long Day’s Journey into Night is marked by a shift in plot sequence from Mary to Edmund […and] from the inadequacy of the present guilt to the fullness of absent innocence” (350). This suggests that Mary is becoming more and more absent not only from her own reality but from the thoughts and cares of her family members. As the men begin to lose all real contact with their wife and mother the focus of concern is shifted to another character that is able to receive such concern, able to connect with the others still.
As Mary is unable to be reached on any plane of reality, both Jamie and Tyrone switch their effort of defending, watching and nurturing to Edmund, recently diagnosed with consumption and not the summer cold the family had been fooling themselves into believing. In the beginning of the play everyone watched Mary diligently but in the last half of the second act, Mary “appears indifferent to the fact that their thoughts are not on what she is saying any more than her own are” (O’Neill, 73). No one seems to consider Mary any longer, seeing that she is lost in her haze of morphine. When she is about to take her leave she announces to James’ initial opposition “You’re welcome to come up and watch me if you’re so suspicious.” James then denies this suggestion “As if that would do any good! You’d only postpone it. And I’m not your jailor. This isn’t a prison” (O’Neill 77). Mary takes her leave and far from the constant watching and listening that occurred in the first act over Mary dissolves – Mary becomes a ghost, not part of the Tyrone men’s world any longer, she is almost ignored and left to her dissolution.
The men, still is a state of presence, loose Mary more and more as they remain attached to reality and Mary to drug induced fantasy. This leads to the eventual destruction of all the characters – their initial sole concern is dissolving. Edmund, as the replacement, is also driven into absence by the death-gaze but still attached to his father and older brother drags them into absence as well. No player escapes their fate as dictated by their actions toward Mary, actions that drove her into absence that then drives each Tyrone man into their own total absence.
Before each reaches total absence, or the last stage of absence, both Mary and the men engage in transference together, but already separated by their previous different states are only draw further and further apart. Mary transfers guilt in turn to James, Jamie and Edmund while the men do the same but allocate guilt to each other. In this way even though they reach transference together the male characters are already separated from Mary by pushing her first into absence via their death gaze or their concretizing of Mary’s absence. When Mary returns from upstairs the men continue to willfully ignore her, as McDonald says, “The observance of the ritual of nonobservance repeats itself” (351). Throughout the third act blame and guilt passes around the family in an endless cycle – “the snapping closure of accusation and the equally sudden opening of remorse inviting counter accusation – is the overriding pattern of dialogue throughout the play. Each character is bound as much to the other as it is to itself […]” (McDonald, 352). This cycle of blame revolves ad infinitum through the family demonstrating the family’s decline into transference.
Act four sees the destruction of the characters as they all become totally absent, transcending from being observed by others and becoming their own observers instead. In this way they are separated from the world and each other. All characters are first drawn toward absence by first a separation from reality, either being inebriated or in a state of narcosis. The total absence of the characters becomes complete after each passes from transference into divine absence and then into transcendence. McDonald states that the dreams of the men “taken from memory, are centered in the loss of self, a pantheistic merging with the world to a point in which the self both-is-and-is-not-there in the totality of the being” (353). McDonald claims that each men finds divine absence in individual dreams of losing oneself.
Tyrone dreams of being lost with Shakespeare, Edmund dreams of being one with the universe, of being lost in the beauty of nature while at sea, and Jamie dreams of being lost in a world of prostitution and alcohol (McDonald, 353-353). Tyrone admits “I loved Shakespeare. I would have acted in any of his plays for nothing, for the joy of being alive in his great poetry” (O’Neill, 153). In this James loses himself in the words of Shakespeare, he becomes someone else and loses the pain of his reality for the dream of non-reality. Edmund and does the same by stating, “I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm if it, and for a moment I lost myself – actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved into the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and high dim-starred sky” (O’Neill, 156). Lastly, Jamie exclaims “I shall attain the pinnacle of success! I’ll be the lover of the fat woman in Barnum and Bailey’s circus” (O’Neill, 164). After admitting each divine absence, the dream of existing but not as in their realities, or existing but at the same time not existing, they come to the destruction of their presence, they fall into total absence.
In the last act as well, all three men reach absolute absence. James reaches his transcendence by acknowledging that he has a fear of the poorhouse, of losing all the wealth he has accrued via bad luck. Jamie reaches transcendence by admitting to his father and to Edmund that he has always, on some level wanted to lead his brother astray. Edmund reaches transcendence by realizing that he may be close to death; that he may reach concrete absence via death in the sanatorium – he gives up any hold on life until his return from the sanatorium (McDonald, 354-355). McDonald claims that each character then becomes free from the observance and death gaze of others; they are free from the stage of transference and dwindle into absence (354-355). Jamie and James’ true intentions and characters are finally known by Edmund. They are at last free from observance of the other, and become their own observers,
locked into a realm of their own, a realm separated from reality and from each other. By acknowledging their biggest fears and flaws in front of each other they are free from the scrutiny and judgment of the other. Edmund facing death or existence in the sanatorium and being the focus of the death gaze also loses his presence and falls into absence, acknowledging his own possible fate. He claims he “must always be a little in love with death” (O’Neill, 157).
McDonald claims that Mary also reaches transcendence, her men no longer caring or trying to make contact with her. She is free from their observations at last, trapped in her own absence. However, she is also trapped within her own divine absence; she is trapped in the drug induced hallucination that she is once again a young girl back in her convent. This hallucination prevents entry into the real world and prevents acknowledgment of past pains, “Let me see. What did I come here to find? It’s terrible, how absentminded I’ve become. I’m always dreaming and forgetting” (O’Neill, 175). As such, she only reaches a faux transcendence, free from the observation of others but she never becomes her own observer, rather she is trapped in her divine absence.
It is this divide between the characters that hampers resolution. They all reach total absence, being totally separated from each other, initiated by mutually pushing Mary into absence and then never allowing her to reach transcendence with her family. The men realizing this inescapable divide between them and Mary, realizing that they have lost her, their symbol for hope and a better life, finally allow themselves to dream the dream of divine absence and then fall into total absence. This isolation between each and the other becomes the tragic downfall of the all the characters.
Works Cited
McDonald, David. “The Phenomenology of the Glance in Long Day’s Journey into Night.” Theatre Journal Vol. 31, No. 3 (Oct., 1979), pp. 343-356. JSTOR. Web. 8 Dec. 2009.
O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journal into Night. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1956. Print.