Mary s adventure of the haze and the foghorn

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1 . Intro

Fog looks in many of Eugene O’Neill’s works. In Long Day’s Quest into Night time, O’Neill uses not only fog but the foghorn as image. This daily news will examine the function of the fog and the foghorn in the play, with particular attention to Jane Tyrone. By the help of secondary literature I will emphasize the parallels first between Jane and the fog and then between Mary and the foghorn. Finally, I intend to find out which will of the two symbols pertains most directly to Mary and serves as a parallel with her mental state.

2 . The Fog and the Foghorn

installment payments on your 1 Martha and the Haze

The first time the motif of the fog looks is once Mary talks to her husband shortly after her return from the sanatorium: “Thank heavens, the fog is finished, ” states. (O’Neill 17) Because of Mary’s past, the statement generally seems to present a weak sparkle of desire that she could “resist the temptation this kind of time” and come to grips with her morphine addiction. (Tiusanen 285) Previously at this point anybody can draw a connection between Mary’s morphine habit and the theme of the haze. (Scheibler 131) Mary comes back from the sanatorium and the sunlight is shining (cf. O’Neill 10), which usually lets a single hope that everything is okay. Later on, the moment Mary manages to lose control over her addiction, the fog becomes thicker, through the end with the play night is pervasive. (cf. Falk 181)

Mary’s conversation with Cathleen also underlines the bond between Mary’s mental state and the fog. Mary does not tune in to Cathleen in any way, instead shaving lyrical regarding the past and speaking only of the fog: “It had not been the fog I oriented, Cathleen, inches she says. “I really love the fog. [¦] It conceals you through the world as well as the world from you. You feel that everything has changed, and nothing is exactly what it appeared to be. No one can find or touch you anymore. ” (O’Neill 123) According to the stage direction, Mary says these terms in a dreamy way (O’Neill 113), the fog appears for her a way to get rid of it of fact.

Martha likes the concept of being hidden and protected by the fog. The fog allows her break free into the past and to dream about being a nun or a concert pianist. Jane calls herself “a pious girl” and points out her permanent longing for a “respectable home. inches (111) The lady indirectly blames her hubby for her circumstance and unfulfilled dreams: “I might have absent ” basically hadn’t dropped in love with Mister Tyrone. Or I might have become a deshalb. I had two dreams. To become a nun that was the even more beautiful 1. To become a live show pianist that was the various other. ” (113) There are zero fulfilled dreams in Mary’s life, she lives with regret and in loneliness, and longs for a real home, a place wherever someone is “never lonely” (Bogard 428). She explains to Edmund: “In a real residence one is hardly ever alone. You forget I know from encounter what a home is like. ” (O’Neill 80)

Scheibler states that we have a close connection between the haze and Mary’s morphine dependency. “For Martha [the fog] is the sphere of the creativeness, of her narcotic dreams, ” Schiebler writes, although “the drugs kill the senses till she can simply dimly discern the things of reality. ” (131) Edmund identifies this connection as well: “The hardest issue to take is definitely the blank wall membrane she builds around her, ” he says, referring to when ever Mary will take her morphine and retreats into her dreams. “Or it’s more like a traditional bank of fog in which your woman hides and loses himself. ” (154) Scheibler’s idea that “even the harmless inquiries and observations can enter the wall membrane of haze around her and destroy the illusion” confirms the proper use of the fog as being a symbol. Fog hides you in only a superficial approach from the outside community. Although one particular cannot examine fog, fog consists just of normal water and is for that reason no actual barrier. So why then will Edmund speak about “the toughest thing [¦] the empty wall” (O’Neill 120)? Normally, one would expect that this kind of a succinct, pithy “wall” should be easy to tenderize, especially for members of the family. In this case, yet , it seems extremely hard for the family members to seriously connect with Jane and help her, the entire family suffers from isolation and too little of communication. According to Bogard, “the fog becomes the physical proof of the isolation of the Tyrones. ” (425 )

Furthermore, Bogard cell phone calls Mary’s isolation “both her need and her terror. ” (428) This discord develops to a vicious ring: on the one hand Jane says that she wants the fog, since it skins her, on the other hand she longs for like and a home. Your woman isolates very little, thereby dropping contact with real life and with her relatives. Mary’s desire “to avoid into a lonely world ” into the convent where she could be continual by a eye-sight and live a simple, virginal existence” suggests that she has often tried to flee from sense of guilt and by her complications. (ibid) Because Bogard understands, Mary’s childhood was not perfect and protected, her father was also a drinker, and Mary’s desire to find a restored home has never been satisfied. (ibid)

2 . two Mary and the Foghorn

The sense of security the fog offers Mary helps to explain the contrasting which means of the foghorn. In the beginning in the play, Martha says: “I do truly feel out of sort today. I was not able to obtain much sleep with that horrible foghorn going all night long. inch (O’Neill 17) She proceeds: “it’s the foghorn My spouse and i hate. It won’t let you alone. It retains reminding you, and alert you, and calling you back. inches (85) These words make clear that, in Scheibler’s words, “the foghorn disturbs the safety and peace [Mary] seems in her dreams and [¦] will not let her escape by reality. inch (Scheibler 137)

Scheibler procedes argue that the foghorn is evidence that Mary is usually not as guarded as she’d like to have the haze and that her superficial “walls” are not totally impermeable. There exists therefore a good side towards the foghorn, it provides hope that Mary will certainly return to fact. That the girl hates the foghorn, nevertheless , shows the girl does not want to do so.

According to Scheibler, the foghorn may also be seen as a symbol of Mary’s pain. Scheibler draws a connection between Mary’s moaning as well as the constant moaning of the foghorn. (138) Wayne Tyrone phone calls the foghorn “a sick whale in the backyard, inch (O’Neill 17) and later inside the play one finds a description of the foghorn in the stage directions, which will picks up on the idea of the “mourning whale” (105). The foghorn is not only a sound that should advise Mary of reality and the outside world, but one which seemes to express her inner turmoil and sense of brokenness.

3. Summary

As we have seen, the features of the fog and the foghorn are indisputably contrary, whereas the fog offers Mary, at least momentarily, to be able to escape in her past and dreams, where she feels safe, the foghorn tries to pull her out of her succinct, pithy harmony, which is itself only a fa? by-by. The foghorn seems sometimes the last ideal hope for Mary to return to fact, but in the final the fog wins out. The foghorn should go unheard.

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Works Cited

Bogard, Travis. Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene ONeill. Ny:

OUP, 1972. 427-433.

Falk, Doris Virginia. Eugene ONeill plus the Tragic Stress: an Interpretative Study

from the Plays. New Brunswick, D. J.: Rutgers UP, 1958. 181-187.

O’Neill, Eugene. Long Day’s Journey in Night. Male impotence. Ferdinand Schunk.

Fremdsprachentexte. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1989.

Scheibler, Rolf. The Late Plays of Eugene ONeill: The Cooper Monographs upon

English and American Vocabulary and Books 15. Bern: Francke, 1970. 106-138.

Tiusanen, Estafa. O’Neill’s Scenic Images. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton UP, late 1960s. 285.

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