Kyra Chessman Exam 1 Essay Postmodernism in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” Postmodernism started as a post-war movement in response to the poverty and depression that began in World War II in the early 40s. Although both the postmodern and modern literature are bot breaks from traditional literature, postmodernism is considered a reaction to the modernist movement because of the paradigm shift of philosophies. Also, it is a metaphysical movement that questions all the fundamentals of literature that came before in the romanticism, modernism, and imagism movements.
Although postmodernism literature has no set definition, common traits include fragmentation, black humor, and challenging the borders of decency which is exemplified in Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night. ” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” is fragmented in the sense that O’Neill deliberately puts the conversations of the family all over the place. Conversation is not a continuous flow, but rather to intensify the drama between the family, a conversation is going north one minute and south the next.
This often happens in the play when Mary is having a conversation with herself and Tyrone and the boys are talking around her arguing with each other. For example, in Act 3 of the play Mary is reminiscing about her past while Edmund and Tyrone repeatedly tell her to stop talking and Mary’s next line is, “[goes on as if nothing has been said] It’s hard to believe, seeing Jamie as he is now, that he was ever my baby” (447). By fragmenting conversations, everyone’s and especially Mary’s problems are prominent to the reader.
Moreover, this play undoubtedly is characterized by dark humor. The characters are alcoholics and drug addicts who all have problems with one another. However, out of all the characters in the play, Jamie is the most comical in the dismal sense. He is an alcoholic who drinks all of his father’s liquor and fills it with water to get away with it. Also, throughout the play it is constantly said how he spends all his money on drinks and whores. This is displayed in Act 1 when Tyrone is having one of his rants blaming Jamie for Edmund’s problems when he raves, “You made him ld before his time, pumping him full of what you consider worldly wisdom…and every woman who wasn’t a whore was a fool! ” (413). His character is both dark and humorous at the same time, a trait of postmodernism. The content of this play is anything but decent. Drugs, alcohol, and sex are all talked about freely. In fact, these three topics are the roots of the family’s issues. The majority of the play Mary is strung out on opium, and the men are in a drunken haze.
The stage directions often describe Tyrone “with a drunken peevishness” (465) and Mary “looking out, a blank, far-off quality in her voice” (452). Jamie openly admits to Edmund his drunkenness when he says in Act 4, “[with great seriousness] I’m as drunk as a fiddler’s bitch” (469). Although, challenging decency is not anything new to literature because it is also seen in the modernist literary movement. The difference is that in modernist literature there is generally a belief towards progress while in postmodernist literature there is no sign of progression.
For instance, “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” has an ambiguous ending where all the characters have not solved any of their problems. Overall, postmodernism is a movement meant to have no definition, but in the end can be characterized by certain traits. O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” does this with its fragmentation, dark humor, and indecency. It challenges literature that came before it by being blunt with alcohol and drug usage and having no answers to these kinds of problems.
