Long Days Journey Into Night

It is understandable that so many people in our class did not find the last act of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night a satisfying one; there is no tidy ending, no goodbye kisses or murder confessions; none of the charaters leave the stage with flowers in their hands or with smiles on their faces and none of the characters give explanatory monologues after the curtain falls, as we've become accustomed to by reading …

…that they've become. Eugene O'Neill wrote the play in the later part of his life in many ways for this reason: to forgive his family and absolve them from the harsh opinions which permeate his earlier works. Forgiving is not an easy thing to do, though (O'Neill eludes to the pain it caused to write LDJIN in his dedication), and, as a result, LDJIN is not an easy play to understand or to sit through.