Abstract: In Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical play Long Day’s Journey into Night, he undisguisedly shows his vivid and accurate family environment. All characters in the play are sculptured according to his true family members. In this paper, the author tries to delve into the play from the perspective of the playwright’s presence in the play from the following three aspects: family members’ influences, his tragic view and the use of symbols in the play. This paper contains five parts: introduction, three chapters and conclusion. The introduction part is mainly to state this play’s important status. It is widely considered as his finest work and is written by Eugene O’Neill with tears and blood. He expresses all his complex feeling and his life thinking into the play, and it is a play worth studying. The first chapter discusses O’Neill’s presence in the play through his family member’s influence, and each family member reflects one part of his ego soul. The second chapter writes about O’Neill’s presence in the play through the tragic sense in the play. To probe into the four tragic souls, we can sense the presence of the mature O’Neill. The third chapter focus on the symbols used in the play, like fog, foghorn and so on, which are helpful for the playwright to better express his themes, and we can sense the presence of the playwright. According to those aspects, the thesis expounds O’Neill’s presence in the play, and deeply reveals the author’s painstaking efforts. Also, it expresses his thinking towards family tragedy as well as his life attitudes and values.

Key words: Eugene O’Neill; Long Day’s Journey into Night; presence; tragic sense; use of symbols

Contents

Abstract

摘要

Introduction-1

Chapter One O’Neill’s Presence Indicated by Each Tyrone-2

1.1 Influence from His Mother-2

1.2 Influence from His Father-3

1.3 Influence from His Brother-5

Chapter Two O’Neill’s Presence Seen Through His Tragic View-6

2.1 The Tragic Setting of the Play-7

2.2 The Question of Blame-laying-8

Chapter Three O’Neill’s Presence Seen Through His Symbol Use-9

3.1 The Symbolic Title-9

3.2 Fog, Foghorn, Curtain and Other Symbols-11

Conclusion-12

Bibliography-12

Acknowledgments-14