Often, people contemplate what is their biggest regret and why? While there might be a thousand different answers, regret is a universal feeling, which can be found everywhere, including literature. Within popular American fiction, one can find regret in the work of multiple authors like Eugene O 'Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller. In their individual plays, Long Day’s Journey into Night, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Death of a Salesman, the authors depict regret through their characters’ remorse with their current lives.
In Long Day’s Journey into Night, both Tyrone and Mary exhibit deep regret with how their decisions have caused their life together to develop. The play revolves around the Tyrone family, who over the course of …show more content…
Throughout the play, Mary references many memories from her marriage with James Tyrone Sr. In the first two acts, her comments are amorous and joyful. However, in the later acts, Mary, who also faces an addiction to morphine, begins to lament about the loneliness Tyrone has caused her. In the final scene of the play, Mary, high on morphine, hallucinates of her youth, when she was training to become a nun of the Blessed Virgin. Within her delirium, Mary mentions that she was only “happy for a time” with Tyrone, before the loneliness and the morphine ruined their lives together (O’Neill 881, 891, 895, & 925). Mary’s character shows her regrets the most explicitly through the play. She regrets leaving her convent, meeting Tyrone, marrying him, having his children, and living her life with him. Regularly, she wishes and wonders how much better her life would be if she were still training to become a nun. In her life she only wanted two things, to become a concert pianist and to become a nun, both of which she gave up for Tyrone (O’Neill 890). Her entire life has been one giant regret. Both characters, in fact, could characterize their lives through their regrets. Tyrone and Mary’s decision have led to the upheaval of their family and their hatred with their
In Long Day’s Journey into Night, both Tyrone and Mary exhibit deep regret with how their decisions have caused their life together to develop. The play revolves around the Tyrone family, who over the course of …show more content…
Throughout the play, Mary references many memories from her marriage with James Tyrone Sr. In the first two acts, her comments are amorous and joyful. However, in the later acts, Mary, who also faces an addiction to morphine, begins to lament about the loneliness Tyrone has caused her. In the final scene of the play, Mary, high on morphine, hallucinates of her youth, when she was training to become a nun of the Blessed Virgin. Within her delirium, Mary mentions that she was only “happy for a time” with Tyrone, before the loneliness and the morphine ruined their lives together (O’Neill 881, 891, 895, & 925). Mary’s character shows her regrets the most explicitly through the play. She regrets leaving her convent, meeting Tyrone, marrying him, having his children, and living her life with him. Regularly, she wishes and wonders how much better her life would be if she were still training to become a nun. In her life she only wanted two things, to become a concert pianist and to become a nun, both of which she gave up for Tyrone (O’Neill 890). Her entire life has been one giant regret. Both characters, in fact, could characterize their lives through their regrets. Tyrone and Mary’s decision have led to the upheaval of their family and their hatred with their