A Survey of American Drama

Questions Group A
1) What is the relation of Long Days Journey into Night to Aristotles three unities as
well as to the concepts of catharsis and terror and pity? Does the plays structure
coincide with the Freytag triangle?
2) The dope or (opium) pipe dream is a metaphoric intersection of hope, ideal,
fantasy and unconsciousness. These dreams are mocked and yet it is suggested that all
life lives by them and that without them there is no life. There are, however, a cursed
few, the self-tormentors, for whom the usual run of pipe-dreams is unsatisfactory and
for them only some final state of insentience, or nirvana can minister. And there
remains one final turn of the screw: the desire for insentience can turn out to be the
biggest pipe-dream of all, and the one which gives, as a dream, least satisfaction to
the holder (Goldman 54-55).
Please think about the implications of running away from actual life by pursuing a
pipe-dream. Specifically pay attention to Edmunds recalling of his sublime
experience at see I lost myself actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in
the sea [] I belonged without past, or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy,
within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man to life itself; To God, if
you want to put it that way (ONeill, 156).
Goldman argues that the recalling of the sublime experience in Edmunds situation of
entrapment is a narcotic escape (55) and that Edmund himself is a fog person as
well.
According to Goldman the fog person, like the pipe-dreamer, is an ambivalent
conception on the one hand the wanderer, lost between romance and reality, in the
hell of this world; on the other, the person whose real element is an even peaceful,
mistiness, beyond care and vexation (Goldman 56).
Please argue whether the nirvana state is predominantly positive or negative.
What after all constitutes our real life experience? When we, like Edmund, reach a
total understanding of the world beyond our sensual experience? Can this effect be
imitated effectively if you opt for dulling your mind and senses with drugs?

Works Cited
Goldman, Arnold. The Vanity of Personality: The Development of Eugene ONeill.
Blooms Modern Critical Views: Eugene ONeill. Ed. Harold Bloom.
New York: Chelsea House, 1987. 37-58.
ONeill, Eugene. Long Days Journey Into Night. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University
Press.

A Survey of American Drama

Questions Group A