Edmund’s Insight Family is something that is prevalent in everyone’s life, whether it’s biological, non-blood or estranged. Eugene O’Neill’s play shows how his family of four deals -- or doesn’t deal -- with their issues with themselves and eachother. The autobiographical play serves as a catharsis for O’Neill as he reveals his inner thoughts and feelings through his own character, Edmund. Long Day’s Journey into Night illustrates the ironic but important life lesson that Edmund learns that results in a deeper understanding of life and family. While family is supposed to nurture you and love you the most, they’re the same people who hurt you the most. This is shown through the insight he gains while exploring his relationships with his father, …show more content…
Her inability and lack of willingness to stay sober for him and her family hurts him the most. At first he is in denial and refuses to believe that Mary has relapsed. Then he stays hopeful, he believes that it’s not too late. However, she denies his accusations and refutes his attempts to get through to her, he pleads, “You can still stop. You’ve got the will power! We’ll all help you. I’ll do anything!” (pg 95). It hurts Edmund that his mother relapsed, that she couldn’t stay strong for her …show more content…
The two seem to get along quite well but near the end of the play, certain touchy topics come up. In a drunken stupor, his brother admits to being “...a rotten bad influence. And worst of it is, I did it on purpose.” (pg 168). Edmund learns that his brother grew up resenting him a little bit, even blaming him for their mother’s addiction because she needed the morphine during Edmund’s birth. Jamie’s buried resentment for his brother hurts his brother in a different way than the rest of his family hurts him. Jamie’s hatred towards his Edmund is something that Edmund has no control over; it had nothing to do with him, so he has no way to fix things with his brother. He refuses to hear what his brother is saying, he doesn’t want to know and yells at his brother, “Shut up! I don’t want to hear--” (pg 169). Jamie reassures Edmund that he loves him more than he hates him, but all the same, hearing that a close family member hates you for something you have no control over is torture. His brother, like his parents, also has the great and terrible power to hurt Edmund, something that Edmund learns in this
In “Up the Coulee,” Hamlin Garland depicts what occurs when Howard McLane is away for an extended period of time and begins to neglect his family. Howard’s family members are offended by the negligence. Although his neglect causes his brother, Grant McLane, to resent him, Garland shows that part of having a family is being able to put aside negative feelings in order to resolve problems with relatives. Garland demonstrates how years apart can affect family relationships, causing neglect, resentment, and eventually, reconciliation.
not only a family but a society. In a play riddled with greed, manipulation and dishonesty,
Every member of a family fulfills a specific role that allows the group to function as a cohesive unit. In most families, these roles involve traditional genders, where the father plays the role of the “provider”, bringing in money to the family, and the mother is the “nurturer”, keeping the children healthy and content while maintaining an orderly household. When these roles are left unfilled, a family can fall apart almost instantly. In Jeannette Walls’ chilling memoir The Glass Castle, Jeannette’s recollection of her childhood involves a large amount of familial dysfunction due to the lack of fulfillment of these roles. Jeannette and her siblings Maureen, Brian, and Lori grow up with their parents Rex and Rose Mary Walls. Rex and Rose Mary
Currently, families face a multitude of stressors in their lives. The dynamics of the family has never been as complicated as they are in the world today. Napier’s “The Family Crucible” provides a critical look at the subtle struggles that shape the structure of the family for better or worse. The Brice family is viewed through the lens of Napier and Whitaker as they work together to help the family to reconcile their relationships and the structure of the family.
Family bonds are very important which can determine the ability for a family to get along. They can be between a mother and son, a father and son, or even a whole entire family itself. To some people anything can happen between them and their family relationship and they will get over it, but to others they may hold resentment. Throughout the poems Those Winter Sundays, My Papa’s Waltz, and The Ballad of Birmingham family bonds are tested greatly. In Those Winter Sundays the relationship being shown is between the father and son, with the way the son treats his father. My Papa’s Waltz shows the relationship between a father and son as well, but the son is being beaten by his father. In The Ballad of Birmingham the relationship shown is between
New studies show men who did not have a relationship with their father tend to act out in stressful situations (Tobin 1). Father and Son relationships are a crucial part of a man’s life, it shapes who they will become; however, it is in the most strenuous circumstances that, in order to survive, a strong father-son relationship is vital. In Hamlet, a play by William Shakespeare and in the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, Hamlet and Elie are pushed in different ways in trying to help their fathers. Night by Elie Wiesel and Hamlet by William Shakespeare emphasize how necessary a father-son relationship is in a boy’s life.
Hamlet is petrified into inaction by the quickness of events that transpires at the beginning of the play. His uncle Claudius has killed his father, and his mother in less than a month has married the same man who committed this heinous murder thus beginning an incestuous relationship. Hamlet addressed his discord with this speed and nature of this relationship, “A little more than kin, and less than kind”...
The complexity and effect of father-son relationships seems to be a theme that Shakespeare loved to explore in his writings. In Hamlet, the subject is used as a mechanism to identify the similarities between three very different characters: Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet. They have each lost their fathers to violent deaths, which leads them to seek vengeance. As different as they may seem, they all share the common desire to avenge their father’s deaths. The method they each approach this is what differentiates each of their characters, and allows the audience to discern their individual characteristics. Fortinbras, Laertes, and Hamlet’s intense loyalty to their fathers drives them to individual extreme measures of revenge, exemplifying Shakespeare’s masterful use of describing the human psyche during Elizabethan times.
These two plays show dramatically the struggle for authoritative power over the characters lives, families, and societies pressures. The overall tragedy that befalls them as they are swept up in these conflicts distinctly portrays the thematic plot of their common misconception for power and control over their lives.
The youngest Pevensie brother, Edmund, is the mischievous child among his siblings in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He is a representation of the possibility of what can go wrong when a child is not properly taught and does not follow set boundaries. Edmund’s subversion of set standards is the cause of a great deal of the troubles the Pevensies face in Narnia. For example, when he goes to the White Witch’s castle instead of listening to the others when they say Aslan is the true leader. In order to redeem himself, he must first be renewed and return to an earlier state. He is not allowed to stay indignant, but is reformed when he learns that Aslan is really the true ruler, and Jadis is not. He is allowed to do so because of his status as a child who is still developing. Edmund’s corruption and later redemption show that he is not really wicked, but has an innate goodness.
Edmund’s discontent with the notion of bastardy is brought up furthermore in his soliloquy at the beginning of scene two: “Thou, nature, art my goddess. To thy law/ My services are bound. Wherefore should I/ Stand in the plague of custom…” (II.1-3). The notion of bastardy in Lear pushes Edmund to place his faith in his born traits as opposed to the system that has labeled him an outsider his whole life. He believes he is equal to his brother in every way—his mind and shape as true—and the only reason he is not aloud to prosper is because of a preconceived idea of the ideal child. Inevitably, Edmund wants to rebel against the system that has stifled him for so long. Gloucester is primarily responsible for Edmund’s actions because he in no way raised him equal to Edgar. Edmund’s goal to usurp his brother and earn the power he believes he deserves is due to the notion of bastardy in the play; Edmund questions “why brand they us with ‘base, base bastardy’” in his first soliloquy (II.10) . After all, even Kent attested to his fine demeanour. But, the steadfast notion of bastardy at the time drove Edmund to the point of betrayal because there was no hope for him in playing by the rules as they are fundamentally opposed to a bastard’s prosperity. With this soliloquy, Edmund positions himself as the more disserving
The father’s character begins to develop with the boy’s memory of an outing to a nightclub to see the jazz legend, Thelonius Monk. This is the first sign of the father’s unreliability and how the boy’s first recollection of a visitation with him was a dissatisfaction to his mother. The second sign of the father’s lack of responsibility appears again when he wanted to keep taking the boy down the snowy slopes even though he was pushing the time constraints put on his visitation with his son. He knew he was supposed to have the boy back with his mother in time for Christmas Eve dinner. Instead, the father wanted to be adventurous with his son and keep taking him down the slopes for one last run. When that one last run turned into several more, the father realized he was now pushing the time limits of his visit. Even though he thought he was going to get him home, he was met with a highway patrol’s blockade of the now closed road that led home.
One of the major themes in the play, “A Moon for the Misbegotten” by Eugene O’ Neill, is the fact that people are rarely what they seem to be at first glance. We see this theme in at least three out of the six characters in the play. “A Moon for the Misbegotten” is the story of an Irish father, Phil Hogan, and his daughter Josie who live in a small shanty on a farm in Connecticut.
Edmund lusted for all of his father’s power, lying to his gullible brother and father aided him in his plan for total authority along with destroying their lives. As bastard son of Gloucester, Edmund wanted to receive all of the power destined for his brother, Edgar, who was Gloucester’s legitimate son. Edmund stated his disapproval of his brother, “Wherefore should I/ Stand in the plague of custom, and permit/ The curiosity of nations to deprive me/ For that I am some twelve or fourteen moonshines/ Lag of a brother? Why bastard?”(1.2.2-6). Edmund wanted the respect and love that Edgar received even though he was Gloucester’s bastard son. He claimed that he was not much younger or “moonshines lag of a brother” therefore he should be considered just as smart and able-minded as any legitimate son. He built up hatred toward Edgar and in order to get rid of him he convinced his father that Edgar had betrayed him through a letter. The letter that Edmund made read, “If our father would sleep till I waked him, you/ should enjoy half his revenue for ever, and live/ the beloved of your brother, Edgar”(1.2.55-57). Edmund portrayed Edgar as the son that would kill Gloucester only to inherit his money and share his inheritance with Edmund. Gloucester believed Edmund, sending out guards to kill Edgar for his betrayal...
A tragic character must pass from happiness to misery whereby he must be seen at the beginning of t... ... middle of paper ... ... born a bastard which continuously haunts him, does what he does as an act against the whole society. Therefore, Edmund’s driving force is to revolt against those in power, against traditional values and against the very make-up of society. He regards this revolution as a worthy cause, and his scheming is aimed at putting himself in power, gaining the throne.