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BY Michael Manheim
FROM Eugene O’Neill’s New Language of Kinship, Syracuse University
Press, 1982
The most recognizable motifs associated with the present life of James
Tyrone, Sr., are the following:
His bitter disappointment over his wife’s condition
His controlled alcoholism
His use of alcohol to help him communicate with his sons
His daily desertions of his wife to seek companionship
His aristocratic affectations
His Irish and Roman Catholic pride
His boisterous manner
His pride in his health and physique
His resentment at his sons’ “ingratitude”
His fear of attack by his sons
His supposed miserliness
His fear of poverty
His distrust of new ideas and recent writing
His resentment of the role which made him rich and famous
His near-deification of Shakespeare
Those associated with James Tyrone, Sr.’s memories of the past are the
following:
His early poverty and sense of social humiliation
His long-suffering mother
His hatred of manual labor
His family’s desertion by his father and the rumors of that father’s
suicide in Ireland
His romantic courtship of Mary Cavan
His need for Mary’s company after their marriage
His nightly desertions of Mary
His drink and social success
His philandering
His becoming a matinee idol
His promise as a Shakespearean actor
His "selling out” in search of financial security
The most recognizable motifs associated with the present life of Mary
Tyrone are the following:
Her social pretensions
Her propriety and at times Puritanical attitudes
Her envy of neighbors
Her hysteria concerning her younger son’s health
Her fear of her elder son
Her narcotic withdrawals
Her use of the upstairs spare room as location for taking drugs
Her dilated pupils when under the influence of morphine
Her fear concerning the appearance of her hair
Her use of the arthritis in her hands as front for her addiction
Her persistent denials of the reality of her condition
Her contempt for doctors
Her desire for and fear of Roman Catholic confession
Her fear of the fog
Those associated with Mary Tyrone’s memories of the past are the
following:
Her father’s consumption and alcoholism
Her proper upbringing
Her love of her girls’ boarding school
Her desire to be a nun
Her desire to be a concert pianist
Her infatuation with the matinee idol
Her wedding gown
Her enforced accompanying of her husband and desertion of her first
child
Her loneliness in hotel rooms
Her jealousy of her husband’s admirers
Her resentment of her husband’s drinking and social life
Her loss of a second child
Her blaming first child for death of second
Her conceiving a third child as replacement for second
Her difficult childbirth
Her dependency on strange doctors
Her use of morphine to alleviate pain
Her addiction and its discovery by first child, then second
Her pride in her first child
The most recognizable motifs associated with the present life of Jamie
Tyrone are the following:
His bitterness and cynicism
His brilliant wit
His contempt for and mockery of his father
His quick recognition of his mother’s renewed addiction
His ability to articulate his feelings through poetic quotations
His “Broadway” diction
His dependency on brother and father
His jealousy of his brother
His support for his brother
His emotional honesty
Those associated with Jamie’s memories of the past are the following:
His early disillusionment with his mother
His early successes at school
His dismissal from colleges
His drinking, whoring, and gambling
His ability to give others pleasure
His elegance in dress
His failure as an actor
The details of his mother’s death and his responses to it as described
in A Moon for the Misbegotten:
The trip to California
His mother’s sudden illness
The deathwatch
His false lamentation
His resentment of his mother’s death
His drinking on the train
The blonde whore on the train
His being too drunk to go to his mother’s funeral
The most recognizable motifs associated with the present life of Edmund
Tyrone are the following:
His persistent hope that his mother has reformed
His repeated disillusionments
His anger at his mother
His guilt at his anger at his mother
His dependency on his brother
His imitation of his brother in drink and wit
His shock at his brother’s cynicism
His radical opinions
His developing admiration for his father
His consumption
His love and recitation of recent poetry
His ambition to be a writer
His high-strung, nervous personality
His love of the fog
His fear that he might be like his mother
Those associated with Edmund’s memories of the past are the following:
His shock at learning of his mother’s addiction from his brother
His early emulation of his brother
His sense of an ideal past before his mother’s “fall”
His running away to sea
His love of the sea
His prodigal return
The following motifs are associated with the family group:
Laughter over an anecdote involving the humiliation of the proud (Shaughnessy’s
pigs)
Father indignant at sons
Sons taunt father
Mother defends father against son
Mother joins sons against father
Father and reluctant sons flatter mother
Father and sons plead with mother
Father and sons observe mother in withdrawal
The following are associated with exchanges between James and Mary:
Father commends mother on her renewed health (by observing her
increase in weight)
Mother resentful of father’s land speculations
Mother resentful of father’s drink
Mother pleads for understanding
Mother resentful of father’s miserliness
Father accuses mother
Mother attacks doctors
Father late for meals
The following are associated with exchanges between James and Jamie:
Father castigates son for his failures
Father castigates son for his dissolute behavior
Father castigates son for his innuendos about mother
Mutual accusations about causes of mother’s condition
Son castigates father for his miserliness
Son attacks brother to father
Son defends brother to father
Father fears son’s cynicism
Son financially dependent on father
Inevitable directness between father and son
The following are associated with the rare exchanges between Mary and
Jamie:
Son recognizes the “signs” of his mother’s addiction (eyes)
Son savagely cynical toward mother
Son reveals slight hysteria at mother’s condition
Communication between mother and son long gone
Mother fears son’s reactions
The following are associated with interchanges between James and
Edmund:
Son attacks father’s miserliness
Father attacks son’s opinions
Father proud of son’s literary achievements
Father fears son’s demise
Son hurt by father’s fears
Father reveals past to son
Son begins to understand father
Mutual fears and hopes about mother
Mutual dependency upon alcohol
The following are associated with interchanges between Mary and Edmund:
Mother hysterically anxious about son’s health
Mother critical of son’s behavior
Son states his belief in mother
Son indirect in his suspicions
Mother hurt by suspicions
Son’s disillusionment rooted in mother’s condition
Son hurt by mother’s denials
Son accuses mother of being a “dope addict”
Mother accuses son for having been born
Communication between mother and son breaks down
The following are associated with interchanges between Edmund and
Jamie:
Brothers jest about drink, whores, father’s eccentricities
Elder brother cynical about mother
Younger brother defends mother, attacks elder brother
Elder brother lords it over younger brother
Elder brother confesses feelings toward younger brother
Elder brother declares his love for younger brother
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