The Embodiment of Alienationin Euhene O'neill's A Long Day's Journey into Night: Structural

Lazhar Benabdallah, Dr. Mohd Nazri Latiff Azmi

Abstract: A Long Day's Journey into Night was written at a time when O'Neill was in increased suffering due to his worsening tremors, yet the theme of alienation has not been proven without reasonable doubt. More so, after extensive reading and researching on the issue of alienation in O'Neill's play, it has become clear that the previous studies including many critics such as Doris Alexander in his Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggle: The Decisive Decade, 1924-33 (1992), James William Flath in his thesis La Familia Como Destino en Eugene O'Neill y Sam Shepard (2013), Travis Bogard in his study of O'Neill and his plays Contour in Time (1972), Arthur and Barbara Gelb in their second biography of O'Neill, and many other semphasized the issue of alienation in O'Neill's life and plays, but they were not directly able to study and prove alienation in a Long Day's Journey into Night due to their concentration on the playwright's intention rather than the presence of alienation through the analysis of the literary text. The purpose of this study is to analyse and prove alienation in a Long Day's Journey into Night, structurally by analyzing the plot, conflict, characters and their defense mechanisms, stage directions, soliloquies, monologue and symbolism.

Keywords: alienation, dramatic devices, experience, structure