II. Themes of Long Day's Journey Into Night

 1. Guilt and Blame

    The characters in Long Day's Journey Into Night are absolutely obsessed with thinking over the past and either feeling guilty about what they've done, or blaming someone else for all the problems they face.

 2. Suffering

    At the most basic level, Long Day's Journey Into Night is a play about people who are suffering. The characters have basically nothing to do. They tend to sit around, argue, and suffer the pain of old wounds and dark prospects for the future. 

3. Drugs and Alcohol

    In Long Day's Journey Into Night, the Tyrone family's past and present have been so dire that normal coping mechanisms (family love, togetherness, etc.) can't keep up. So what do they turn to for relief? Alcohol and drugs

 4. Memory and the Past

     Everyone in Long Day's Journey Into Night has some major anxiety about the lost Good Old Days and about old mistakes that still show scars. Both parents express real regret over choices they made in their youth: James wishes he could have been a more diverse actor and Mary seems to wish she had never married James. She is also absolutely haunted by the death of one of her children, and clearly feels guilt over it.

5. Fate and Free Will

      One of the basic tensions underlying Long Day's Journey is the conflict between fate and free will. All the characters want to change their lives, but at the same time, they can't get this depressing fatalism out of their heads. The play's matriarch sums it up well when she says, "None of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they're done they make you do other things" (2.1.76). 

      Each character struggles against the tides of the past. Even though they aren't battling divine will, they are all in least in some way shaped by forces that are out of their control.