One man who has devoted much time and effort to the understanding Eugene O'Neill's works and the "behind the scenes- details that all come together to have a great effect on O'Neill's writing is John Manheim. He summed up the play and the underlying vibrations therein quite effectively when he said that the play is largely a focus on male kinship and human isolation. This kinship is borne of the trials and tribulations that the men go through within themselves and each other, each relating and dealing in a different way. Arthur and Barbara Gleb concede much the same with their statement about the poor quality of O'Neill's parents and the lack of happiness and love growing up, and his motivation for Long Day's Journey into Night. In general, it is commonly accepted and agreed upon that Long Day's Journey into Night is indeed very closely related to and follows much of O'Neill's life with very few major discrepancies. .
In Long Day's Journey into Night, Edmund is representational of Eugene. From the time that O'Neill was about 20 he has written himself into the scripts of his plays in one way or another. Michael Manheim even goes so far as to state that there is not a single young insightful man in any of O'Neill's earlier plays that does not in at least some aspects relate to Edmund Tyrone (20). There is also the direct correlations of O'Neill in real life and Edmund in the play both being sailors, having trouble with alcohol abuse, and depression which eventually led to attempts to take their own lives and finally the contraction of tuberculosis. The selection of the name Edmund is also symbolic in one way or another in that O'Neill, as in the play, actually had an older brother named Edmund who died prior to O'Neill's birth. As an infant, Edmund caught German measles from his older brother Jamie, which first led to his becoming deaf and eventually his death. There are several other simila!.
