There are two historical periods relevant to Long Day's Journey into Night. The play was written between 1939 and 1941, but it is set in 1912, at a critical period in the author's own life, paralleling that of his fictional persona, Edmund Tyrone.
Events of moment from the outside world do not intrude on the Tyrone family dialogue. For example, there is no mention of the April, 1912, sinking of the Titanic, which took over fifteen hundred passengers to their watery death, and was the greatest maritime disaster of the age. Nor is mention made of Captain Robert Scott's ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, which ended in March, 1912, when Scott and the last survivors died in a heroic attempt to reach awaiting shelter and provisions.
O'Neill's focus, relentlessly on the Tyrone.....
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