Unveiling the Identity through the Circuitous Path of Concealment in Long Day s Journey into Night

Long Day s Journey into Night portrays a small family who is isolated from the world outside. The members of the family are entangled in their own relationships and the more they discuss the problems the less they are able to solve them, the more they are dragged into the quicksand of failure and the more they get far from reality. The interactions among these characters lead them to the untenable situation in which they have no other choice than being bad or mad. The immediate algorithm of interpersonal perception of I know that you know is perceived at first glance but probing more deeply into the interactions, one encounters a more complex algorithm. This play is full of love hate relationships, paradoxical relationships, syncopations, deceits and concealments which paradoxically lead to the revelation of the identities. Two characters are in one up position and cunningly manipulate the game of deceit which the other two characters, who are in one down position , are completely unaware of. It is towards the end of the play that the weaker characters, Mary and Edmund, dare to face the reality and understand that they have been defeated in a chess like power game set by wiser characters, Tyrone and Jamie. This paper applies the communication theories of Watzlawick and Laing to this play to explore the pathological interactions among the family members and to investigate how the identities are revealed through the circuitous path of concealment.