University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-2013 A paradox of American tragedy : Long day's journey into night and the problem of negative emotion in theatrical performance. Jeremy Killian University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Killian, Jeremy, "A paradox of American tragedy : Long day's journey into night and the problem of negative emotion in theatrical performance." (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 749. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/749 This Doctoral Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. 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A PARADOX OF AMERICAN TRAGEDY: LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT AND THE PROBLEM OF NEGATIVE EMOTION IN THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE By Jeremy Killian B.A. Pensacola Christian College 2001 M.A. Pensacola Christian College 2003 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Humanities University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky August 2013 A PARADOX OF AMERICAN TRAGEDY: LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT AND THE PROBLEM OF NEGATIVE EMOTION IN THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE By Jeremy Killian B.A. Pensacola Christian College 2001 M.A. Pensacola Christian College 2003 A Dissertation Approved on August 8, 2013 By the Following Committee Members ________________________________ John Gibson, Committee Director ________________________________ Osborne Wiggins ________________________________ Ying Kit Chan _________________________________ Andrew Cooper ii DEDICATION This dissertation is dedicated to my parents Eddie and Jill Killian, who taught me to love wisdom, to my wife Haley Killian whose loving sacrifice has made this project possible and to my children, Zoey and Gwenyth Killian. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my dissertation director, John Gibson, for his constant affirmation and guidance through this project. His imagination and philosophical courage has served as a model that I hope to embody in my academic career. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Osborne Wiggins, Ying Kit Chan, and Andrew Cooper, for their patience and guidance in this project. To my wife, Haley Killian, I owe perhaps the most significant debt of gratitude, as she has believed in me through the roughest times of this project and is a constant source of love, inspiration, and humor. iv ABSTRACT A PARADOX OF AMERICAN TRAGEDY: LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHTAND THE PROBLEM OF NEGATIVE EMOTION IN THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE Jeremy Killian August 8, 2013 In this dissertation I examine a philosophical problem referred to as the “paradox of tragedy” as it presents itself in the context of the positive reception of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night. This play depicts a harrowing day in the life of the Tyrone family, where each of the family members cope with failure, addiction, and disease. The emotional tone is bleak and pessimistic, yet people often describe their responses to this tragedy in terms of pleasure, and one can easily imagine someone claiming to “enjoy” the play. How is this possible? Moreover, what motivates one to pursue Long Day’s Journey into Night when they would endeavor to avoid negative emotional stimuli in real life? In chapter 1 of the project, I survey a family of theories as proposed resolution of this problem. I examine a theory derived from Stoic philosophy, David Hume’s “conversion” theory, and John Morreall’s “control” theory. Utilizing evidence drawn from analytic philosophy as well as cognitive psychology, I rule each of these theories out. This allows me to establish acceptable criteria for any resolution to the problem. In chapters two and three, I turn my attention to the claim that Journey on the whole elicits v more good than bad emotional states. Using a method of emotional analysis proposed by Nöel Carroll, in chapter three, I construct a close reading of the emotional address of the play, concluding that the claim that the play elicits more positive emotion than negative is likely false. In chapters four and five, I construct a thematic reading of the play by first establishing the connection between the writing of Eugene O’Neill’s writing and the work of Friedrich Nietzsche. I perform a second close reading of the play to validate a Nietzschian reading, and then utilize this data as a feature of my own resolution to the problem. In chapter six, I conclude by presenting two theories that account for all the conditions I have established as a candidate solution and defend a “meta-response” style solution to the paradox of Journey. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………iv ABSTRACT………………………………….………………………………………….v INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER ONE………………………………………………………………………. 16 CHAPTER TWO……………………………………………………………………….40 CHAPTER THREE……………………………………………………………………..61 CHAPTER FOUR………………………………………………………………………102 CHAPTER FIVE……………………………………………………………………….127 CHAPTER SIX…………………………………………………………………………183 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………208 REFERENCES....………………………………………………………………………212 CURRICULUM VITAE………………………………………………………………..218 vii INTRODUCTION In 1956, Long Day’s Journey into Night appeared on the American stage for the first time, and most heralded this play as the greatest of Eugene O’Neill’s career. John Chapman of the New York Daily News described the opening of the play as exploding “like a dazzling skyrocket over the humdrum of Broadway theatricals.”1 With few exceptions, the critical response to the play was overwhelmingly positive, with critics asserting that with Long Day’s Journey, “the American theatre acquires size and stature.”2 When Journey premiered in Paris, despite the fact that the theatre was without air-conditioning in July and the play ran from 8 PM until 1 AM, the Herald Tribune reported that “there was a five minute ovation, marking the most enthusiastic reception ever accorded an American play in France.”3 When one considers the nature of the play, a philosophical problem emerges. The overwhelming response to O’Neill’s masterpiece was—and continues to be in contemporary performance—expressed in terms of pleasure. There is nothing apparently contradictory in an audience member stating, “I really enjoyed Long Day’s Journey,” but how can this be the case? The play depicts the terribly dysfunctional relationships of the members of the Tyrone family, each of whom struggles with some form of addiction and 1 Qtd. in Jordan Miller, Playwright’s Progress: O’Neill and his Critics, (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, and Company, 1965), 133. 2 Qtd. in Brenda Murphy, Plays in Production: Long Day’s Journey into Night, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 47. 3 Ibid., 48. 1 malady, each of whom is at once oppressed and the oppressor of the other four members . When one interrogates her emotional response to the play, she is likely to recognize that she experiences so-called “negative” emotions as a result of the events depicted. If she feels empathy toward these characters.1 By negative emotion, I refer to the fact that the viewer finds herself experiencing anger, despair, and pity, emotions whose qualia are typically those we wish to avoid in our daily lives. Through the course of the play, the audience member receives little relief from these emotions. The philosophical problem, then, is how to understand what goes on when one characterizes the experience of Journey as one of enjoyment. Moreover, why would an audience member willingly subject herself to the negative emotions aroused by Long Day’s Journey into Night when she would not likely subject herself to such negative emotion in real life? Students of David Hume’s aesthetics will recognize this problem as a localized version of what has come to be called “The Paradox of tragedy,” Hume describes the phenomenon of tragic enjoyment in his essay “Of Tragedy:” It seems an unaccountable pleasure which the spectators of a well-written tragedy receive from sorrow, terror, anxiety, and other passions that are in themselves disagreeable and uneasy. The more they are touched and affected, the more are they delighted with the spectacle…the whole art of the poet is employed in rousing and supporting the compassion and indignation, the anxiety and resentment, of his audience. They are pleased in proportion as they are affected, and never so happy as when they employ tears, sobs, and cries to give vent to 1 It is important to note that not all viewers experience such empathy toward the characters in the play. Thomas R. Dash, a reviewer of the play for Women’s Wear Daily, writes that “For the cognoscenti and for devotees of O’Neill, these flagellations and psychological penetrations into the pitiful ruins of a family may prove stimulating. But for the neutral and dispassionate observer and for the rank and file of theatregoers, ‘A Long Day’s Journey into Night’ may prove a long night’s journey without too much daylight.” (Qtd. in Jordan Miller, Playwright’s Progress: O’Neill and the Critics, 136). Here it is not necessary for me to defend that all people experience negative emotions with respect to the representation of the Tyrone family; instead, I am attempting to resolve the problem of how anyone may experience a positive response despite—and perhaps because of—the negative emotions she experiences toward the Tyrones and the world of Journey. 2 their sorrow, and relieve their heart, swollen with the tenderest sympathy and compassion.2 In other words, when one observes tragedy in art or literature, often one is most thrilled by the horror it depicts.