Traumas and Jouissance of Characters LDJN

• Traumas and Jouissance of Characters 

The Real Order is the most inaccessible part of human psyche, according to Lacan, since we live in the symbolic world
where we have to adopt ourselves with ideologies and imposed on us by the Other. However there are times when one
can experience the Real for fleeting moments of joy and terror, in traumas, and of course while seeing through
ideologies. The symbolic world is the only world through which the subject has the understanding of reality, since their
understanding of reality is shaped through language that is made of signs which do not represent the real essence of the
things. Therefore reality, as it really is, does not have any place in the unconscious mind, instead some representations
of it exist there, consequently we can experience the real only when a cut happens to the Symbolic Order, such as in the
case of having trauma, especially a sad one.
Many times in the play, Mary experiences the trauma of being with her father. Whenever she looks at Edmund, she
compares his situation with that of her father's whose trauma comes to life again, since he had tuberculosis and drank a
lot, like Edmund, and that caused his death. In one scene Tyson tries to hide the truth that Edmund has tuberculosis,
since it reminds her of her father: "She has control of her nerves—or she had until Edmund got sick. Now you can feel
her growing tense and frightened underneath .... What makes it worse is her father died of consumption. She worshiped
him and she's never forgotten. Yes, it will be hard for her. But she can do it! She has the will power now! We must help
her, Jamie, in every way we can!" (LDJ, I. p. 2017). In another scene, she blames Tyron for letting Edmund drink, since
she is afraid that he would die because of it: "did you take a drink? Don't you know it's the worst thing? You're to
blame, James. How could you let him? Do you want to kill him? Don't you remember my father? He wouldn't stop after
he was stricken. He said doctors were fools! He thought, like you, that whiskey is a good tonic!" (LDJ, I. p. 2030).
To experience the Real, Jamie drinks a lot and spends his time with whores in whom he looks for pleasure, for an
extended Jouissance which never happens. To find himself out of the symbolic and the big Other's rules through this, he
drinks more and more to experience and maintain the feeling of Jouissance, but it is just a short, fleeting moment. In
one scene, his father criticizes him for spending time with the whores in the bars: "at the end of each season you're
penniless! You've thrown your salary away every week on whores and whiskey!"( LDJ, I. p. 26), though Jamie does not
care for such a loss, and only wishes to get rid of the symbolic world of the big Other.
The same thing is observed in the mother who uses morphine to forget her loss, and to escape from the ideologies
imposed on her, as Thaddeus Wakefield argues: "Mary takes morphine to escape the reality that she has failed ...
prescribed by the society in which she lives" (2004, p. 49). Moreover she uses morphine to keep herself "high" in
pleasure, to forget the present situation in which she just changes desire after desire to feel real, and to experience
Jouissance. When she is "high", she sees herself as a girl in a perfect situation in the past – free from the pains of the
Symbolic Order and the rules imposed on her by the Other. Morphine alleviates her pains, as she tells Cathleen:
CATHLEEN: [stupidly puzzled] You've taken some of the medicine? It made you act funny, Ma'am. If I
didn't know better, I'd think you'd a drop taken.
MARY: [dreamily] It kills the pain. You go back until at last you are beyond its reach. Only the past when you
were happy is real. (LDJ, III. P. 2047)
Edmund too drinks a lot to forget the present situation which he suffers from, and to experience Jouissance, though he
knows he is sick and drinking is detrimental for him. He tells his father that there is no problem with being drunk, as he
forgets the pains of his conditions by drinking: "let us drink up and forget it .... Well, what's wrong with being drunk?
It's what we're after, isn't it? ... We know what we're trying to forget, [hurriedly] But let's not talk about it. It's no use
now" (LDJ, IV. P. 2059). Moreover there are some hints in the play that shows he has decided to commit suicide to get
rid of the symbolic world and the rules of the big Other. He speaks of death as an outlet that brings permanent feeling of
Jouissance: "yes, particularly the time I tried to commit suicide at Jimmie the Priest's, and almost did. ... I was stone
cold sober. That was the trouble. I'd stopped to think too long" (LDJ, IV. P. 2067). As the result of reading books and
getting aware of ideologies at work in society, he is quite aware of what he is doing when he commits suicide. Once
when he speaks about the English poet Arthur Symons, he talks about the experience of real and how everything is just a hoax granted to us: "The fog was where I wanted to be. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it
is. That's what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself ...
Who wants to see life as it is, if they can help it?" (LDJ, V. p. 2059).
Each of these characters has their own "method of escape", as Rogers calls it: "Mary has her drugs, Tyron and Jamie
their liquor, and Edmund has poetic sense of personal dissolution" to escape from suffering that "has formed their lives
and their feeling" (1965, p. 720), the suffering that is caused by ideology. Edmund is the only character of the play that
has realized the point and seen through ideology, hence he wishes to go beyond, since it seems to be just a bunch of lies
and craps to him, thus attempts to commit suicide.



Work Citation


Ali, Emman. “Lacanian Orders in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night.” International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature, www.academia.edu/3111234/Lacanian_Orders_in_Eugene_ONeills_Long_Days_Journey_into_Night.