Eugene O’Neill presents a quasi-biographical family drama in his best-known play, Long Day’s Journey into Night. O’Neill’s tragedy reveals a once-thriving family unit breaking down around matriarch Mary, who reveals that the play’s only means of escape is a total splitting of the self. One Mary, as it were, embraces entropy, and as the curtain descends, she is changed, while the men around her stagnate. If entropy and time go hand in hand, the final scene of Long Day’s Journey shows that Mary captures something of a long-lost past, a snapshot of a happier time, before James and his stultifying influence inculcated her in a pattern of degradation, self-loathing, and endless pursuit. Still, a darkening dominates the play, such that the Tyrones live out their days in a monotonous loop, clouded by past tragedy.