Professor Cecilia Liu 
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| All the characters in this play try to muster an optimistic outlook at times. Tyrone always hopes that Jamie will one day make a success of himself. In this scene, we see that Edmund, in keeping with his youthful romantic outlook, has hope for the whole family to make amends. [ . . . ] Edmund also has a tendency to avoid conflicts by laughing them away when they appear. He has his outbursts, but less responsive to baiting from his father than this brother is. Mary, in a similar vein, tries to hold the family together in part through imminent talking. She seems to dislike silences, because whenever she is onstage, she is usually making meaningless chit chat simply to create noise. (Source) |
If the play ends on a note of resolution, that resolution comes from confessing to faults in an attempt to better the future. Jamie, for instance, warns Edmund to watch out for his (Jamie's) jealousy, and before that, Tyrone acknowledges his own stinginess and agrees to send Edmund to a high-class sanatorium in hopes of curing him. Thus, two of the major family conflicts are at least partially resolved by the end of the play. Of course, some problems are still left open, particularly Mary's morphine addiction, which we see at its worst in this act. (Source) |
