56 pages • 1 hour read
Dorothy DayThe Long Loneliness
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Natural Versus The Spiritual
These two concepts often come up in Day’s discussion of religion. The natural world is made up of daily realities and theories. The supernatural is the concept that there is an unknowable force or entity that exists in the universe, one that we can aspire to become closer to. Forster’s inability to believe in the supernatural is what drives Day away from him, and towards baptism. She was a firm believer in the day-to-day reality of improving conditions for workers and the poor, but also thought that this work had a higher purpose that includes honoring God and his presence through good works. Indeed, Day thinks that this belief in a higher power strengthens the impetus to push for worker communities that not only exist in the here and now, but feature philosophies and values that will endure.
Mass
A Catholic Mass is the ceremony in which bread and wine symbolically become the body and blood of Jesus Christ. When a Catholic takes Communion, they take a wafer on their tongue that symbolizes the body of Jesus; when it dissolves, they are supposed to think of the sacrifice that Jesus made for Christians. After that, they drink a bit of wine, which is supposed to symbolize Christ’s blood. The idea behind this is one of transubstantiation, in which Jesus’s body has appeared in the forms of the wafer and the wine. Day mentions her first Mass, and how she felt like an imposter on the one hand, and like she was betraying the atheistic principles of communism on the other. However, she eventually comes to realize that worship is essential for her humanity. This allows her to become closer to the ideals of sacrifice and social action that Jesus symbolizes and taught.
The Worker/The Masses
The worker has a prime place in The Long Loneliness. In fact, all of Day and Maurin’s efforts are for the increased welfare and rights of the worker, or “the masses,” as they would be referred to in communist theory. The ironic connection to the masses and Catholic Mass is not something that Day explores, but she does emphasize a sort of spiritual connection in union and togetherness, which Mass emphasizes through communion and the wafer. Community can create a higher purpose. Though Day does highlight specific workers that came to have pivotal roles in the Catholic Worker Movement, the worker also comes to be symbolic of the movement’s efforts to provide freedom, community, resources, and love for every single American worker.
