Professional Documents
Culture Documents
10 - Chapter 5 PDF
10 - Chapter 5 PDF
10 - Chapter 5 PDF
HIS TRAGI-COMEDIES :
A CRITICAL ANALYSIS
HIS TRAGO-COMEDIES : A
CRITICAL ANALYSIS
plays and poems when the impatient hands of Death flicked him away
from the midst of human beings. His two tragedies if an extremely
small number to draw inferences bout an author’s tragic vision
especially when he has produced a few more comedies quantitatively
in comparison to the tragedies.
The play has its symbol too, the very title amounting to one and it
is surprizing and creditable both that the dramatist could provide a
dose of so many meaningful symbols in a really ‘short’ play.
of the Island. In this cry of pain the inner consciousness of the people seems to lay itself bar
for an instant, and to reveal the mood of beings who feel their isolation in the face of univers-
that wars on them with winds and seas. They are usually silent, but in the presence of ch at:
all outward show of indefference or patience is forgotten, and they shriek with pitiable desga '
before the horrer of the fate to which they are all doomed.5
The story of this play relates to the struggle for survival and
the resultant suffering of the fisher-folk finally. It is not merely the
hardship of earning a living which makes the life of the fishermen
miserable. The sea is a perpetual and an insatiable monster devouring
the male members of the fisherman’s families, and thus leaving the
mothers utterly destitute of sons. Women folks are aware of trie,
uncertainity, that their men may return or may not but they also have
to allow them to go fishing as a necessary evil, as something
inevitable. Synge has aptly described this dilemma:
The maternal feeling is so powerful on these islands that it gives a life of torment tc
the women. Their sons grow up to be banished as soon as they are of age. or to live here n
continual danger on the sea; their daughters go away also, or are worn out in their youth witl
bearing children that grow up to harass them in their turn a little later. These people live it
perpetual fear of death and are subordinated to the instincts of the family. 6
5. Ibid. p. 235
6. Ipid. p. 231
145
The people of this plays were the real people among whom he lived and that his dream,
look come from this. 7
It will not be far from the truth to postulate that Synge expectea
an intimate knowledge of the life of the fisher-folk for the proper
understanding of his play. Hence, a little imaginative amplification of
setting becomes of great significance to prepare our minds to react
to the life that he is going to present in his play. The setting on the
one hand, richly suggests a simplicity of life, while on the other it is
an unambiguous commentary on the extreme poverty of the people.
This offers a glaring contrast with the contemporary drawing ’room
plays with decor and external paraphernalia deliberately forcing their
significance on the meaning of the plays. In this sense Synge
compares well with Sophocles or Shakespeare where the tragic action
is characterised by economy and directness. Like the opening scene
in Hamlet-as soon as the first sentence is uttered by Nora, the action
is set in motion: (in a low voice); Where is she ?
Cathleen: She’s lying down, God help her, and may be sleeping, if she's able.8
The scene opens, dealing with the death of Michael, the fifth
son of Maurya, who has already lost her four sons and her husband
and husband’s father to the ‘sea’. Two sons, Michael and Bartley are
left along with two daughters, Cathleen and Nora. While Maurya is
resting, Nora, one of her daughter enters softly in the kitchen with a
bundle containing Michael's clothes under her arms, for the final
identification of the drowned Michael. Cathleen, the sister of Nora had
still some hope that these were not Michael’s clothes :
How would they be Michael's, Nora? Haw would he go to
the length of that way to the far North?9
9. T.R.Henn. p.96
10. Ibid.p.96
147
not be so cruel as to snatch the last thread of hope from the old
woman.
NORA: "I won't stop him." says he; "but let you not
be afraid. Herself does be saying prayers half through
the night, and the Almighty God won't leave her
destitute", says he, "with no son living".11
Maurya’s mind now gets occupied with her last son. She tries
to hold Bartley back from death, who must sail to the mainland
because of the ecessity to keep the family going. The emotional values
of life seem to be out of place in the context of the life of these
people.
moon, and it rising in the night. If it was a hundred horses .you had itself, what is the price •;
a thousand horses against a son where there is one son only ?14
rye, and if the jobber comes you can sell the pig with the black feet
if there is a good price going. His detailed instructions to his sisters
for managing the routine activities of his family during his absence
against the background of a bewailing mother surely gives us a ■
impression of Bartley’s callousness, and unless we refer to Synge's
description of life in Aran Islands, Bartley’s behaviour would loos
unconvincing. As Synge remarks :
although these people are kindly towards each other and to their children, the.'
.............
have no feelings for the suffering of animals, and little sympathy for pain when the person Mi •
feels it is not in danger,16
Even without relying exclusively on Synge’s Aran Islands as a
source of our interpretation, we can see the bitter realities of life where
the sole concern seems to be the mere existence on a day to day
basis, Bartley’s cruelty is in keeping with the mission of life, Synge
wants to present. Moreover, Bartley is the sole bread-winner of the
family and his lack of sentimentality can perhaps be the only source
of his strength for struggle. Maurya’s anxiety at its climactic point yields
to her almost a prophetic vision. The death of Bartley appears to her
a foregone conclusion :
It’s hard set well be .surely the day you're drowned with the rest. What way will I I <
and the girls with me, and I ah old woman looking for the grave ?17
It’s the life of a young man to be going on the sea, and who would listen to an ' t
The suspense with which the play began and which we had
almost forgotten in the midst of a more immediately threatened
catastrophe, is revived. Cathleen and Nora take ‘the bundle of clothes
got of a drowned man’and open it. From the stitches on the bit of
the shirt recovered and its matching with the flannel of the shirt Bartley
had now put on, the girls infer that the clothes were Michael’s. To
Maurya returns home with the cake in her hand and starts
keening. She has ‘seen the fearfullest thing’. She saw ‘the grey pony'
behind him and Bartley riding the red mare’. Maurya’s conclusion is
explicit and categorical when she mentions the very commorly
believed superstition of these people, i.e. ‘Birde Dara seen the dead
pp
man with the child in his arms’ Maurya also sees Michae riding
the grey pony. Besides the implication of the superstition of the
company of the dead with the living, the colour symbolism can hardly
escape our attention. Red is the symbol of life and grey is the symbol
of death. Mauyra’s hallucination of Michael riding the grey mare
becomes frighteningly ominous when Macbeth- like she feels a
choking in her throat when she tried to say ‘God speed you’. He went
by quickly; and'the blessing of God on you’, says he. ‘and I could
say nothing.’
The family is destroyed from this day surely. Nora tries to
, console the broken-hearted Mauyra, but her premonition of disaster
cannot be silenced even by Nora’s attempt to comfort her with
assurances of divine mercy, ‘Did’nt the young priest say the Almighty
God won’t leave her destitute with no son living’. Here religion seems
to be mere ritual-more formal than real-and paganism is unmistakably
clear though not frankly pronounced. Maurya, without showing her
distrust in God, talks of her personal experiences and knowledge of
the destructive sustainer- the sea, the tangible, terrible reality- ‘it's
little the like of him knows of the sea’, etc. She means to say, ‘Let
people ask me what the sea is like, because it is she who have
suffered at the rapacious hands of the sea. I know its ways better
than anyone.
Her anxieties now seem to have reached a climax, and Maurya
feels that she will be unable to bear this final stroke,’ Bartley will be
lost now, and let you call in Eamon and make me a good coffin out
of the white boards, for I won’t live after them’. But her desire for her
own death is immediately drowned in her nostalgic reverie when she
surveys the past of her family and the suffering caused it by the sea's
snatching away all the male members one after the other. It is this
reverie which seems to give her the strength to face the climax of
the prolonged tragic drama which is her life.
Owing to Mauyra’s earlier anxiety and fret to hold her last son
from death the expected experience of a broken-down mother does
not appear. Maurya knew the sea too well and never for a moment
forgot its rapacity.
bravely and stoicly. Nevertheless they never lose their faith in Gcd
We find that Maurya observes the formalities of Christian rights until
the end. She does not blame the lack of mercy of God at any stage.
But the futility of such prayers can be deduced from the words which
Synge puts in Maurya’s mouth, perhaps with his tongue in his cheek
It isn’t that I haven't prayed for you Bartley, to the Almighty God. It isn't that I hav* "
said prayers in the dark night till you wouldn't know what I'd be saying: but it's a great re>t
QC
have now. and it's time, surely.
Her faith in God has, on the other hand, made her patient and
instead of being cynical and sceptical, she faces life with a sense of
holy resignation. She realizes that life is fleeting and temporary ana
death is a necessary end to it. Various tragedies merely strengthen
her faith in God and she accepts the various death as an essential
part of the Divine plan.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
156
Her final vision of life may sound banal and rather of a popular
V
exiomatic nature, ‘No 'man at all can be living for ever, and we must
be satisfied. If we look at this last concluding sentence of this play
in isolation, the meaning can hardly be very impressive. It is a
proverbial truth taught to all right thinking people from their childhood.
But the simplistic and allegedly banal utterance has profound tragic
validation in the context of Maurya’s long journey through suffering
to philosophic calm of mind.
As flies are to wanton boys we are to gods. They kill us for their sport.31
Omar Khayyam expressed the same idea more elaborately. The Moving Finger writes
: and. having writ. Moves on : nor all thy Piety nor wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a L .<e
Nor all thy Tears wash out a word of it32
35.
36. THE HOLY BIBLE, P. 53, EXODUS', 15-,19-21.
161
too and hence tries to prevent Bartley from going which she had not
done in the case of others. So, the male members ride to the sea
full of hope and confidence like the soldiers of Pharoah but do not
return alive and perish in the sea.
‘Sea’ on the other side, in this play. The ‘Sea’ becomes a living force,
a demon hungering after men, but the persons in the Cottage-Maurya.
Nora and Cathleen, weak as they are (having also the disadvantage
of being women), face the physical power of the ocean and are titanic
in their courage and patience.
Synge’s Deirdre seems much more Vividly alive than the play
by Yeats and A.E. on the same story; “It avoids almost wholly that
collouquial modern vulgarity too often shed by writers like Shaw airj
the figures of the past like Jeanne D.Arc, and to often thought,
on
poignant by modern translators of the classics”. As we know synge s
habit was to rewrite his plays servreal times. He was in the habit of
adding and altering till the structure had become as strong and vaired
as we have seen in the other plays. W.B. Yeats has also regretted
its structural deficiency. He has remarked that ;
.... had he lived to do that, 'Deirdre of the sorrows’ would have been his mastewoik
so much beauty is there in its course, and such wild nobleness in its end, and so poignant ■>
walls of a palace. The other themes of the dread of old age. Loneiness
and defiance of fate and death are subtly interwoven with the central
theme. In handling these Synge once in his dramatic career, decided
not to use the actual, realistic, topical material with which he was so
familiar. The measure of difference of tragic gexius of Syngs from
those of his other contemporaries lies in the intensity and hero c
suffering of his protagonist when she is placed beside her other
creators like W.B. Yeats. Lady Gregory and E.M. Hull, A.E. etc.
The play ends when Deirdre decieves the king, stabs hereself
and dies falling on the dead body of Naise.
Lady Gregory, on the other hand, begins her prose work from
the very root, i.e., the time when there w3as a prophecy about the
ruin and destruction to be caused by Deirdre. Cathbad, the Druid hac
foretold that the beuatiful daughter born to the wife of Fedlimid, the
story-teuer would bring bloodshe, death and destruction in Ireland.
/ would not Conchubor. A girl bom the way I'm is more likely to wich for a mate wh> a
be her likeness.........A man with his hair like the raven, may be, and his skin like the snow am.
his lips like blood split on /f.44
and, with a choric function, introduces the main burden of the tHeme
Deirdre has been away in the mountains and has not returned home;
until late in the evening when the weather the threatening to be
44. HENN. T.R. : The Play and Poems of J.M. Synge, P. 236.
168
.....little call to mind an old woman when she has the birds tc
school her, and the pools in the rivers
where she goes bathing in the sun. I'll tell you
if you seen her that time, with her white skin, and
her red lips, and the blue water and the ferns
about her, you’d know, may be and you greedy
itself, it wasn't for your like she was born ,
at all,46 i
The themes of epic fatalism and idyllic life are both pushed
forward interconnectedly-one threatening the existence of the other
Further suspense on this accound cannot perhaps be desirably
continued by the dramatist; Conchubor commands unequivocally : 'It's
little I heed for what she was born, she’ll be my comrade, surely’.
The action at this point is very dramatically interrupted by Lavarcham's
very important speeches which sum up the compleity fo the themes
of the love of age for youth, idyllic life, and fatalism :
47.Ibid,p.234
171
‘there is a storm coming’ and ‘the floods are rising with the rain’. This
exit of conchubor which threatens the demoliton of the dreams of
Deirdre as well as himself marks the first movement of action in the
first Act.
enigma for her. Naisi notices the ‘golden mug’ with the High king’s
mark on its rim. He suspects that the young girl whom they have met
in the mountain has connection with conchubor. As Lavarcham seems
to be oh the weak verge of almost succeding in keeping Naisi away
from Deirdre, the apparently improving situation veers round to its
opposite, ‘Deirdre comes in royally dressed and beautiful’. She tells
Naisi that she is ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’ and implores for his
coradeship. Naisi at the sight of a now transformed Deirdre is
‘transfixed with amazement’. All the radiance and destructiveness of
beauty is at once conveyed through these words:
And it is you who go around in the woods making the thrushes bear a grudge agan st
the heavens for the sweetness of your singing50
50. Ibid.p.243
175
being as an index of the path which Deirdre must follow; the path of
self-preservation-the only way to preserve youth and beauty forever,
the way which Deirdre Naisi’s death-that lies through the grave. In
this connection Owen’s suicide is in itself, powerfully suggestive and
forges stronger links between himself and Deirdre.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid, p.253
58. Ibid.
180
shattered once for all, but the gains of clear singth if not of
happiness-are a relative compensation. The second count on which
the revelation is positive rather than negative is further-ranging, and
is brought out fully only at the end of the play.
declares not to run away for his and deirdr’s security, leaving his
brothers behind to be killed by conchubor’s men: It is at this critical
moment that a bitter exchange of words takes place between Naisi
and Deirdre Naisi Feels that ‘When I’m in that grave it’s soon a day’ll
come you’11 be to wearied to be crying out, and that, day’11 bring
you peace.63 Naisi’s words are ‘worse than death’ for Deirdre. They
alive in the world when he has gone on his -journey to the other world.
He syas:
... It’s hard and bitter thing leaving the earth, and a worse and harder thing leaving
yourself alone and desolate to be making lamentation of its face always 64
The bitter conversation between the lovers is interrupted by
the appearance of conchugor on the scene, who very dramatically
comes in and ‘bids’ him ‘welcome’. The simister irony of the welcome
in the context hardly needs any explanation. Conchubor’s ‘plot’ now
is clear to Naisi and so is his intention: ‘ I’ve come to look on Deirdre'
In this situation while Naisi loses self control out of anger, it is Deirdre
who demonstrates her presence of mind and equanimity. Her ironic
mention of ‘three lonesome people near the grave’ Which includes
Conchubor, is interpreted by the passion-blind ‘lover’ as the first
friendly word’ ever spoken to him by Deirdre. While Naisi and
conchubor are on the verge of engaging themselves in a scuffle, cries
of Ainnle and Ardan are heard from outside. The brothers of Naisi
are obviously trapped in an ambush. Naisi must go to help them
leaving Deirdre behind in the tent. Deirdre, montivated by her
selfishness, is once again ‘broken hearted’ as Naisi rejects her
beseeching’ and declares his bond with his brothers in fighting to be
stronger than that in iQve. ‘He throws her aside almost roughly’ and
the hardness of death’ that has come between them most pitiably
and almost harrowingly distances them from each other. Naisi ‘looks
at Deirdre aghast’ Deirdre’s ‘cruelty’ in sending Naisi to death ‘ with
a hard word form her lips in his ear’ demolishes his earlier confidence
in his love. He like Antony, blames now, both love and woman:
They'u not get a death that's cruel, and they with men alone. Its women that have
loved are cruel only.65 .
64. Ibid.
65
185
talking, and a cruel death facing Ainnle and Ardan in the woods?
Naisi goes out with these hard words from (Deirdre’s) lipsin his ear’.
Naisi blames Deirdre for the whole affair ending in a disaster for his
family. Deirdre’s reaction is naturally one of bitterness: 'I’m well
pleased there’s no one in this place to make a story that Naisi was
a, laughing-stock the night he died’67 Without any reapproachment
between the lovers, Naisi goes out leaving Deirdre’ bewildered and
terrified’ when conchubbor appears again before her to take her as
his queen. Deirdre, having registerd an ebb in her earlier heroic stature
now rises again, in her complete and brutal rejection of conchubor’s
plea for pity for him. She is broken down completely with the
realization that sent Naisi out with cruel words on her lips, and is left
desolate and helpless. The brief conversation between Deirdre and
conchubor, before the play ends reemphasizes the theme of despair
at ‘ being old and lonesome’, one sorrow (which) has no end surely’
conchubor emerges as an object of pity at his hopeless condition.
But more effective than this is his self-pity at being frustrated in his
long cherished yearning to have Deirdre as his wife.
67. Ibid.
186
68. Ibid.
187
And thus, she puts an end to her life for immortal union with
her lover and goes to the grave with a sense of joy and victory, without
any regrets.
69.
70. Ibid, p. 273
71. Malone. A.E. : The Irish Drama', p. 154.
188
created by these three is as great as the last act of deirdre, it might be the supreme justification
of that austere discipline they had imposed on themselves 72
Whereas most of the critics praise the end of the play due to
its theme and philosophy of life and death, Alan price moves away
from the common interferences and dinds the last part of the play
equally impressive in techique, imgery, rhythm and language. He
explains:
The closing of this play is perhaps the finest thing Synge ever
wrote Here his technique and his exuberance of phrase and fancy,
are purified and directed to one end, eachword, each gesture is
functiona; and serious.
The speech defies analysis in the last resort but it clearly owes a good deal to the
wonderful rhythmic flow and to a great fastidiousness in the choice of words. 74
On the epic level it is a tragedy of fate of a statcrossed girl,
of a compulsive closing of the net that drives Deirdre to fulfil the doom
that was prophesied at her birth. Here synge keeps to the high-road
of his fable introducing only his invented character of owen, the
‘grotesque, whom (according to yeats) he had intended to bring in
also in Actl. Nor did he succeed in his intention "to weave ....... a
grotesque peasent element throughout the play", and we may question
yeats’ suggestion that he would therreby have made Deirdre into "a
world- famous masterpice",for he himself had called it-all but the last
Act-"a Master’s unginished work, monotonous and melancholy". It
.seems likely that much of the economy, concentration and unity of
tone would have been lost. As it stands, the play reveals considerable
depth and subtlety of characterization.