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The Imaginative Alternative : a Study of the Plays of John Millington Synge

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The Imaginative Alternative : a Study of the Plays of John Millington Synge THE IMAGINATIVE ALTERNATIVE A Study of the Plays of John Millington Synge by CAROLYN SALLY JONES B.A., Swansea university, 1968 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of English &CAROLYN SALLY JONES 19 70 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY JULY, 1970 APPROVAL Name: Sally Jones Degree: Master of Arts Title of Thesis: The Imaginative Alternative: A study of the plays of John Millington Synge Examining Committee: (John Mills) Senior Supervisor (Gerald Newman) Examining Committee - - - - (Jerald ~as1ove)-p Examining Committee . - - -- -- (~a'EherineStockholder) External Examiner DATE APPROVED: August 4, 1970 iii ABSTRACT The thesis explores the plays of John Millington Synge as works of literature, possessing an artistic com- plexity which demands an appropriate complexity of response from the reader (as opposed to the immediate audience reaction). It suggests that the critical interpretation which deduces that the conflict in the dramas is between dream and reality is limited; but the intention is to offer an alternative reading rather than to argue against the validity of this approach. The view of the plays which is presented defines the tension as derived from the choice open to the characters of formulating their own imaginative rites in life or of acceptmg the already structured cere- monies and rituals of society. The formulation of these rites is dependent upon the power of the imagination to reveal, and eventually realize, a significant pattern in external reality, and specifically in the apparently meaningless destructiveness of the natural world. The imaginative participation of the character in the processes of this world, through his selection of the images which translate and enrich his own human emotions of fear and loneliness and love, constitute his freedom to see, not the illusion but the illusive quality in reality. Riders to the Sea is approached through an examin- ation of the ability of each character to perceive a meaning- ful pattern in an essentially unheroic cycle of loss; the of mourning (pagan and Catholic) provide a definition of loss and extend its significance, but the equation of death by sea with "the life of a young man" is the source of the transformation of suffering into a willed necessity. The Shadow of the Glen, The Tinker's Wedding and The Well of the Saints show Synge's increasing concern with the savage as well as the lyrical rites of the imagination for the central characters are propelled toQards the assertion of their individuality by the force of their own rage. In the last-mentioned play the imagination extends to include the perception of the animal indignity of the human predicament, as the Douls turn on each other to vent their frustrations; but the inclusion of the brutality of nature in their vision leads them to a more splendid and all-encompassing transfor- mation of the knowledge provided by their senses. The Playboy of the Western World most fully explores the realization of the imaginative alternative in a three- dimensional reality. By the inflation of their emotions through the exaggerative tendencies of their language, the characters seek to make a "wonder" of death. Christy Mahon, the focus for the imagination of the community, having learned to include all the images ofmortality in his linguis- tic range, refuses to die; he -dli_scovers in mutability the source of his poetic energy and becomes the shaper of his own image. In this play the imagination is the force which precipates the experience which initially it had only envisaged. In Synge's unfinished work Deidre of the Sorrows, the legend, and its re-creation in terms of the inevitabilities of the natural world, provide the heroine with the promise of eternal youth. Through her perfect commitment to her destiny, Deidre exalts even fear and folly and the ignominy of death, since they form one part of an imaginatively perceived pattern of existence. ~ynge'slast tragedy includes within its vision the triumphant assertion of the imaginative alternative in the face of the "untidy death", which is its consequence. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE 1. INTRODUCTION .................. 1 I1 . THE PATTERNS OF LOSS .............. 10 I11 . THE IMAGINATIVE ALTERNATIVE .......... 39 IV. THE BREAKING OF THE CIRCLE ........... 78 V . THE PERFECT COMMITMENT .....me...... 102 VI. CONCLUSION ................... 135 WORKS CONSULTED ..................... 136 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The main purpose of this thesis is to provide an alternative to the categorical interpretation of the plays of John Millington Synge that defines their development as directed by the conflict between illusion and reality. The "dream world," and the "world of illusiont" have become key terms in the language of many critical approaches to Synge's work. The fullest application of this interpretation is given by Alan Price in Synge and Anglo-Irish Drama. He posits the thesis that, in order to come to a fuller under- standing of the playwright's genius, it is important to examine one aspect of his work: "This aspect is the tension between dream and actuality, and it is central in Synge. I, 1 Price's conclusion rests on the argument that the dream is one of escape from a mundane reality into a world which does not, and cannot, incorporate the harsher aspects of the natural world : All the sympathetic characters in Synge's plays are driven by an impossible dream; each with a single-minded, intense, almost child-like longing to become 'a wonder', is continually reaching out for a finer and fuller life. Imagination is creative in each of them, and it gives them a vision of some good beyond the poverty or drabness or terror which surrounds them; towards that vision, that dream, they strive . 2 I contend, on the other hand, that the movement of the plays is always towards a point where the most forceful characters, the artists of the imagination, recognize the illusive world as being not true but necessary, so that at this moment it becomes their own vital reality. Within the limitations which the cycle of destiny imposes on them they are free to make their "choice of lives," however bleak the alternatives may seem. Only their recognition of the savage moods of the natural world, together with their de- light in its beauty, makes the choice possible. Through encompassing the violence within their vision, they achieve a measure of freedom and invulnerability to external events and actions. The "choice of lives," consequently, is not between an oppressive or mundane reality and an illusive dream of happiness, but between accepting the reassurance of the rites of a routine existence and of an "Almighty God" whose will is interpreted by the priest, \ or of formulating their own life style from the richness of the imagination. I have called these self-formulated rites, the imaginative ~Zternative (for the sake of clarity, rather from a desire to categorize Synge's work) for they involve a recognition of the validity of the imagination to intensify and also to precipitate experience. In the vision to which the irreverent poets come at the end of the plays, the imagin- ation does not exalt or distort reality into the realm of illusion, but it transforms it into something more intense and widely significant, and enriches it by placing it in relationship with the past and the future. Synge had said that he looked on life "as only a play, a dream scened for my single delectation. lt3 It is the dream quality within experience, rather than the escape from experience into the dream, which his plays celebrate. .In exploring the process by which Synge's heroes and heroines formulate their own imaginative rites, it is neces- sary to employ the term myth. I intend to apply it, in my thesis, to the characters' selection of the images and cadences which assure them of their significance and individ- uality in the context of a natural world which threatens to deny them both. The emphasis in plays such as Riders to the Sea, and Deidre of the Sorrows, is not so much on the mythic proportions of the struggle or on the destiny which has already been foretold in legend (although these aspects are undeniably present and enrich our sense of the implications of the conflict) but the concern is always with the particular and personal creation of the myth. In an important sense, it is what Deidre creates from the legend rather than the legend's direction of Dedre's fate, that precipitates the action of the play. The movement of Synge's plays therefore, depends heavily on the potential of language to provide the characters 4 with the images for the transformation of themselves and the world around them. The imaginative inclusiveness they attain indicates their capacity to intensify and extend the significance of their experience in terms of the natural, supernatural, pagan and animal worlds. The imagination becomes the force which envisages a human connection with the more vivid and evocative life of these worlds, and becomes too the means of defining the qualities of the altern- atives which are open to the individual within the circle of mutability.( The responses to the moods and movements of the natural world, the chief source of their inspiration, con- stitute a poetic and dramatic projection of the longing and the rage which the rituals of an over-organized and traditionalized society only frustrate. In his Autobiography, Synge defines explicitly the unsophistication of the relationship of the Irish peasant (and of all primitive societies) to their natural environment, and the kind of fulfillment they seek within it: I think the consciousness of beauty is awakened in persons as in peoples by a prolonged desire .
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