| Discuss Anti-Heroism In The Plays Of Sean O?Casey Essay, Research Paper
In O?Casey?s Dublin Trilogy, the playwright attacks
the weight of dead heroes which manacled contemporary Ireland to a violent past
and self-destructive dream. The space between pretension and failing, rhetoric
and reality, abstraction and suffering is carefully exposed as O?Casey departs
from the stereotypes of the Irish stage to evolve a fresh realist idiom of
tenement drama. His characters indulge in their own detached fantasies ? create
sanctuaries of inaction around themselves ? and O?Casey strips away the fiction
to reveal a earthy, vulnerable, often farcical hollowness inside. In doing so,
he also strips the dream of Romantic Ireland away from the brutality and
oppressed poverty that accompanied the birth of the Irish Free State. This
dialectic is part of a larger critique in which the rhetoric of heroism is
shown up to be a fa?ade for an inability to act, a form of impotency. Finally,
O?Casey relates this specifically male failing and elevates the female
characters to an anti-heroic status embodying an Ireland with many failings,
but real courage and an honesty that shames the hypocrisy of the heroic cult.It is a neat
irony that Davoren, the writer in The
Shadow of a Gunman, ascribes to an imaginative ideal of poetry, embodying
all the shallow clich?s of Romanticism (romantic love, nature, beauty as truth,
the tragic muse and so forth.) Yet he ends up (in his courting of the na?ve and
resolutely uncultured Minnie, for example) as a mock-heroic character in the
best traditions of Augustan satire, unaware of his overblown foolishness. Both
literary and literal senses of ?mock-heroic? undercut Davoren?s two images:
that of the poet in communion with the muse and as a dangerous revolutionary on
the run. As we find out, he is actually a second-rate pseudo-Shelley and, of
course,? a mere ?shadow of a gunman.?[1]This pattern,
where the heroic pretensions of a character are revealed to have a comic or
satirical core is recurrent within O?Casey, and is thoroughly analysed by
Krause. [2]This
movement is interlocked with a larger one between image and reality, where
pretensions are ridiculed and often levelled by the concrete intrusion of the
outer world?s violence and suffering. For example, Capt. Boyle lives an illusion
similar to that of Davoren: he builds around him the myth of a seafaring past
which is in fact limited to a single trip on a collier. Boyle is arrogant
enough to even place his heroism above that of the gunmen: ?When I was a
sailor, I was always resigned to meet with a watery grave; an? if they want to
be soldiers, well there?s no use o? them squealin? when they meet a soldier?s
fate.?[3]
O?Casey cleverly undercuts this by interrupting Boyle?s most expansive
panegyric on his ocean-ranging spirit with the insistent call of a
coal-merchant. In a comic vein, the Captain can be played with heavy comedy ?
for example, when he reverses opinion and defends the Church at the prospect of
taking on bourgeois airs. More tragically, in the wake of his son?s shooting,
the oblivious Boyle is drunken and incoherent with his roguish mate, Joxer.A similar clash
between heroic and comic, image and truth, is seen in the other two plays.
Davoren?s fantasies have already been mentioned, and both his literary
pretension and Shields? piety can be played comically. There is a mock-heroic
tone to the heavy-handed and letter of Grigson?s (to the Irish Republicans) and
an exposure of his true cowardice when he ingratiates himself to the raiding
auxiliaries. A similar capitulation that underscores hollow rhetorical
posturing comes in the following sequence:Seumas ? There?s a great comfort in religion; it makes a man strong in
time of trouble an? brave in time of danger. No man need be afraid with a crowd
of angels round him; thanks to God for His Holy religion! Davoren You?re welcome to your angels; philosophy is mine; philosophy that
makes the coward strong.The volley of
shots that follows this exchange, as well as their fear at finding the bombs,
vindicate O?Casey?s critique of their pretensions. The Plough and The Stars sees the characters at least partially
live up to their boasting, some of them taking to the streets in the Easter
Rising, but they still fall far short. Clitheroe?s vanity is noted when the
audience learns he left the revolutionaries because he didn?t get a promotion.
The Young Covey?s Socialist ideals, whilst sometimes providing an accurate
attack on the shortcomings of the Rising, are pared down to a comic motif as he
quotes from his single Socialist textbook. The general myth surrounding 1916 is
deflated by O?Casey as he contrasts the supposed solidarity of Dublin with the
squabbling and petty rivalries of the tenement block. The tenement dwellers,
despite their superficial adherence to the image of revolutionary Ireland,
actually take to looting: something that can be read as grotesquely comic in
itself ? the two women fighting over the wheelbarrow, for example. This reading
has been advanced been Krause.Thus, in
O?Casey?s drama, the tragic cult of heroism is often comically inverted into a
fantastical and daydreaming mock-heroism, where pretensions give way to fear,
reputations gives way to idle boasts, and the image of glorious Irish
solidarity gives way to the chaotic and abrasive existence of the slums. The
examples are only a small selection. O?Casey also shows that rhetoric not only
disguises cowardice or frailties or delusions of grandeur, but often represents
an impotence. There is an element whereby O?Casey is pointing out the Irish
working-classes were largely swept up in a tide of nationalist fervour, without
really being in control of their own destinies. Without realising the paradox,
the sheen of nationalistic feeling was actually layered over more mundane
levels of attainment: a folk-song and a drink are more likely to be the
concerns of an O?Casey character than national emancipation. Neither are the
tenement-dwellers immune to the lure of bourgeois respectability, as seen in
Mary?s attempts to escape the slums through marriage, Boyle?s sudden airs and
graces, and perhaps the aloofness of Nora Clitheroe too. The petty social
ladder is particularly well-evoked in the jealousies of The Plough And The Stars.Yet this narrow
world and its impotence also represents a wider set of concerns closely allied
to anti-heroism. O?Casey is asserting the value of pragmatism over idealism,
and also the tragic consequences of the largely comic fronts of the idealists
themselves. The idea of impotence is most clearly deliberated in The Shadow of a Gunman, where Seumas?
non-response to the question ?I mean what action shall we take??[4]
foreshadows their response to Act II?s crisis. It is left to Minnie to snatch
Maguire?s bag of explosives and save them from arrest. Mitchell[5]
follows a similar reading in analysing Juno
and the Paycock, where the expectation of a legacy leads the family to a
more socialised and expansive existence. Yet, the character?s internal
fantasies belie a complete impotence which disintegrates the family: ?their
hopes of?break-outs are based on rescue through outside agencies rather than
through their own efforts.?[6]
One might cite Fluther?s drunkenness (when he is needed to fetch a doctor) or
Clitheroe?s paralysis in the arms of his wife as further examples of impotence
in The Plough and the Stars. What is
apparent, then, is that the tenement-dwellers, locked in by their own
pretensions and illusions, can do nothing to stop the chaos around them.
Characters like Johnny, awaiting the inevitable assassination, and the
slowly-fading consumptive Mollser, represent the irreversible entropy of their
situation; the futility of rhetoric in dealing with the suffering and violence
of the Irish troubles. Boyle ends up drunk, the male characters in The Plough and the Stars end up gambling
in a barricaded house (a useful motif for the chances of fate, perhaps a
harbinger for the stray bullet that catches Bessie at the window.) Only Davoren
really realises his own predicament, although Schrank has argued his poetic
finale is a rhetorical internalisation and denial of the tragedy, where his own
egoism eclipses the death of Minnie: ?Donal Davoren, poet and poltroon,
poltroon and poet.?[7]The only real
modes of existence is such a situation are escape or acceptance. O?Casey?s
treatment of the former, which we have seen embodies both mocking comedy and
accusing tragedy, is damning. Instead, pragmatism is seen as a possible line of
least resistance. We see the ascendance of pragmatism in Juno?s matter-of-fact
comment: ?Yis, ?an when I go into ?oul Murphy?s tomorrow, an? he gets to know
that, instead of? payin? all, I?m goin? to borry more, what?ll he say when I
tell him a principle?s a principle??[8]
This mirrors very much the attitude of Nora towards Clitheroe: ?you?ll make a
glorious cause of what you?re doin?, while your little red-lipp?d Nora can go
on sittin? here, makin? a companion of th?loneliness of th?night!?[9]
Although Minnie does not offer the audience such a vocal affirmation, it is
clear that she is practically-minded, unswayed by the seductions of rhetoric. Her
only question at Davoren?s poetry is who the sweetheart is in reality: it is
merely a lovely little poem, just as she sees the supposed wildflowers for the
weeds they are.It is these
pragmatic characters that get everything done in O?Casey?s drama. The only
triumph in the tragic finale of Juno and
the Paycock is Juno abandoning her husband and setting out on her own.
Minnie?s sacrifice, based around the simple principle that the soldiers will
respect a woman?s property, is in sharp contrast to the fearful inaction of
Davoren and Shields. It is Bessie who rises to dominate the closure of The Plough and the Stars, selflessly
fetching the doctor for Mollser, and nursing Nora, who is declining into
madness. Yet Bessie was the Protestant who (partially out of sorrow for her son
fighting in the trenches) mocked the revolutionaries and spent the entire play
sparring with her neighbours.It must be noted
that most of these characters are female: O?Casey attacks mock-heroism as a
particularly male vice. Of course, the pattern is not universal: Mary shares
the faults of the male dreamers, and Fluther redeems himself by an act of
courage. Yet, the female is deeply implicated in two vital polarities that
O?Casey sets about deconstructing.The first
revolves around the figure of Kathleen ni Houlihan who represents an
alternative love for the men of Ireland: ?Ireland is greater than a
mother?Ireland is greater than a wife.?[10]
Most prominently in The Plough and the
Stars, O?Casey dramatises a conflict over the soul of men between
Nationalism and their womenfolk. As already mentioned, women represent the
dogged, imperfect but pragmatic voice of reasonable action; whereas Nationalism
represents the seductive rhetoric of tragic and impotent idealism. The superb
scene in which the true-life words of Pearse are juxtaposed with the earthy
prostitute Rosie confirms this polarity. It is also apparent that Johnny
forsook his mother for the principles of Nationalism, and pays the price with
his death; confronting his own hollowness and hypocrisy in betrayal. The
relationship is modified and more subtle in The
Shadow of a Gunman (especially as Minnie is partly taken in by images, too)
but we see here the female spirit sacrificed to Nationalism by Shields and
Davoren.The second polarity
is that between dead heroes and living women. It encompasses the polarities of
image/reality and impotence/pragmatism already discussed. The female characters
become the only ones with a measure of heroism precisely because they are
anti-heroic. The moment when the Boyle family leave the gramophone to watch the
cortege is a capitulation motif: the cult of death has overwhelmed the capacity
for life, and as Mitchell points out, everything goes downhill from then on in.
Heroism in O?Casey is ruthlessly exposed as a tragicomedy, an illusion that is
both pathetic and ultimately damaging. On the other hand, the pragmatic females
who forsake the heroic illusion of Romantic Ireland for love of their wayward
sons and husbands, are presented as alternative ideals. They have the potential
to lift the deadweight of dead heroes that condemned Ireland to the ideological
bloodshed. Although their anti-heroism depends, to a large extent on their
relationship with men, O?Casey?s position was nevertheless courageous and radical
in its own way. He portrayed the slums as symbolic of a malaise that beset all
Ireland and set Pearse next to a whore to reveal the brutality of his words. As
Krause says of Juno, Minnie and Bessie: ?they are the Ireland of tenacious
mothers and wives, the women of the tenements ? earthy, shrewd, laughing,
suffering, brawling, independent women.?[11]
Their anti-heroism was O?Casey?s brave alternative to a hail of gunman?s
bullets and a shallow grave.Bibliography Sean O?Casey
Three Plays: Juno and the Paycock, The Shadow of a Gunman, The Plough and the
Stars (London, 1957) O?Casey: The Dublin Trilogy, ed.Ronald Ayling (Basingstoke, 1985) David Krause, O?Casey and His World (London, 1976) [1] The Shadow of a Gunman,
collected in Sean O?Casey, Three Plays (London,
1957) p.104 [2] David Krause, O?Casey?s
Anti-Heroic Vision (1960) collected in O?Casey:
The Dublin Trilogy, ed.Ronald Ayling (Basingstoke, 1985) [3] Juno and the Paycock,
collected in O?Casey, p.47 [4] The Shadow of a Gunman,
collected in O?Casey, p.88 [5] Jack Mitchell, Inner
Structure and Artistic Unity (1980), collected in Ayling [6] Ibid. p103 [7] The Shadow of Gunman,
collected in O?Casey, p.130 [8] Juno and the Paycock,
collected in O?Casey, p.8 [9] The Plough and the Stars,
collected in O?Casey, p.158 [10] Ibid. p.178 [11] David Krause, O?Casey?s
Anti-Heroic Vision (1960), collected in Ayling, p.36
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