Relevance of Title Christy Mohan
John Millington Synge
(1871-1909) is considered as the greatest dramatist of the Irish Literary
revival. Along with W.B.Yeats and Lady Gregory he made the Abbey Theatre of
Dublin a famous centre of dramatic activities. He wrote several plays- The
Aran Islands, The Shadow of Glen, Riders to the Sea, The Tinker’s Wedding, The
Playboy of the Western World, The Well of the Saints and Deirdre of
Sorrows. These plays
provide evidence of his versatility and have won and preserved for him a
permanent place among the great names in the British drama.
The Playboy of the Western World, a
highly controversial play exposed the middle class audience to a different portrayal
of Irish countryside life as opposed to the traditional idyllic image they were
accustomed to. The play has been looked at variously from the point of
view of its genre, its themes and its central characters. The main themes in
the play are:-
Theme of Opposition: At
that time Ireland was under the control of England. The people of the
imperialist country were fighting for freedom. The liberties of the people were
being crushed and were mercilessly exploited. The result was that the general
masses regarded the landlords, magistrates, policemen and judges as their
enemies. Hence, anyone who broke the law became hero. That is why people
of Mayo have a tendency to protect all criminals. Christy comes to Mayo and
tells them that he had killed his father with a single stoke of spade. Instead
of treating it as a despicable act and handing him over to the police, he is
received warmly and treated as a hero. They regarded a self-confessed murderer,
one who opposed the law as a brave and reliable man.
Theme of Patricide: Another
theme of the play is patricide. This is linked with the idea of growth of
personality. Christy has built up his personality (attained maturity and
manhood) by symbolically killing his tyrannical father. Though patricide was
the most dreadful of sins to the ancient Greeks but in the present play the
subject is treated with comic irony, indeed with comic reversal of values and
is presented as a metaphor of emancipation and achievement. Christy commits two
murders of his father and is prepared to kill him the third time. The first
time he hit him with spade and thought was killed when his father tried to
force him to marry a rich old widow. The second time he strikes him to win back
Pegeen’s respect.
However, the chief
interest of the play seems to be in the expanding consciousness of Christy
under the influence of the adulation of Pegeen and other Mayo women and men.
Instead of handing him to Police, people regard him as a courageous hero.
Pegeen admires him as one who has done some glorious act. The most real reward
is the growth of his personality and his poetic eloquence that accompanies it.
As against his this achievement, Shawn laments that he has no father to kill.
Widow Quin feels inferior because she has only killed her husband and not
father. At the end, Christy leaves as a mature and self-confident boy quite
different from the frightened runaway boy.
Theme of Fantasy versus
Reality: The play is about fantasy. It shows the power
of myth to create a reality out of dream or illusion. The expansion of
Christy’s consciousness is accompanied through a lie and grows to heroic
proportions at each telling. The people of Mayo welcome his fantasy as long as
it remains distant, a ‘gallous-story’ beautifully told but becomes disgustful
when it comes too close for comfort and becomes a dirty deed. Christy’s
exaggeration and those of his listeners provide a great deal of fun, but Synge
sees to it that in his handling of the theme versus reality never gets out of
hand. Whenever Christy soars too high on the wings of his imagination, Synge
brings him back to earth. For example, when Christy is
boasting about his bravery to Pegeen, a knock at the door sends him cowering to
her. Similar kinds of instances can be noticed throughout the play. Therefore,
when fantasy becomes a reality it transforms the person.
Theme of Role-playing:
One of the themes in the play is also about role-playing. This is essential for
Christy for his survival, but later that becomes a means to self-discovery. He
is supposed to be a man of words rather than deeds but proves to be a man of
deeds at the end. Christy is indeed a naïve braggart who does not lie grossly
and whose fantasies are more a sign of his own growing self-esteem. This brings
us to the recognition that Christy’s role-playing proves to be educative and
leads to self-discovery; it results in the creation of a new personality.
Therefore, each theme
is intimately connected with the other and only together do they come close to
give a true picture of the play.
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