Some Question and Ans of The Playboy

 

Why does Christy Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World by J. M. Synge tell strangers that he killed his father?

In The Playboy of the Western World by J. M. Synge, when Christy Mahon initially appears, he is exhausted, confused, and terrified of being arrested. He is not thinking particularly clearly, and begins by asking if police regularly visit the pub. That arouses the curiosity of the villagers and makes them enquire as to what he has to fear from the police. Christy's account of killing his father is only elicited from him gradually, and under pressure. It is only once he does admit to it, and finds that his auditors are rather impressed by his courage, that he becomes comfortable boasting of the act.

 

Why does widow Quin and Sara want to help christy escape from the crowd to the later stage of the play?

Answer:

      Christy chases Mahon out of the pub with the loy. After a great noise and “a yell” outside, Christy comes back in. Widow Quin hurries in too, telling Christy that the crowd is turning against him and he needs to escape before he gets “hanged.” He insists that he won’t leave Pegeen, who should be impressed with him again now that he has dealt his father a fatal blow.

      Though its offstage, it’s clear that Christy strikes his father again. The crowd is bloodthirsty and wants justice, without having a clear sense of the parameters of that justice. In essence, they want to impose their own collective authority and Widow Quin knows that they will come for Christy and tries to help him escape.

Gulliver's Travels is an adventurous novel with lots of humour and satire within it. Explain.

Jonathan Swift's masterpiece satire Gulliver's Travels is written in the form of a travel story and details a sailor's journey to four very different fantastical societies. But the book is not a simple adventure story. It is a pungent satire on man. It is also a critical and insightful work satirizing the political and social systems of eighteenth century England. Through frequent and successful employment of irony, ambiguity and symbolism, Swift makes comments addressing such specific topics as current political controversies as well as such universal concerns as the moral degeneration of man.

 Ostensibly, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels is adventure story detailing a sailor's journey to four fantastical lands. It tells the story of the various wonderful voyages undertaken by a man called Lamuel Gulliver. The narrative is in the form of an adventure story. To any young mind, Gulliver is an adventurer exploring various fantastic lands. To a child, both Lilliput and Brobdingnag are strange and wonderful lands full of fascinating events. The way the pigmies handle the man-mountain' Gulliver, the way they feed him, the way Gulliver visits the capital of Lilliput, the way he cripples the enemy fleet and the way he extinguishes fire in the Lilliputian royal palace by urinating on it are all exciting and amusing. In addition to their littleness, Lilliputians customs as well as sources of their conflicts are also sources of great amusement to any young and inexperienced mind. Again, Gulliver as a pigmy among the giant Brobdingnagians gives endless amusement tor the children. Gulliver meets several mishaps in the land of Brobdingnag and they are all bound to interest the young reader.

 Similarly, strange and surprising events take place in Laputa and Lagado. the Laputans with their strange behaviors in a flying island are very funny people. The experiments which are in progress in the Academy of Lagado are also very interesting. Gulliver's interviews with the ghosts and spirits of the great dead on the island of Glubbdubdrib are also a source of great interest. Gulliver's last voyage takes him to another fantastic land of the Houyhnhnms and the Yahoos. Here too the element of the marvellous predominates. That horses, the Houyhnhnms are perfectly rational animals and controls the human-like Yahoos and their way of governing the society as well as life-style are all parts of a fanciful story. Any young mind ravels in the narratives of the fantastic places, objects and events throughout Gulliver's Travels.

But, Gulliver's Travels is not a simply adventure story. It is more than a children book. It is a great satiric masterpiece. Swift’s purpose in writing the book is to 'vex' the world by exposing the evils, follies and absurdities of human life. The whole book is a direct and outspoken condemnation of the follies and faults of human beings. By presenting the Lilliputian society and court as corrupt Swift attacks his contemporary political institutions and the politicians. The diminutives in the fantastic island symbolically suggest human capacity of infinite pride and Corruption. The second book is also a bitter and pungent satire on English politics and society. Through Gulliver's account of English society and the giant king's subsequent reaction of his panegyrics Swift exposes the avarice, hypocrisy, perfidy, cruelty, madness, malice and lust of Englishmen. The third book is a satire on unrealistic philosophers and scientists in pursuit of useless knowledge and their intellectual pride. The last book contains the most scornful, the most incisive and the most corrosive satire on mankind. In the abominable and filthy Yahoos, who are brutal, un-teachable and mischievous, and by contrasting them against the ideal Houyhnhnms, Swift exposes the innate depravity of human beings.

Much of the humor in Part I comes from the visual imagery of the contrast in size between Gulliver and the Lilliputians. The image of their hundred arrows shot into his hand that feel like the sting of needles seems funny because such little people can be so fierce and yet cannot do much to damage such a huge visitor. Other instances of humor revolve around Gulliver's physical needs, and again, most of these relate to the size difference. The Lilliputians feed Gulliver plates of a meat that he takes to be something like mutton legs, yet they look like tiny bird legs to him. When the little people transport Gulliver during his sleep to their city, he wakes up with a violent sneeze. Only weeks later does he learn that two inquisitive guards had climbed onto his face and stuck their spears up his nose. Along with the humor about physical needs, the story contains scatological humor dealing with Gulliver relieving himself.

Thus, Gulliver's Travels is not a simple adventure story; it is rather a bitter satire on mankind. Every aspect of human life has been severely castigated and humor in the book

Gulliver as a misogynist. Explain it

 Gulliver as a misogynist because Gulliver hates humanity through women. Swift portrays women as inferior creatures, comparing them to lusty, dirty, and ignorant animals, ultimately leading to Gulliver’s disgust in women in general at the end of the novel. In the moral domain, women inspire as much aversion as they do on the physical side. We know that Misogynistic reflecting or exhibiting hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women. Reflecting or exhibiting ingrained and institutionalized prejudice against women; sexist: misogynistic attitudes stemming from the highest corporate level. In Lilliput, Gulliver illustrates the carelessness of women, when he retells the story of the fire. The only way to extinguish the fire is through urination, an act so rude and grotesque that a woman could not handle it. The queen is autocratic and infuriated when Gulliver urinates on her apartment to keep it from burning. She decrees that public urination be banned and that the contaminated building be left as it is. The method by which Gulliver describes this event, leads the reader to believe that only a woman would act so harshly to his actions.

 In “A Voyage to Brobdingnag”, when the farmer shows Gulliver to his wife, she screams with disgust, the way a woman would react to a bug. Gulliver in Brobdingnag discovers that his sense was more acute in proportion to his littleness. He sees everything magnified, he examines everything as if through a microscope. Looking up close at the women’s anatomy, Gulliver notices that their skin seems very rough, discolored and greasy. Also he has difficulty breathing because of their strong and repugnant scent. He is disgusted by the sight of their huge pores, spots, pimples, hair and moles and even more repulsed by one maiden who places Gulliver on her nipple to play. Swift uses the Maids of Honor to illustrate flaws in a woman’s beauty that are generally overlooked or hidden. Gulliver expresses his aversion to their naked bodies.

They were, “very far from being a tempting sight”, and gave him, “any other emotions than those of horror and disgust”. Gulliver makes the connection that the women of England, that he normally finds so beautiful, have the same flaws, but he just does not see them as easily because they are of the same size: “This made me reflect upon the fair skins of our English ladies, who appear so beautiful to us, only because they are of our own size, and their defects not to be seen but through a magnifying glass, where we find by experiment that the smoothest and whitest skins look rough and course and ill coloured.” Only the women are described as having such horrible discolored skin. Men had it too, but he only brought attention to the women.

 

When Gulliver describes a grotesque vision of humanity in Brobdingnag, he generally uses women as the objects of repulsion. It is the Empress who eats in a grotesque fashion. When Gulliver sees beggars and homeless, he describes in unkind detail the lice crawling on their clothes. The homeless beggar with cancerous breast is a horrific sight to Gulliver as he can see into the crevices and cavities in her body, destroyed by vermin and disease. That is “the most horrible spectacle that ever an European eye beheld”. Swift deploys the rhetorical “instruments” necessary for such disavowal figuring the decaying body as female. In Brobdingnag, Gulliver is shocked to see the “monstrous breast” of a nurse giving suck in front of him. Even the act of feeding does not escape his disgust: “I must confess no object ever disgusted me so much as the sight of her monstrous breast…”. The flying island of Laputa  has been the object of several feminist discussions particularly to show that women are repeatedly described separately from men. The women are described by geometric shape and mathematical figures. Furthermore, the women are not allowed to explore or travel off the island without specific doctrine from the King. In Laputa, a wife is someone who would rather prostitute herself than stay with her neglectful husband. According to Susan Bruce, Gulliver’s Voyage to Laputa enacts men’s ultimate inability to control women’s bodies and desires.

 

In Houyhnhnms women were also supposed to be gross, lusty, sexual, benevolent and disgusting as the description of the Yahoo female shows: “The females had long lank hair on their heads and only a sort of down on the rest of their bodies. Their dugs hung between their fore feet and often reached almost to the ground as they walked.” A young female Yahoo gets “inflamed with desire” at the sight of Gulliver. Never does Swift suggest they are more than what he presents them to be, nor does he suggest that they think, feel, love or are morally responsible. The Yahoo female who, driven by sexual craving, throws herself on Gulliver is a strikingly horrific image.

While the Houyhnhnm females are sexually modest and controlled, the Yahoo females are sexually aggressive: “A female Yahoo would often stand behind a bank or a bush, to gaze on the young males . . . and then appear, and hide, using many antic gestures and grimaces . . . and when any of the males advanced she would slowly retire, looking often back.” However, Gulliver encounters several women in his travels but we never hear their opinions. We never find out how women think or what they feel about their own society. We also never find out what they think about Gulliver’s society. The reason for this is that women did not have figurative voices. The conversations that he had with the queen, the lady and the women in Laputa are not brought up because it doesn’t matter. Women’s voices were not important. So we could say Gulliver as a misogynist.

Discuss the laboratory from Laputa

Laputans are the inhabitants of the flying island called Laputa. The Laputans have prostituted science by fixing on knowledge for knowledge’s sake, instead of putting intellectual theory to practical use. Where Scientists, in Swift’s send-up, would make poor rulers. Even Bacon, whose New Atlantis was the first scientific utopia, implicitly recognized this; while Bensalem’s key institution is Solomon’s House, it is not the sole governing body. One reason why Bacon thought scientists should not rule alone is that, while scientists pursue knowledge as an end in itself, politicians seek to use such knowledge as a means for other ends. The realities sought and delivered in the laboratory, in other words, are a different kind from those sought and delivered in the political arena.

The activities of the members of the Academy of Projectors, though they involve experiment, are yet related to the abstract thinking of the King. For the most part, they are based on some wrong-headed abstract conception, and are really examples of reasoning downward, taking "the High Priori Road" They are aspects, therefore, of the modern tendency to ignore "the old forms" and to rely on a spider-like spinning of thought, By blending experiment and High Priori reasoning in the Academy at Lagado, Swift is able to show scientific "projects" as yet another example of the kind of thinking which leads away from the methods of a Christian and humanist tradition. Indeed one of the projects is an exact allegorical equivalent of the process of reasoning downward to the foundations of plain experience. There is a most ingenious architect who has contrived a new method of building houses, by beginning at the roof and working downwards to the foundation, which he tries to justify by the practice of those two prudent insects-the bee and the spider. Again. the notion of ploughing the land with hogs to save the charges of ploughs. cattle. and labour results, upon experiment, in no crop and a good deal of trouble and expense.

Such projects leave an impression of uselessness, dirt, temporariness, or death. An eminent member of the Academy has been busy for thirty years converting things into their opposites. Air has been made tangible and marble has been made soft; land is sown with chaff, and woolless sheep have been reared; the hooves of a living horse are petrified. In short, the projects are conducted in an atmosphere of aimless activity, distorted values, and a perversion of things from their proper purpose. While the general effect of the  images we associate with Lilliput and Brobdingnag is of man and other animals as vigorous physical beings, the effect of Laputa and its subject Kingdom of Balnibarbi is of a deliberate giving up of the physical and the vital for the abstract, the mechanical, and the unproductive. The prevailing images in Laputa and Balnibarbi are not of real people and animals, but of ruins, mechanical constructions, men who look like allegorical figures and women who are thought of in geometrical terms. Animals are only negatively present, as in the pathetic horses and sheep of the Academy. Laputa itself is a mechanical device, because the flying island expresses not only the Laputans’ desertion of the common earth of reality but their conversion of the universe to a mechanism, and of living, to a mechanical process.

Academy of Lagado, Gulliver meets a culture completely dedicated to the sciences. Swift lampoons his era’s enlightened thinkers by directly parodying their own experiments, this time implementing a different body part. One of the academy’s most famed physicians claims to be able cure illnesses by inserting objects “eight inches up the anus.” Another hopes to “reduce human excrement to its original food.” Guided by real-life research, Swift ridicules philosophers with common sense, showing that even the world’s most brilliant minds are still capable of humbling mistakes.

 In his poem, “The Lady’s Dressing Room,” Swift moves from satirizing the sciences to poking fun at the arts. He attacks romanticized ideals of femininity by once again focusing on their bodily functions. Imitating the epic illusions used by his literary peers, Swift compares Celia’s chamber pot to Pandora’s Box and Paradise Lost. After further deconstruction of the feminine ideal, Swift’s male protagonist reaches the disturbing conclusion that his darling “Celia shits!” This crude discovery grounds both genders in reality and parodies any poem portraying women as anything other than eating, breathing, pooping characters.

 Academy of Lagado, Gulliver meets a culture completely dedicated to the sciences. Swift lampoons his era’s enlightened thinkers by directly parodying their own experiments, this time implementing a different body part. One of the academy’s most famed physicians claims to be able cure illnesses by inserting objects “eight inches up the anus.” Another hopes to “reduce human excrement to its original food.” Guided by real-life research, Swift ridicules philosophers with common sense, showing that even the world’s most brilliant minds are still capable of humbling mistakes.

While readers typically focus on Swift’s mastery of bathroom humor, his critical portrayal of accepted governmental, scientific, and artistic standards remains applicable to today’s society. Instead of using bodily fluids as a crutch, Swift strategically hides his highbrow social attack within the bladders and bowels of his characters.  From vain politicians to irrational logicians to idealized women, he humanizes the social elite and unifies the world through one of our few shared experiences – the restroom. All of the above discussion about the Laboratory from Laputa.

Jimmy's Relationship with Alison and Helena.

 

Jimmy's marital life and his relationship with wife Alison is one of the chief concern of the play, Although Jimmy and Alison had a love marriage, their marital life was full of tension. Alison's parent's apposition to the marriage due to Jimmy's low 80cial status enraged Jimmy. He could never forgive Alison's family members for their disapproval of him and constantly bullies his wife in a way to get back to them. He treats her in a callous manner attacking and abusing her parents, her brother in a ruthless manner. le finds fault with her for her endless ironing of clothes, for being devoid of animation and enthusiasm, of being silent when he expects her to retaliate to his attack, for being "pusillanimous", for having the passion of a python, for coming under the influence of Helena, for being indifferent to the ailing Mrs. Tanner and so on. He shares some occasional moments of tenderness with her and plays the bears-and-squirrels game, thus escaping to the world of fantasy and shower their uncomplicated love for each other. But otherwise his attitude towards her is of scorn and contempt. He humiliates her in front of Cliff by comparing her sexual passion to that of a python. He cares little not to hurt her feeling while criticising her family members. In fact he deliberately tries to bully her by ridiculing her parents and brother and attacking them with harshest possible language. Alison rightly says to Helena that he treats her like a hostess of the middle class against whom he is waging war Jimmy considered Helena as one of his "natural enemies" when she is first introduced. There is no love between them and he does not even spare her from his ruthless verbal assault. His behaviour with her is very un-gentleman like. After the kissing incident, she becomes his mistress and he shares a good report with her. In her Jimmy finds a good soulmate. She replaces Alison completely in the Porter's household. She takes over Alison's work on the ironing board, ceaselessly ironing clothes wearing one of Jimmy's old shirt.

Though Jimmy does not play the bears-and-squirrels game with her, yet he shares some tender moments expressing their love for each other. On Alison's return when Helena decides to leave her, he is hurt. He accuses her of hypocrisy for trying to lead a saint's life. He also accuses her of trying to escape the pain of being alive. After her desertion he is so distressed that he bangs his fist against the window frame. 

 

  The premise of the play is that Jimmy is lower-middle-class, both Helena and Alison are upper/middle-class, and most of their problems stem from this difference. Alison is less excitable and doesn't stir up as much trouble as Helena. The two women appear to be aligned in many ways and are supposedly friends, but Alison is more practical and is willing to walk away from Jimmy, whereas Helena seems willing to put up with his poor behavior. Alison betrays Jimmy by leaving him, but Helena betrays Alison by taking up with Jimmy. Where Alison is discouraged by the abuse she endures from Jimmy, it lights a fire in Helena. For example, once Alison has gone home with her father, the fight between Jimmy and Helena crosses the line, and they end up getting romantically involved.  When act 3 begins, Helena has taken on Alison's role, and she is only able to see the error of her ways when Alison returns to see Jimmy. Neither of the women is especially important to Jimmy, as he isn't sad to see Helena leave and does not seem especially glad to have Alison return. They are similar in their station in life but different in how they handle Jimmy's behavior. Alison and Helena both end up living with Jimmy Porter, Allison as his wife and Helena as his mistress.

Allison and Helena are both upper-to-middle class, something that drives Jimmy crazy. In a way, both Alison and Helena rebel against their families by taking up with Jimmy, but Alison, it seems, actually loves him.

Use of Irony and Humour in The Playboy of the Western World

 

The Use of Irony

At the outset, Christy is a poor sort of creature and his deed is reprehensible by any code; yet he progresses to become a proven hero in the end of all." Within this ironic frame-work, irony is piled upon irony as the audience rejects Christy, and then lends him grudging admiration, rejects and then approves the attitudes of those in the Mayo shebeen. By his mere presence, the snivel-

ling coward, Shawn Keogh, Constitutes a sarcastic comment on the situation, since for Pegeen's life-partner he is the only alternative to a parricide. The miserable Shawn with his false piety is also apparently the Church's only answer in lieu of the presence of Father Reilly and the saints of God, all kept well off-stage. When Pegeen's father, Michael James, tries to prompt Shawn to claim Pegeen for himself, Shawn can only grumble that he is “afeard to be jealous of a man did slay his dad". This, for the audience, is reasonable enough, but no less vexing all the same.

Old Mahon himself is a second ironic presence lurking throughout the play, constantly undercutting Christy's heroic image by obstinately refusing to be dead. The audience is ready enough to grant the playboy some of the stage glory he has acquired by Winning races on the beach, flaunting his colourful jockey silks, and attracting all the young women in their bright fed dresses (as authentically worn by the Aran peasant girls). He even pleases us by threatening Shawn's skull with another spade. But in the latter part of the play old Mahon's sly presence is planted like a warning, threatening to thwart our pleasures. Nevertheless, Michael James himself accepts the idea that a daring fellow is the jewel of the world, even though he did split his father's middle with a single clout, and presumably may well do it again to a father-in-law;

and so it seems, by dint of Synge'sironic stage-craft, that Christy's heroic image is solid and complete. When, therefore, Christy is finally chased off, threatening to kill his father a second time if necessary, the audience, as much as Pegeen herself, feels the pain and annoyance of self-deception.

 

Humour :

The dialogue in the play too is a source of rich comedy. Leaving aside a few speeches which . may momentarily depress us or put us in a serious mood, the rest of the dialogue amuses us greatly. The verbal duel between Pegeen and Widow Quin is one of the comic highlights of the play. Widow Quin slanders Pegeen by saying that the latter goes "helter-skeltering” after any man who winks at her on a road, and Pegeen accuses the widow of having reared a ram at her own breast. Then there are the satirical remarks Pegeen makes to Shawn. She tells him that he is the kind of lover who would remind a gril of a bullock's liver rather than of the lily or the rose. And then she ironically advises him to find for himself a wealthy wife who looks radiant with “the diamond jewelleries of Pharaoh's ma". Widow Quin, speaking to Christy, says that Pegeen

is a girl “itching and scratching" and one who stinks of stale whisky. These are examples of conscious wit and humour, but we are also greatly amused by the unconscious humour of many of the speeches of Michael, Old Mahon, Philly, and Jimmy. Michael's way of describing the wretched life of a man who has never married is very funny. Old Mahon's use of words and phrases to describe Christy's shyness and his incapacity to drink or to smoke is highly entertain-

ing, while Philly and Jimmy amuse us by their talk about the exhibition of skulls in the museum in Dublin.

The above has been discussed about irony and Humour  of “The Playboy of the Western World” in detail.

What is kitchen sink realism? Analyze the character of Jimmy Porter as an epitome of an 'angry young man'.

 

'Kitchen Sink' is the term given to a particular type of drama, which focuses primarily on the trials and experiences of the urban working class. It stems from the wider 'Kitchen Sink' movement of social realism in art.

  Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" who were disillusioned with modern society. It used a style of social realism, which depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons, living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore controversial social and political issues ranging from abortion to homelessness. The harsh, realistic style contrasted sharply with the escapism of the previous generation's so-called "well-made plays".

  Perhaps the first, and most notable, characteristic of these Kitchen Sink dramas was the way in which they advanced a particular social message or ideology. This ideology was most often leftist. The settings were almost always working class. The previous trend in Victorian theater had been to depict the lives of the wealthy members of the ruling classes. These classes of people were often conservative in their politics and their ideologies. This was not the case for Kitchen Sink theater. The Kitchen Sink drama sought, instead, to bring the real lives and social inequality of ordinary working class people to the stage. The lives of these people were caught between struggles of power, industry, politics, and social homogenization.

  Another chief characteristic of the Kitchen Sink drama was the way in which its characters expressed their unvarnished emotion and dissatisfaction with the ruling class status quo. This can be seen clearly in the play considered to be the standard bearer of this Kitchen Sink genre: John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger. In Osborne’s play, Jimmy Porter plays the role of the Angry Young Man. He is angry and dissatisfied at a world that offers him no social opportunities and a dearth of emotion. He longs to live a “real life.” He feels, however, that the trappings of working class domesticity keep him from reaching this better existence. His anger and rage are thus channeled towards those around him. Osborne’s play is a study in how this pent up frustration and social anger can wreak havoc on the ordinary lives of the British people.

   Some critics have noted the irony in the term “Kitchen Sink drama.” The domestic world during this time was believed to be the domain of the feminine. Almost all of the major Kitchen Sink works which take place in the mid-twentieth century, however, are centered around a masculine point of view. These plays rarely centered around the emotions and tribulations of its women characters. The power dynamic between male and female often assumed to be masculine and is an unexamined critical component in many of these plays. Women are often assumed to serve the men of their household and, when conflicts do arise, it is often the man who is portrayed as the suffering protagonist. Women’s suffering is always a result of the suffering of the male.

  Though Kitchen Sink dramas gained notoriety in twentieth century British culture for their unflinching anger and criticism directed towards the social, political, and economic establishment, the plays were also significant for the way they depicted the most intimate aspects of domestic life.

  So the play as an embodiment of  kitchen sink realism because  The Angry Young Jimmy Porter as an epitome Kitchen Sink Realism in John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger" and its relevance in the twenty-first century society.

Analyze the major themes of The Playboy of the Western World.

The major themes of  " The playboy of the western world ":     Various themes are found   in the john Millington Synge’s play "the playboy of the western world ". Some majors themes are going to be discussed below :

Darkness: The Playboy of the Western World approaches the question of darkness from several different angles. At the top of the play, the literal darkness of the nighttime creates the first conflict: Pegeen has been left alone to mind the alehouse at night. She would like company and protection. Shawn's character is quickly established when he is unwilling to protect her from the darkness for fear of upsetting Father Reilly. However, even Michael James is perturbed by the dark, as he doubles back before arriving at the wake because of it. All the characters realize that in darkness lies a litany of threats, including: ghosts, drunken farmhands and violent militiamen. The real threat, however, lies just outside in a ditch: Christy Mahon.

 

Offering shelter to this stranger invites a different and more profound darkness: the darkness of the human capacity for violent, subconscious desire. Part of what incensed contemporary audiences about Synge's play is that the play reveled in this dark behavior, but we may understand the villagers' celebration of Christy's patricide as an expression of their own subconscious desire to relish in their dark impulses and thereby upset the reigning moral order. Christy’s tale offers them a chance to imagine their own violent liberation from the stifling village life. But when Christy’s father appears, providing Christy a chance to kill him once and for all, the crowd turns on him. Darkness is easier to imagine than to confront directly, and so the village ultimately choose to keep their violent desires locked away, in the figurative dark. Overall, Synge uses his wild comedy to ask questions about what humans do in confronting their dark desires.

 

  Religion: Religion in The Playboy serves as the reigning moral order of village life. However, Synge's depiction of it is quite nuanced, since characters frequently subvert religious expectation for the sake of self-interest. Shawn Keogh prefers to leave Pegeen alone in the dead of night with a madman abroad than risk censure for spending unchaperoned time with her. Meanwhile, these 'religious' villagers immediately celebrate Christy for his horrific patricide. The worse Christy's tale becomes, the more do the villagers grow enamored of him. What is implied through Pegeen's tale in particular is that freedom from religious restraint allows for freedom from the stifling nature of village life. Christy's crime allows her to imagine a life of self-realization, away from religious restraint. Though Synge never makes an explicit attack on religion in the play, it is posed as something antithetical to human freedom and individuality, and this conflict forms the center of the story.

 

Fathers:  The theme of fathers is reflected everywhere in [The Playboy]. In general, fathers are presented in terms of authority. They demand obedience, which then poses a challenge to their children: do they obey, or revolt? There are three “fathers” within the play: Michael James (Pegeen’s father), Old Mahon (Christy’s father) and Father Reilly, the village priest. Each of these men is defined by the obedience he demands of his children (whether literal or figurative).

 

The most uncomplicated relationship is that between Father Reilly and Shawn Keogh. Father Reilly never appears in the play, but Shawn refers to him incessantly. Shawn, an orphan, frets over Father Reilly’s approval, and commits no action that might be censured. Shawn grants total obedience to Father Reilly, so much so that his obedience swallows his identity. It absolves him of having to make any difficult decision.

Headstrong Pegeen mostly obeys her father Michael James, but she never fails to argue her own point of view where it differs from his. Her most stunning act of disobedience is to insist upon marrying Christy instead of Shawn. Interestingly, her father's initial anger is overcome by her strength, until he eventually blesses the union. Of course, this blessing only lasts so long before Pegeen again makes herself subservient to him. By the end of the play, we see that Pegeen remains Michael's property, reliant on the life he provides, even despite her fiery personality. She is not willing to entirely repudiate him and run away.

Of course, it is relationship between Christy and Old Mahon that takes center stage. Though initially like Shawn in his life, obeying his father without a hint of rebellion, Christy eventually comes to distinguish himself as a revolutionary against his father's authority. He murders the man once by accident and again on purpose, so that even when Old Mahon survives, Christy demands the power. By the end, Christy has gained the authority, because he was willing to entirely repudiate his father. The sense is that we must be willing to destroy authority if we are to subvert it, something Pegeen has a sense of but is unable to entirely do.

 

 Social Expectations: Christy’s murder of his father incites the action of The Playboy. This murder is both literal and metaphorical - in terms of the former, Christy does actually (try to) kill his father; in terms of the latter, he is celebrated not for striking an old man, but for representing an act of rebellion against social expectation in general.

There is an interesting interplay between the concepts of patricide — the literal killing of one’s father — and parricide —the murder of a family member. It seems that literal patricide shades into a more general category of parricide, since the murder has a greater metaphorical significance. In addition to striking his literal father, Christy strikes his 'family,' meaning the many aspects of society that attempt to define and limit people. What Christy 'kills' has great weight for the villagers because it represents a greater murder: of Church, law, village, country, of general subservience to social expectation. Christy's attempt at patricide enables him to represent a great liberator to the villagers. That they are shocked by his literal attack in the final act reveals that the villagers have turned his act into a symbol of defiance, one that allowed them to imagine destroying much greater concepts than an actual flesh-and-blood man.

Poetry: In many ways, what distinguishes Christy as a hero is less his actions and more his ability to represent those actions through language. Throughout the play, Pegeen and company are struck by Christy's verbal brilliance. In her first exchange with him, Pegeeen compares him to the great poets. Despite his limited education, Christy discovers a rhetorical skill as he articulates the subconscious desire to subvert authority, one that all of the villagers secretly share. As his own self-image strengthens, so does his language grow richer. It is telling that the prizes he wins in the sports competition symbolize a traditional Irish bard. Christy turns word into flesh, and language becomes one of the most important actors in the play. The sense is that we define ourselves not only by what we do, but also by how represent ourselves to others.

 

The Playboy: The concept of "The Playboy" is undoubtedly central to the play, considering its prominent place in the title. What is intriguing is that the concept shifts throughout the story. The Playboy is initially understood as a flirtatious man who attracts women. This aptitude is largely based on his mastery of language. Therefore, a playboy is one who can 'play' with words. And yet Christy drives this concept into a greater place, as his language and storytelling inflate his self-image. His identity grows to match the hyperbole of his language. As a result, he becomes a sports champion, suggesting that the Playboy is also an athletic specimen. By the end of the play, when Pegeen laments losing the "playboy," we understand that she does not regret losing a libertine, but rather a master of self-identity. The Playboy has come to represent not just a master of language or athletics, but in fact a master of himself and his own identity.

 

Marriage:  Marriage is obviously central to a world centered around Church expectations, as the Irish countryside of his play is. However, it is also represented as a contentious, potentially violent, subject matter. Throughout the play, 'fathers' force marriage upon their 'children,' inspiring intense acts of rebellion or submission. Because marriage does not represent love, but rather economic convenience, characters must decide whether to submit to expectation or declare their identity in the face of these expectations. The catalyst to Christy’s initial attack on his father was the latter's attempt to marry him to someone he did not like. Father Reilly controls Shawn’s fate through deciding whether to grant the dispensation. Most of all, the relationship between Christy and Pegeen reflects the way marriage stands in contrast to personal identity. Pegeen declares her own strength when she insists upon marrying Christy despite her father's intentions, and then later repudiates him of her own will. Similarly, Christy finally discovers his true potential when he repudiates Pegeen in turn, announcing his decision to "romp" forward, using woman as he pleases. Whether Pegeen will eventually submit to marrying Shawn is uncertain, but what is certain is that she has  that true freedom is stifled by social expectations like marriage.

The Free bondsman

 

In the play character of the beggar as a free bondsman is most wise, optimistic, hard working and the one who do not believe in any superstitions at all. Through the character of the beggar Soyinka has also given the culture of the Nigerian society that guests are treated as god.

      The crops that had been left by flood water have also been ruined by oil.Igwezu  returns  from  the  field  greatly  disappointed  by  the  destruction  of  his  farm  due  to flood. The begger consoles  him promising that his  farm will once again  stand, and  he will give himself as his bondsman.  The tells him that he is a wanderer, a beggar by birth and fortunes. The beggar also tell to Igwezu that  he has stood where soil is good and cleaves to the toes like the clay of bricks in the mixing; but it needs the fingers of drought whose skin is parchment.

    The Bondsman is presented as Christ like figure. He is a spiritual man, he is full of hope, and he is moral and advises people in right way. He is symbol for salvation. The Bondsman also gets treatment as he is God. In Yoruba Custom, stranger is considered as god. The character of beggar introduce by Soyinka as “Christ figure who introduce a completely new force, a new way of thinking into the hidebound society of the village”. It is the reason beggar gets the special treatment from the Old Couple,

“Alu squats down and washes his feet. When this is finished, she wipes them dry, takes a small jar from one of the shelves, and rubs his feet with some form of ointment.”

       The bondsman who represented as the blind beggar  is a thinker. He does not believe in whatever. He questions the wrong ideas and persuades others also to question. He is the only person in the play who questions Kadiye and his ways. He tries to explain people not to believe in Kadiye.

 

 Thus, The bigger as a Bondsman is not minor character in the play. He has very much importance. He is symbol of new thinking, spirituality, morality, hard work, hope and brotherhood. Through his character Soyinka tries to say many things to reader.

The Serpent of the swamp

 The people of the swamp believe animism.  The term animism is derived from the Latin word anima meaning breath on soul. Animism is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence.  Potentially, animism perceives all things animals planets, rocks revers, weather systems human handiwork and perhaps even words—as animated and alive.

As swamp suck people in, The whirlpool of ignorance, superstition and frustration continues to drag villagers deeper and deeper.  People living in village believe in superstitions, have traditional thoughts.

They are believe in  the Serpent god. The swamp people sacrifices the best ones of their production in order to pacify the serpent god so that they can yield a good harvest otherwise they might suffer from loss.

The Swamp Dwellers is a close study of the pattern of life in the isolated hamlets of the African countryside as well as an existential study of the simple folk who face religious of life without any hope or succor. Soyinka tears apart social injustice, hypocrisy and tyranny.

 

     The Swamp Dwellers reflects the life of the people of southern Nigeria. Their vocation mainly is agro based. They weave baskets, till and cultivate land. They believe in serpent cult. They perform death rites. They offer grain, bull, goat to appease the serpent of the swamp. Traders from city come there for crocodile skins. They lure young women with money. Alu withstands their temptation. Young men go to the cities to make money, to drink bottled beer. In fact the city ruins them. The Swamp Dwellers consummate their wedding at the bed where the rivers meet. They consider the river bed itself as the perfect bridal bed. Sudden flood ruin the crops throwing life out of gear.