This then lays the alcohol-drenched groundwork for us to trace the development of Synge’s characters as they drink throughout the day. For the case of Christy, drunkenness inspires poetics in his chronicles. In Act 1, the rehashing of patricide is terse and bland; on his first glass of porter, he fumbles:
“I never used weapons. I’ve no licence, and I’m a law-fearing man… I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of it… he went down at my feet like an empty sack”
Here, Christy’s language is limited: his storytelling is prosaic as he reduces the magnitude of his murder to an underwhelming loy that ‘just’ fell, as if it were a mere case of Newtonian gravity. Not only that, but the prose is shoddy: there is a lack of smoothness in his non-parallel …show more content…
Furthermore, what is interesting to note is that neither character denies either’s judgement, nudging us to believe that the accusations have some basis in reality. However, this alcohol-fueled satire is not employed purely for the sake of humor: in addition to entertainment, Synge utilizes satire as a tool to exaggerate and deconstruct the stereotypes imposed on peasant class during this time. In this exchange, the interlocutors’ comical indecency both in subject matter and tone completely unravels the gendered perception of 20th century Irish women as domestic, dignified, and gentle Catholic conservatives. This reversal of gender roles and Catholic piety is epitomized in the play’s drunken climax, where alcohol poetically and politically empowers Widow Quin. In the act’s outset, she prevents Mahon from searching for Christy as she seduces him “in a cajoling tone”: “Sit down then by the fire and take your ease,” she invites, “There now is a drink for you, and may it be to your happiness.” As a widow, Quin is expected to retreat into a period of mournful grief; but here, she is powerfully dynamic as she grabs the play’s plot and tries to nix Mahon from it. Her pace is sedating and magnetic as she upends law and religious expectation in order to imbibe her narrative of choice––that is, Christy’s tale. Here, alcohol is transfigured into a political weapon that heightens peasants as transgressive intellects to then liberate them from their lower occupations in the social hierarchy, in turn exposing the tenuity and plain wrongness of dominant social
“I never used weapons. I’ve no licence, and I’m a law-fearing man… I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of it… he went down at my feet like an empty sack”
Here, Christy’s language is limited: his storytelling is prosaic as he reduces the magnitude of his murder to an underwhelming loy that ‘just’ fell, as if it were a mere case of Newtonian gravity. Not only that, but the prose is shoddy: there is a lack of smoothness in his non-parallel …show more content…
Furthermore, what is interesting to note is that neither character denies either’s judgement, nudging us to believe that the accusations have some basis in reality. However, this alcohol-fueled satire is not employed purely for the sake of humor: in addition to entertainment, Synge utilizes satire as a tool to exaggerate and deconstruct the stereotypes imposed on peasant class during this time. In this exchange, the interlocutors’ comical indecency both in subject matter and tone completely unravels the gendered perception of 20th century Irish women as domestic, dignified, and gentle Catholic conservatives. This reversal of gender roles and Catholic piety is epitomized in the play’s drunken climax, where alcohol poetically and politically empowers Widow Quin. In the act’s outset, she prevents Mahon from searching for Christy as she seduces him “in a cajoling tone”: “Sit down then by the fire and take your ease,” she invites, “There now is a drink for you, and may it be to your happiness.” As a widow, Quin is expected to retreat into a period of mournful grief; but here, she is powerfully dynamic as she grabs the play’s plot and tries to nix Mahon from it. Her pace is sedating and magnetic as she upends law and religious expectation in order to imbibe her narrative of choice––that is, Christy’s tale. Here, alcohol is transfigured into a political weapon that heightens peasants as transgressive intellects to then liberate them from their lower occupations in the social hierarchy, in turn exposing the tenuity and plain wrongness of dominant social