Silence

 

In February 1975, Garfitt wrote an article in which McGahern, in the very title of the article, was qualified as "a silent traveller", for, as Garfitt put it :

 

Silence is the background to all McGahern's writing. It lines the appearance of things as silvering lines a mirror : existence is reflected back from the certainty of non-existence (R.Garfitt "Silent Traveller" in The New Review I:11 Feb.1975 p.63).

 

Silence is then a foil to writing or to speech. Silence gives shape to writing and speech and it is defined according to them in a negative way, as non-word or non-writing. It is the non-existence of existence as Grafitt implies. It is first considered negatively, and as Moran is closely linked to negativity, as we saw in the chapter on characterization, since he is a negative character, he is also connected with silence. To write a pastiche of a sentence by Paul Viallaneix about Albert Camus, we could say that McGahern's work, more than any other, is the daughter of silence. Indeed, every page includes the word "silence" or a synonymous. For example, p.79, silence is enhanced since it is at the beginning and at the end of the two sentences : Silence fell at once. Everyone looked towards Moran who held his own pained silence (79). In a circular structure, we always come back to silence, as it were. Silence can concern characters but also nature, that is the Irish countryside. Wasn't Ireland hushed and reduced to silence for many centuries of colonization by the English oppressor ? Moreover, as it is nearly deserted, the Irish countryside is all the more silent. When Michael arrives in Dublin, the remark in the narrative is quite symptomatic of the boredom generated by the silence of the countryside : Here were people and excitement and noise and bustle (116).

 

Silence often generates anxiety because people feel imprisoned in this silent countryside and prison is nothing else than the condemnation to silence. People, especially young people, feel the need for life, for noise, for activity ; the problem of the drift from the land is implicit here for the empty, deserted silent countryside is reminiscent of the silence of death and thus generates anguish and anxiety. It may be to forget it that people have recourse to the shout. At the bottom of p.19 : Moran held a pointed silence, then p.20, the narrator mentions the blustering way he spoke. P.71 : he blustered again and p.169 : <Sheila> could not bear to hear him shout (...) he roared. Expressing himself by shouting or remaining silent, the mcgahernian character can easily be compared to a wild beast, either barking aggressively trying to bite each time his desires are thwarted, or staying apart, in silence. According to an essayist, Max Picard, who wrote Le Monde du Silence, this alternative (shout/silence) is characteristic of country people :

 

Ils font du tapage et poussent des cris, ils semblent essayer de faire irruption hors du silence ; ils n'y réussissent qu'en usant de violence (Paris PUF 1954 p.96). McGahern's rural characters are no exceptions. Silence is recurrent in the book above all in clashes or episodes of tension : in the opening scene between Moran and McQuaid, for ewample : the two girls were silent (...) the two men ate in silence (...) they did not speak (12).

 

The two men quarrel, then

 

Moran did not answer. An angry brooding silence filled the room (...) when Maggie returned she found them locked in the strained silence (...) In the silence, she began to make tea (...) At last, out of the silence, Moran noticed McQuaid's glass was empty (18).

 

In McG's writing, silence is always grievous, heavy and it often corresponds to a break (here between Moran and his friend), and the major break is death, hence silence in death scenes. Remember the children's mother is silent since dead. Silence is always close to death. It may be embarrassed silence which can express the anguish one feels facing one's own death. In front of dying Moran, the family is silent - the room was still (180) - and, ironically, Moran precisely asks for silence, when they say their prayers, as if silence was needed to die : shut up (180), he orders.

 

Moran is a silent character and he repeatedly tries to impose silence on others, as if his authority was reinforced by silence : If you listened a bit more carefully to yourself I think you might talk a lot less (54) he tells Rose.

 

Oddly enough, he sometimes complains about his children's silence too : God, why is nothing ever made clear in this house ? Everything has to be dragged out of everybody (8). He particularly complains about his lack of information from Luke.

 

This son is very silent too : he never comes, never writes and anyway, the subject is too grievous to be talked about. Luke's brothers and sisters must remain silent concerning him : it was better to make no mention of their elder brother (4).

The war is another taboo that must not be talked about : <Moran> generally went stone-silent whenever it was mentioned (4). Rose conjures it up later :

she ventured into what they had never spoken of (...) it was clear he didn't want to talk about those nights.

- Would you like to go to Strandhill ? (58).

Moran does not want to talk about war, so he does not answer and changes conversation. On the whole, he refuses to talk about the past. It is clearly mentioned p.3 he resented any dredging up of the past ; the phrase "his aversion of the past" (173) can be underlined too. Silence often reflects a tense atmosphere. On Mark O'Donoghue's visit to Great Meadow, silence is recurrent:

 

So uncomfortable was the silence that Mark asked (...) A door banged and Mark's voice was loud as they came in (here again shout or silence). Then they heard Maggie's low urgings that he keep his voice down (...) Moran's brooding silence always had to be watched... (138-140).

 

Both tension and silence are imposed by the tyrannic father and, facing tension, people have recourse to silence or to the shout that is frustration or quarrel. When they leave the house, the description has it clearly that it is also getting rid of tension : To leave the ever-present tension of Great Meadow was like shedding stiff, formal clothes or kicking off pinching shoes (33). This tension is of course due to Moran's presence. Indeed, his departure from the house immediately brings about some kind of slackening or relaxation : No sooner had the door closed than Mona, released from the tension of his presence, let slip a plate from her hands (10).

This nervous tension is so excessive that it may provoke nervous laughter :

 

his very watching put pressure on them to make a slip as they dried and stacked the plates and cups. There were several alarms, bringing laughing giggles of relief when they came to nothing (80).

 

I remind you that the etymology of the word "excess" is in "ex-", that is "out" ; to exceed the limit is to go beyond. "Excessum" means "exit", "out" and when Moran's attitude is excessive, his children always find a way to escape his presence. The father's anger entails the children's flight. If you have a look at p. 54 :

 

Moran's excessive attitude is highlighted by "he had gone too far" (54) and this very attitude has triggered off Rose's departure from the room : <she> left the room (54). The children, in tense periods, always resort to tactics of escapism, strategies of avoidance : this is why they are so serious at school:

 

Rose's coming to the house had (...) allowed them to concentrate everything on school and study, which, above all, they saw as a way out of the house (67). Anyway, Moran's children always pretend to be working when their father is shouting : their opposition to his attitude and their submission to his authoritative power are also conspicuous physically : Moran erect at the table, Rose and Michael bent at the chairs, looked scattered and far apart (90). Likewise, when Moran and his son, Luke, meet on Sheila's wedding : <Moran> "stood" and Luke "bowed" (155), which is quite significant too. This attitude, or natural reaction, is summed up in the sentence : All they had ever been able to do in the face of violence was to bend to it (54). Moran is always erect, apart from the bending crowd. For example, at the station, before Maggie's departure : Moran stood erect and apart on the platform (63).

 

Even if he is sitting, he still remains stiff : Moran sat stiffly on the tractor (161) whereas his family is bending : whether Rose - her head going low (69) - or the children who, when they are addressing to their father, have a submissive behaviour : Sheila hung her head despondently low (76). These physical attitudes highlight the opposition between them and Moran's excessive tyrannic attitude in his home. There is something so excessive, so absurd in his presence and behaviour that his family cannot stay with him too long. Excess brings about escapism and absurdity too :

the idea that lies at the back of nonsense <is> the idea of escape, of escape into a world where things are not fixed horribly in an eternal appropriateness (G.K.Chesterton "A Defence of Nonsense" in A Book of English Essays Penguin London 1980 p.211), by a tyrant's authority, we would be tempted to add. The first clash between Moran and Rose is clear :

 

Part of her expected to find them laughing at his wild reaction beyond all sense and to return her to the blessed normal but when she looked around only Maggie stood in the room. The others had slipped away like ghosts (52).

 

Moran's absurd reaction is underlined - his wild reaction beyond all sense - which provokes escape - the others had slipped away like ghosts. Rose expected them to laugh, which is another kind of escape, of liberating tension, of de-dramatizing. Nonsense often triggers off laughter : in spite of her fear, <Maggie> was tempted to laugh. Trouserless men looked absurd in socks (40). Likewise, going to the church for his wedding, Moran startles everyone when he parks the car and announces that they would walk the rest of the way through the village. It is an absurd situation for a wedding and "Michael sniggered behind Moran" (41). By the same token, the fact of remarrying sounds so hardly credible from Moran's mouth, that the girls, once he is out, "exploded into wild laughter" (28).

 

Notre rire est toujours le rire d'un groupe as Bergson put it (in an essay called Le Rire PUF Paris : Quadrige 1983, p.5). Laughter seems to be a way out, an exit, a nervous reaction to too ponderous a pressure, too oppressive a situation. The atmosphere is so tense that the least trifle, the slightest mistake brings about laughter. Laughter is a sign of tense atmosphere, of being under pressure, of absurdity. In the presence of the absurd, laughter is a kind of self-defence, self-protection and liberation. But characters always laugh behind Moran of course. In front of him, they remain silent:

 

They knew that <Moran's> accusation was untrue. They remained obstinately silent, abject looking as well, the camouflage they had learned to use for safekeeping (68). When he does not speak to them, they surreptitiously slip out : if he was eating alone or working in the room (...) they always tried to slip away (53). Luke has also escaped absurdity, leaving his father's house to lead a life of his own and Michael also takes leave to avoid his father's violence and runs from the house (112). Yet, Moran never realises that his sons' departures are due to his excessive, nonsensical behaviour. He himself longs for escape as he is close to death : Now he wanted to escape, to escape the house, the room, their insistence that he get better, his illness (178). This sentence implies the nonsensical aspect of existence. Existence is so short and derisive that it generates desires for flight. But this feeling, as most feelings in the novel, remains repressed, frustrated and unvoiced. Silence seems to cover every feeling, every idea, every sentiment. People do not utter, express what they feel but remain silent. And strangely enough, they cannot stand silence either. Indeed, silence is so embarrassing that people sometimes speak to fill the void : No one spoke much afterwards except to murmur the names of the houses they passed (157) or

 

As he ate and drank she found herself chattering away to him out of nervousness, a stream of things that went through her head, the small happenings of a day. She talked out of confusions : fear, insecurity, love. Her instinct told her she should not be talking but she could not stop (54)

 

and this lonely chat brings about the clash with Moran. This raises the question of incommunicability since with such a tyrant who imposes silence in his house, people cannot express themselves. There is a genuine crisis of speech or an oral block since characters do not communicate but are content with gossiping : Maggie had so little to do during the day that she spent much of the time chatting and gossiping with Rose (50) or p.97 : There were many.../...from the rail. This is a mechanical reaction which is repeated every Christmas ; people keep talking about others because it avoids talking about themselves : People talk too much about other people round here, says Rose p.24. You have an illustration of this right from the following page :

 

Mrs Reynolds paused to watch Rose make her way round by the bridge to the post office and muttered venomously, "There's no fool like an old fool" (25). The words used could kill or at least ruin people; they are like weapons. Moran speaks "as quietly as if he were taking rifle aim" (69). Aggressivity is part of language.

 

Some sentences are quite mechanical in so far as they are so systematically repeated that they do not mean anything at the end. For example, Moran keeps on repeating his children who introduce him to their friends : If he does you, Maggie, he'll do me, which is to be read twice p.140, an echo of the preceding page : if he suits her he'll suit me (139). The sentence is to be found again concerning Michael : if she suits Michael I am quite sure she suits me (172). And strangely enough, when Rose mentions her possible marriage with Moran, her mother tells her : if he suits you I'm sure he suits me (30). A commonplace mechanism seems to settle as soon as a situation occurs. Ionesco noticed this phenomenon :

 

Je constate parfois la destruction ou la déformation volontaire du langage et je dénonce cela ; je constate aussi son usure naturelle ; je constate encore son automatisation qui fait que le langage se sépare de la vie (Notes et Contrenotes Folio Paris préface p.11).

 

Characters are content with uttering clichés, trite, ordinary words of everyday life. They annihilate speech or discourse reducing it to an addition of quotations, of ready-made, stereotyped sentences. Rose's mother, for example, deplores her daughter's marriage with Moran by remembering that she had "many admirers" : this is repeated several times (pp. 31, 34, 44). Likewise, when someone mentions his work, Moran and Maggie have a similar reaction : "There will be work long after you" Maggie said (144) and Moran tells Luke : "There'll be work long after you're dead and gone" (155). It is easily understandable that Luke does not feel like going back to his father's house when he hears such words that people do not think of their own but repeat in a ridiculous way. These sentences sound like ready-made truths that are imposed by others. The mcgahernian character is the character of slogans, proverbs and clichés, of a poor vocabulary. He gives vent to formulas that bring about other formulas ; words mechanically trigger off other words. It is a chain, a never-ending story. Proverbs are to be noticed for example p.89 : there's none more deaf than those who do not want to hear (89), a symmetrical replica of there are none more blind than those who will not see (126) or better to have too much than too little (95). These sentences are nothing else than popular truths which allow to hide the expression of feelings. They are automatic reactions and do not say anything. Using them is a way of keeping the ball rolling, of eluding reflection and of reassuring oneself, for proverbs are considered as universal truths. They are taken for granted and do not bring about controversy or discussion. They are as reliable as gospel truths and not debatable, which is quite convenient in order to have a neutral conversation. It avoids involving oneself ; proverbs are truths hiding the truth, so to speak. It is precisely to avoid saying the truth that Luke always sent neutral cards. Moran says : I wrote him several times and all the answer I ever got was I'm-well-here-and-I-hope-you-are-well-there (51). The way it is written on the page, with dashes connecting words together, lay stress on the cold, mechanical characteristic of the answer that looks like a telegram. Furthermore, the whole society seems to have recourse to such conventional formulas : she gave the formal response (23).

 

Religious references are quoted several times too and are to be considered as such : they put an end to the discussion because they are taken as the truth : for example, the sentence "to those that have shall be given too much" (87) echoes the biblical quotation "For the man who has will always be given more, till he has enough and to spare" (Mt 25/29) or "fear not for me but for yourselves and for your children" (127) is a reference to the words of Jesus to the women of Jerusalem : "do not weep for me ; no, weep for yourselves and your children" (Luke 23/28). Moreover, the characters' religious education is obvious in these quotations. But here again, they do not really involve themselves. Feelings are not expressed either when characters resort to reticence. In fact, the protagonists often feel embarrassed with one another. They avoid putting words on particular situations, and then they change the subject.

 

"Man proposes..." starts Moran (20) : here again, he is saying a proverb (Man proposes and God disposes) but he stops and McQuaid goes on : And God stays out of it. It is the principle of the apocope (as using, in French, "télé" for télévision or "kiné" for kinésithérapeute) applied to a sentence. Similarly, you can read p.40 : He might never have thought... The sentence is started without being finished. It is an elliptic process that turns the second clause into silence. "Abruption" is the technical term that qualifies such interrupted sentences. The interruption is noted through suspension points, then the sentence may be diverged, the subject is changed or hushed. Of course, it is Moran who provokes the interruption of speech, here again, reducing the other to silence. In a word, reticence is half-way between silence and allusion. Collaborating both with silence and speech, it is frustrated speech, compressed talk. One shuts up when one could speak. Reticence is dying discourse, the explicit turned into the tacit. It has a sound value ; it is expressive interruption. In fact, the truth lies in the implicit. Emptiness is meaningful and filled with emotion. Doubtless, things felt but left unstated have value. Words are pointless but feelings still remain in the background. It is precisely because it is implicit that it is convincing because it is close to life and sincere. The narrative itself is implicit and reticent too : the pauses or blank spaces imply a change of setting, of people or of time (Cf. p.8 or 45). It is also silent concerning sex : the girls can hear Rose and Moran having sex together on their wedding night, but it is quite implicit in the narrative :

 

they were too nervous and frightened of life to react to or put into words the sounds they heard from the room where their father was sleeping with Rose.

 

Rose was up at seven the next morning etc. (48).

 

The narrator does not linger on sex but straightaway deals with the next morning. Some kind of decency urges the narrator telling a story that happens in the catholic Irish 50s not to talk about sex of course. Another example : p.165, the family imagines Sean and Sheila making love :

 

they were forced to follow them in their minds into the house, how they must be shedding clothes, going naked towards one another..., as the forks sent a rustle through the dying hay. They hated that they had to follow it this way (165).

 

You see the suspension points, the sentence is diverged and the subject is changed. Both reader and character are brought back to reality.

The narrative can also use the implicit to avoid saying something crude or cruel : euphemism allows to do so. For example, death is mentioned as "the longest journey a man ever takes" (18), a cliché which covers crude reality with silence. Likewise, the verb, the engine of the sentence, is sometimes deliberately omitted : The Tommies marching to the station. The band. Sound of the train getting closer and before I knew it I was out on that street pushing the trolley (16). It may be to lay stress on the mechanicity of the action.

 

Oddly enough, the written language used by the characters does not bridge the gap, does not supersede the lacks of the oral language : when Moran writes to Luke, he hardly has any answer. Moran does not speak much, but writes a great deal : he took to writing letters again (172) and he writes to Luke to forgive him everything (176). This inability to communicate often leads to hypocrisy. People are content with watching others to judge them more easily : that's all this country seems to be able to do - gape (162). That is what Mrs Reynolds does (Cf p.41), an attitude which is quite similar to that of Moran who also "instinctively stepped backwards into the plantation to watch McQuaid struggling from the Mercedes" (10). Both of them, Mrs Reynolds and Moran, remain in the dark to spy on others, without being seen.

 

Communication is false, fake in this novel since hypocrisy permeates any human relationship. Moran himself "had never been able to deal with the outside" (12). McQuaid is hypocritical when he leaves Moran's house in which he will never come back : he says "well, thanks for the meal and evening, Michael. It was a great evening" (21). Likewise, Rose's mother does not like Moran but she puts on an appearance : Though her mother disliked him the custom of hospitality was too strict to allow any self-expression or unpleasantness (28-29). Personal sentiments are never disclosed in fact. Moran is also hypocritical when he speaks behind Rose's back : "we could get on topping without her" (68). This hypocrisy in communication denounces the drawbacks of such formal society. It is visible in lies too : McQuaid lies to leave Moran : "I told my old lady I'd be home", McQuaid lied as he rose (21) or the children lie when they are asked if they were beaten by their father : Shame as much as love prompted the denial (34).

 

Whatever lie or hypocrisy are both ironical since it implies that reality does not correspond to appearance : Maggie would pretend to be busy whenever she heard Moran come (50) or Sheila who "pretended to be sick in order to escape the tension of the day" (8). These are strategies to avoid clashes, tactics of flight, camouflage (mentioned p.68). Such strategies lead on a wrong track, delude the other, mask or hide reality, create illusion, and illusion is a game, a play (ludere, the Latin etymology of "illusion" means "to play"). It can be less serious indeed for example, when Michael mimicks Ryan, just to make the others laugh (162). These are just parodies to have fun like the wren-boys, at Christmas, "in masks and carnival costumes" (35).

 

So you see the difficulty, nay the impossibility of communicating in the diegetic universe of AW. Any attempt to communicate ending in failure, the characters take refuge in some illusive exchange, in hypocrisy, in silence or in cries, that is below or beyond dialogue. Furthermore, their endeavours for physical communication which would possibly make up for the failure of the verbal exchange do not turn out to be more satisfying, since any fusion seems impossible to achieve. Indeed, except on their wedding night, Moran and Rose do not seem to make love together : they do not really reconcile after their arguments. As for the reason of this silence, you know the Irish could not express themselves openly because of English oppression, so the implicit may be considered as a characteristic of Irish literature but, more precisely, in Great Meadow, anguish is at the source of silence. It is a vicious circle for silence and emptiness generate anxiety or anguish which itself literally strokes the character who can no longer speak. This is what is called in French "la gorge serrée" (when anguish prevents you from talking). Emptiness generates anguish, for example when Great Meadow is emptying, that is the more the children leave, the more the anguish appears : "there were still enough people to dull the heartache and emptiness" (90), but a few lines below, you can read : there was an increasing sense of fear as the trees stirred in the storm outside when the prayers ended (90). This "sense of fear" is generated by the absence of the girls.

 

As Kierkegaard put it in le Concept d'Angoisse : Il n'y a rien contre quoi lutter. Mais qu'est-ce alors ? Rien. Mais l'effet de ce rien ? Il enfante l'angoisse (Idées Gallimard 1935 p.46). Emptiness generates anguish. On s'angoisse de rien (p.47), he goes on. Speech would liberate the anguished character, but most of the time he remains silent and broods, gnaws his anguish. Rose, THE anxious character of the novel, does not speak but moves. Her bustling activity betrays her anguish :

 

Rose was so nervous that she did not come out to meet them at the door (...) As she quickly dried her hands and ran towards them, her excess of gladness and affection masked an anxiety that had gnawed at her since Michael first ran away (126).

 

She is still silent ; silence and anguish seem to be in osmosis together, generated by each other: She did not ask him where he had been but more than once looked at him with covert anxiety (130). Her anguish is all the stronger as it is not expressed. Besides, her anxiety is physically visible, on her face : the strain was showing on her own drawn, anxious features (69), and if she talks, what she says has nothing to do with reality. She strives to mask her anguish with jokes and trivialities :

 

as soon as Rose heard the tractor working she gathered all the others and led them out, making little jokes and sallies which betrayed her own anxiety as they went through the orchard (161).