"The great novelist John McGahern once wrote that Ireland has never been a nation, but a collection of tens of thousands of little republics called families. My sense is that Irish voters flooded to the polls to support their gay daughters and sons, their siblings, neighbours, workmates and friends."

 

 Joseph O’Connor’s most recent novel is The Thrill of It All

 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/24/same-sex-vote-makes-ireland-a-kinder-fairer-place?CMP=fb_gu

Religion and philosophy

 

What I called McG's philosophy is something recurrent in all his fiction : it is the feeling of emptiness that pervades all his books. Because of the drift from the land, the Irish countryside is empty : the bridge (41), the strand (59), the road (85), the beach (106) the streets, the house : the lighted streets wintry and empty (...) the dining room was empty (...) the empty dining-room (...) the empty morning street (113-115). But what is empty is just temporarily : the emptiness due to the death of the children's mother is filled up : if I was to fill your mother's place (27) ; Moran is found staring into the emptiness of the meadow (178), but it was no longer empty but filling with a fresh growth (179). Every empty space needs to be filled up : the empty coffin (181) is not empty for a long time. "La nature a horreur du vide", as Pascal remarked and it may be reassuring to fill the void, in order to avoid anguish. But Moran's wish to fill up empty spaces is sometimes thwarted :

 

 

At last, out of the silence, Moran noticed McQuaid's glass was empty and attempted to pour him more whiskey.

 

 

"Cap it", McQuaid said and covered his glass with his hand (18). McQuaid refuses to have his glass filled. It remains empty and this is a sign of break, of rupture. Likewise, Luke refuses to fill his father's house with his presence ; his absence is mentioned repeatedly : it was the first Christmas anybody had even been absent and Moran seemed to be painfully aware of Luke's absence (35). On the following Christmas, Moran deeply feels Luke's absence again : we offer up this most holy Rosary for the one member of the family who is absent from the house tonight (96), and this absence is getting on Moran's nerves. He cannot bear his empty house. This emptiness is progressive :

 

- p.90 : there were still enough people to dull the heartache and emptiness,

- p.104 : the house felt empty again,

- p.108 : he continued staring vacantly out into the empty space of the room,

 

- p.8 (chronologically AFTER the preceding examples) : the hush and emptiness of the house is mentioned.

 

 

 

Interestingly enough, when Sheila takes Moran and Rose to her house, it is compared to "an empty stage" (151) ; it is also empty but, unlike Great Meadow, it may be presumed that it will soon be filled with children, with a whole family, whereas Moran's house is dying with him and that is what seems to be painful for him. The emptiness of the outside gradually enters Moran's heart and life : this is how old age and death are described by McQuaid : Nothing happens and then the whole bloody thing is on top of you before you know it (16). Once life and its various activities have gone, nothing more happens. It is similar to the feelings of the girls once their exams are finished : all they felt was emptiness where once all was tension and work (77). Moran is then in a real state of mental vacuity :

 

When he did get up to go to the room he looked like someone who had lost the train of thought he had set out on and had emptied himself into blankness, aware only that he was still somehow present (91).

 

 

 

His boredom, his passivity stem from this blankness. In fact, he does not exist any longer (he was still SOMEHOW present (91)). Anyway, he is considered as non-existent by Luke. Moran says himself : it was as if I didn't even exist (56). Grief and sadness depress Moran. Dissatisfaction and grief do not make him act, they are no engines but they paralyse him : his "lethargy of spirit" is mentioned p.148. The old Irish peasant is accustomed to suffering. He does not revolt but passively endures. This is why his vision of life is ironical. His remorse is also etymologically scathing, biting and linked to passivity : Le remords est réservé à ceux qui n'agissent pas, qui ne peuvent agir. Il leur tient lieu d'action, il les console de leur inefficacité (Cioran De l'Inc. d'Etre Né p.92). Remorseful, Moran writes to his son to beg for his forgiveness. Life is senseless, absurd, too quickly spent. It is only a bad joke, a "journey to nowhere" as McG wrote in one of his short-stories (Wheels). The Mcgahernian character does not expect better days for the storm has lasted for too long to believe that it will disappear. Nothing is to be expected from life to be sure not to be disappointed. Life only brings disgust, bitterness, disappointment. It is a fool's world, the stage of a theatre. "Cosmetic" derives from "cosmos". The world exists according to the appearance it shows (Cf § on hypocrisy). It is false, fake : Sheila's house is a stage (151) and Moran is the dupe of the play : it was in the nature of things and yet it brought a sense of betrayal and anger, of never having understood anything much (130). Maybe the world is vacuum, empty, unreal, a dream : "La vie est un songe", a literary tradition generated by Shakespeare and Calderon. It plays tricks on men and if man has no more illusions, it is precisely because he has been duped for too long. The world is the object of our knowledge and is inevitably reduced to our own representation of it. If my representation of the world is empty, the world is empty. This is Schopenhauer's theory in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (the World as Will and representation). By birth, man is a dupe, a victim of the illusion represented by life that he has not asked for. He is living by chance, without asking for it. He has been, as it were, pushed on stage, a stage on which he is both spectator and actor of a tragedy : Looked at with the mind, life is a joke ; and felt, it's a tragedy (Wheels 3). Blackness, tears, bitterness and anguish are consequently his lot. For religious reasons, the mcgahernian character does not think of suicide, but he would have liked to choose between being born and not being born, "naître ou ne pas naître". He would have liked this alternative, this margin of freedom, the choice between birth or remaining in a state of pure possibility BEFORE his birth. He was born without choosing it, hence a feeling of unease, of uselessness, of contingency. In McG's fiction, the character proves to be quite nihilistic in his wish for destruction : both Moran and McQuaid, for example, have destroyed the tradition of Monaghan Day : As soon as Moran saw McQuaid on his feet again he knew the evening, all the evenings, were about to be broken up (21), or during the first clash with Rose,

 

Moran "swept his hat from the dresser and crushed it on his head and went outside as if he might break down the doors in his way. Soon they heard the sharp, swift sounds of the axe as he started to split lengths of branches into firewood" (52).

 

His wish for breaking down the doors in his way being frustrated, he gives vent to his anger by splitting branches, a castrative activity, which is repeated p.46 : he thinned several small ash trees from the hedge. As a tyrant, Moran is always a castrative father by imposing silence on his family. Getting old, these nihilistic impulses change into fatalism and resignation. The lethargy of mind, the unachievement of dreams, the refusal of deep changes stick the character in a frozen life. Moran is static physically and psychologically. He is only anchored in routine, in the "usual", and it is so stifling that the characters inevitably feel imprisoned in their everyday lives, frustrated and fatalistic. The weight of destiny is conspicuous in Moran's repeated remarks that enclose the narrative : Who cares ? Who cares anyhow ? (1 & 178), which are the first words he utters. This question is mentioned repeatedly (3, 109, 125, 178) - he even writes it to his son (176) - and implies that it is all fixed. It is revealing, on the one hand, of middle class, and, on the other hand, of passivity, obviously entailed by such philosophy. If destiny is already fixed, what is the use of acting ? There is nothing to do but accept the way it is.

 

Religion could be helpful but it is not : mcgahernian characters are far from being solid believers or idealists. Consequently, they account for life with emptiness, total abstraction such as the power of destiny. Moreover, the religious feeling, particularly in christian religion, is deeply altruistic and Moran's egotism has been proved. It is to be noticed that "plus s'affirme l'individualisme, plus le sens du destin s'accuse" and in McG, characters are particularly individualistic in their relation with the other. The mentality of "who cares ?" releases from any duty, any obligation. It makes passive. It is because he considers that nothing is necessary any more, because he has no more obligations that he is passive. The passive man is a suffering man. He is fatalistic because he is the victim of a necessity over which he has no control. Necessity is no longer part of his modus vivendi because he feels as the fruit of chance. His birth is just chance. Although he prays a lot (28 occurrences of saying the rosary are to be picked up in the novel), Moran is not in peace, because prayer is always mechanically spouted, voiced without thinking. It seems to be the result of meaningless routine, of a formal habit : every evening, Moran calls "Thou, O Lord, wilt open my lips". But the rosary is said reluctantly ; from the outside, it seems to be a waste of time and faith can be totally absent from it : indeed, it does not change anything in their lives and does not allow them to live in peace together. Prayer is deprived of its meaning because it is nonsensical if it is not sincere. Anyway, it is always presented ironically by the narrator. Prayer is done as a chore : "If we say the Rosary now we'll have that much out of the way by the time we get home" (156). It is just something one has to get rid of to do one's duty and have a clear conscience. Prayer is just a way of formulating one's desire, maybe of understanding it more clearly ; it is a kind of "méthode Coué". They seem to pray without hoping any answer to their prayers and Moran's justification of praying - "the family that prays together stays together" (137) - sounds a bit ironical since his family does not stick together precisely.

 

There is never any real desire for praying. Prayer is always droned, muttered, expressed mechanically, without truth or sincerity. It is one of the trivial, automatic activities we do without thinking. When it is put to the level of domestic everyday activities, it is fake, denaturalized, for the rising of feelings and sentiments is proper to prayer and if it is no more spiritual communication with God, it loses its substance, its meaning and simply becomes a useless, artificial nonsensical activity, a chore.

 

 

Yet, the narrative is strewn with biblical quotations and religious references : "Lourdes' miracle" is referred to p.2. Every evening, the family prays the rosary which is divided into five decades : they say the rosary three times and each time corresponds either to the joyful, sorrowful or glorious mysteries :

 

 

They knelt to the Rosary. Moran began, "Thou, O Lord, wilt open my lips", as he began every evening. There was a pause when he ended the First Mystery. All their eyes were turned on Rose but she, with just a glance at Moran, took up the Second Mystery as if she had been saying it with them all the nights of their lives (47-48).

 

 

"The first mystery" is the joyful, "the Second Mystery" is the sorrowful, and the fact that it is voiced by Rose, the woman of the house, is symptomatic of the female condition of the time... To come back to the rosary, each decade is a meditation on a specific event in Jesus Christ's life. For example, the first rosary corresponds to the joyful mysteries which are

 

1 - the Annunciation (when Mary is promised a son by angel Gabriel),

2 - the Visitation (Mary's visit to her cousin Elizabeth)

3 - the Birth of Jesus

4 - Child Jesus is presented to the community in the temple,

 

5 - Jesus teaches in Jerusalem.

 

 

The sorrowful mysteries ponder over Jesus' passion and death.

 

 

The whole intrigue of the novel could also be seen as a reversed parable of the lost son (Luke 15/11). A certain number of similarities with AW are noticeable :

 

 

- Luke is the name of Moran's son, but also the writer of this gospel,

- the man has two sons,

- one of them leaves his father's house,

 

- then comes back much later and sees again his father who forgives him and celebrates the event.

 

 

Likewise, expressions such as "my beloved son" (56) or "God bless you, son" (167) sound like gospel's quotations too.

 

Concerning differences : in the gospel, the son regrets, repents and returns, which is never really done by Luke who, after seeing his father, leaves again. There is never a real return or reconciliation.

 

To end with, we could see the image of the priest which is also far from being spared by McG's sarcastic pen in AW. Throughout McG's fiction, the priest is either drunk or selfish, either sadistic or narrowminded but he is never generous, tolerant, charitable and pleasant as a priest is expected to be. He is always working for his own salvation, never for the others'. In an interview, McG said that most of them had no vocation but all the same became priests because their studies were paid :

 

It was as far as you could go in Moyne. I was there for two years. All the others went on to be priests. Joe Brady became a Bishop in Colorado. He died two years ago. I used to write to him till then. You couldn't go further than the eighth class without going on to be a priest (74).

 

 

Don't forget the Church is in charge of education in Ireland. According to this point of view, priesthood may be an escape from the world difficulties, from the fear of woman perhaps. Anyway, priests are no models, no examples because they fear death maybe more than others perhaps precisely because they become priests without vocations : Strange, to this day I have never met a priest who wasn't afraid to die. I could never make head or tails of that. It flew in the face of everything (74), a remark which is echoed by one of his last conversations with Rose : "One day later / Who cares ?" (179), a discussion which implies that they do not believe what they preach, and having no answer, Moran resorts to fatalism : "Who knows anyhow ? Who cares ?" (179).

 

 

To go on with this reasoning, if the priest does not believe what he preaches, his speech is completely empty, devoid of any meaning and he is useless. This is clear when he speaks about lazy Sean : He wasn't much use though the poor fellow tried his best. He was brought up to be the priesteen (166). If Moran is so fatalistic, it is precisely because he is not religious enough. His faith does not make up for his doubts, anguish and fear of death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

 

To conclude, McG is a fashionable writer because he is the witness of a precise time of Irish life, the types and humours of which he minutely restitutes. Through his fiction, he presents the stifled thoughts and words, the implicit feelings, to disclose the heart of this universe in which a sense of loss hides, Irish consciousness being torn between absence and failure. The protagonist, like the author, suffers from this for he is both clear-minded enough to judge the situation and also incapable of changing anything. This is why he remains in mental isolation, gnawed by some form of moral resignation. That is why, after so many years of disappointment and failures in Irish history, everyone is enclosed in the mediocrity of one's habits, in the dull bitterness of one's setbacks, in apathic individualism and finds one's complete chronicle in McG's fiction. Individualism is precisely the plague of our western societies where people refuse commitment, whether political, religious or associative, in order to involve themselves in their private lives and leisures. This fiction is particularly contemporary : it shows the possibility of living without any ideal, without transcendant goal, by maintaining Narcissus on the pedestal built by our present time. McG's fiction is really work for today.

 

Different faces of death

 

Facing death, Moran is alone : man is always alone to die, noone will ever be able to die for him: la solitude appelle la hantise de la mort et la hantise de la mort referme la solitude (Edgar Morin L'Homme et la Mort p.278). Death is enhanced in the novel since it is situated at its very end, as it is often the case in realistic novels. Yet, this death is heralded in the book through several signs which prepare the reader to this foreseeable end. Indeed, isolation, darkness, old age and its monotony are heralds of death and prominent symbolic elements of the book : Jankelevitch, an expert on death, wrote:

 

Quand la grande mort finale vient à se produire, elle était depuis longtemps annoncée par les innombrables petites morts de la quotidienneté, par la succession des minuscules trépas qui sont le présage de cette grande mort : la chute des cheveux, le blanchissement des tempes, le déchaussement des dents sont autant de morts en miniature et ces morts en miniature sont autant de signes avant-coureurs de la mort générale (La Mort p.237).

 

Isolation

 

Nous ne sommes pas nés pour notre particulier mais pour le public, wrote Montaigne in Les Essais (I (1580) "de la solitude" Poche Paris 1972 p.35). He meant that man must not remain alone but take part in collective decisions and be a member of a community. It is not the case concerning Moran who continuously isolates himself, which is often done deliberately : He stood apart on the platform (63) or he sat looking out at the people that passed by without acknowledging them or being acknowledged (128) ; he's "away from people" (130), which underlines his misanthropic mood, but sometimes he is excluded against his will : Everyone in the field except Moran saw them kiss (165), or when females discuss in the house : Moran began to feel out of it and grew bored (79). He is physically amongst women but not mentally. He who always wants to be in the middle of a circle is sometimes excluded (he felt "outside their circle" (77)) and says something unpleasant so that the others stop talking, which reinforce Moran's authority and re-integrates him within the circle. The masculine space seems to be condemned to seclusion and isolation. Michael is also put apart : his schoolfellows (...) ignored him (119). Luke is apart too, breaking any relationship with his family and with his country, being in love with an English girl. Still considering his family as the extension of himself, Moran isolates his own family too : they had been brought up to keep the outside at an iron distance (172) and Mona is the only one who can bridge the gap between the family and the community : she became the most reliable link with the outside world (169) ; without her, they would live in total autarcy.

 

Women are always sociable whereas men are lonely, isolated wild beings. Great Meadow is seen as an isolated area because it is surrounded with doors and barriers. The obstacles represented by the Irish hills and the very insularity of the place are reinforced by Moran enclosing his fields, putting barbed wires and felling trees to replace broken stakes which will become new enclosures (81). He gives vent to his inner violence in this activity. Hammering this fence is so associated with his character that the girls find him thanks to the sound of the hammer : they found Moran by the sound of malleting (80). With tools, he recovers the power he is always afraid of losing with his family. He does not tolerate anything from the outside. For example, he is not warm when he welcomes his future sons-in-law. Women are the only ones who are a window to the outside world. For example, Nell Morahan drives Michael to the other side of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Opening this breach, she is opposed to Moran. Her freedom is symbolized by her car that she leaves to her family when she flies back to the States, a way of transmitting freedom to a conservative society. Likewise, Nell, unlike Moran, does not hesitate to spend a lot of money and to offer gifts to Michael. Whereas Rose and Moran stare at the sea from the car - a warm, covered cell - Nell and Michael walk on the beach, and make love on the dunes, in the open air. Both generations are attached to this island but this attachment is shown differently : the first generation is isolationist. The foreigner is an "immigrant", whereas the second generation is more open-minded and tries to get rid of the stifling atmosphere of the parents'house. The outside is the unknown. It is impossible to visualize a space different from theirs : they tried to imagine what kind of space enclosed Luke in England during the same hour, but they weren't able to imagine it. It was too much like facing darkness (35). This "somewhere" is unimaginable because of the absence of familiar structures. Remember the text itself with its circular aspect recalls the shape of an island and has something isolationist too. It is cut from the outside, as it were. Eventually, Moran reluctantly realises that it is necessary to be open on the outside. His feeling of seclusion, of separateness is doomed to failure. On the last Monaghan Day with McQuaid, Moran is aware that his authority has collapsed since even his former soldier does not respect him any longer. He feels as a loser, leaving the door open behind him, the evidence that he no longer strives to isolate his house : he closed the door without shutting the iron gate at the road or the small wooden gate leaning against the boxwood (22). Some other signs reflect this change of attitude : Moran gradually neglects his enclosures : the hedges are not so thick as before, the walls are collapsing : he went from field to field, no longer kept as well as they once were, the hedges ragged, stones fallen from the walls (130). This insularity is less and less claustrophobic ; we already mentioned claustrophobia before, a word which is to be found p.174 and this atmosphere is so stifling that it may be why people leave doors and windows open : the door continuously open (22) is evoked concerning the farmhouse of Rose's mother. Besides, one of the first thing Michael does to gain independence is to open the window : as soon as he got to his room he moved the bed so that it stood against the door and unlatched the window (121). Indeed, the insular character is particularly Moran who is very often lonely. He is this man conjured up by McQuaid and himself, "one man marching alone through the night" (14). Moran is this lonely widower who remarried not to be alone - he would be alone. That he could not stand (22) - but who, actually, soon realises that a wife does not prevent him from feeling lonely. Moran is very often described sitting alone near the fire, brooding :

 

Moran sat alone in the room (...) Maggie was (...) startled to find him alone when she came in (...) He sat on alone until all unease was lost in a luxury of self-absorption (55-56).

 

"The man marching alone through the night" is pondering over his own human condition, his family in the night heralding his death. The night is the time of important events in the family : love act, Christmas party, celebrations, but also arguments take place in the night. There is a constant connection, a perpetual movement between light and darkness in McG's fiction which is particularly dark as the titles of his books indicate : The Dark, the Power of Darkness or Nightlines. Darkness is close to death : Thanatos, which means "death" in Greek is the son of the Night. Darkness is a messenger of death. We already mentioned the similar attitudes of Moran and Mrs Reynolds who both withdraw into the dark to watch others. Darkness is a secret, reassuring refuge that allows the character to feel better at ease than in the light. It is satisfying for it gives a regenerating space of loneliness and of individual freedom. Darkness is a refuge that seems to be more securing than home: the light was beginning to fail but he did not want to go into the house (129). Dark areas are intimate places where the unconscious appears and is liberated. It was relief and peace when the light began to fail (167). It is like going back to the protection of the dark womb of the mother. Furthermore, sex belongs to the night for Moran's generation, whereas his children have sex in the day-time, on the beach or while they make hay and these love scenes are described more accurately maybe to lay emphasis on the liberalisation of this generation's morality. Nevertheless, Nell and Michael have sex together for the first time in the dark, as if death and sex were closely connected (and I remind you that in many languages, they are : "petite mort" for example in French), as if the sexual act could find its expression and its blooming only in the dark : before she reached the yew tree at the gate she turned up a disused lane and switched off the lights. Already his hand was moving between her thighs as she drove (103). Obscurity allows to connive at sex, to close one's eyes on sin and sin, because of its link with death, is precisely darkness. St Paul says :

 

It is far on in the night ; day is near. Let us therefore throw off the deeds of darkness and put on our armour as soldiers of the light. Let us behave with decency as befits the day (Rm13/12).

 

Sex and darkness go together. Anything else can be done in the light and the religious education of the first generation is too strong to have sex in the day-time : Though they were alone they did not embrace or kiss. That belonged to darkness and the night (56). Besides, woman has the night with her. Feminine night conjures up death and love and, oddly enough, maybe night is reassuring for men, as we have just seen, BECAUSE it is feminine whereas night is a source of anguish for women : McQuaid says about his wife : she gets afraid on her own in the house at night (21). The darkness of the outside, that is the nightfall, is also perceptible in Moran's mood. Moran is a dark character - he was dozing in darkness (92).

 

Brooding in the dark, he lets darkness penetrate within his mind : the light was dimming (...) he sat morosely in the chair, not wishing to speak at all, just watching the light disappear (...) "he's gone", he brooded (124-125). The darkness of mind is melancholy (ety. "black bile"), sadness and monotony. Nietzsche mentions the spirit of the evening melancholy, "this devil of dusk" (Also Sprach Zarathustra). Melancholy is an open door on despair, depression. It longs for eternity, for the unlimited. Time, death, any limit is a source of anguish for the melancholy character who shuts himself in silence, loneliness and cuts himself from others. Sadness is his only company. Melancholy and darkness are connected in the episode about Christmas : "the melancholy sounds of the instruments" are mentioned (100), and a bit further, you can read : there were no lights (...) they found the big house in darkness (100). Today, we do not speak much of melancholy but rather about pessimism which also introduces a negative notion. Melancholy comes from the Greek "melagkholia", that is "black humour" and pessimism from the Latin "pessimus", the superlative of "malus", which means "bad". It amounts to say that what is black is bad and this notion is deeply anchored in our culture : darkness suits bad people, criminals and their evil actions. Melancholy is negative, a sign of death. It is always moving downwards : decline, despair, depression, degradation, all terms with negative prefixes : Moran is depressed because he is declining. He regrets his life, would like to have a new chance, notably when he sees his daughters working : he could be seen looking often at their heads bent over the lamplit pages in what looked close to melancholy and sunken reflection (74). He feels bitter and nostalgic about his own youth and the fact that because of war, he has not been able to study as he would have liked to : Moran had been a guerrilla fighter from the time he was little more than a boy (163). I remind you of his bitter remarks against his country, notably at the beginning, in his conversation with McQuaid. Moral grief is omnipresent in McG's characters of the first generation. It stems from a representation of what life could have been, which makes the characters bitter, passive, annihilated, tired of everything. The Irish socio-economic situation remains disappointing. the Irish man has not seen the achievement of his hopes. Bitter, brooding, he has lost his taste for life. Gnawed by what could have been and has not been, his heart is filled with rancour, bitterness and he is unable to forget. Existence may be bearable only for those who do not remember, which is not the case of the Irish who, according to G.B.Shaw, never manage to forget. There is a real dichotomy between old dreams, former hopes and present reality. Moran's grief probably results from this antagonism between representation and reality, two phenomena which, inversely, when they are in keeping with one another, generate pleasure. When reality does not tally with my representation, man is unhappy. The melancholy of the mcgahernian character is due to an accumulation of aborted dreams : Moran's questions are bitter and remain unanswered : "What did we get for it ? (...) What was it all for ?" (5). This is why "the humdrum of his life" (28) is spent in a gloomy, monotonous way. Moran speaks "gloomily" (74), the evenings in Great Meadow are qualified as "dull" (95), Moran's task as "slow and monotonous" (107). Monotony was defined by Baudelaire as "cet avant-goût du néant" and this notion of void or emptiness is the major theme of McG's general philosophy. We know that Moran is ill. This illness encloses the novel : he is qualified as a "sick old man" (6) and "the illness" is mentioned (178), but we do not know what he really suffers from. The revival of Monaghan Day is a means of thwarting this "slow decline" (177) but girls fail since he dies all the same.

 

Anyway, various details announcing death or symbolically representing it are noticeable throughout the book : silence and loneliness are obviouly connected to death as we saw before, or the mentioning of the Franciscan habit right from the beginning of the novel, but other signs are also to be picked up in the narrator's similes or metaphors. For example, the silent rows of parked cars <were> funereal along the sidewalk (113) or As great a pall would fall on the conversation when Luke's name came up (142). These implicit comparisons highlight the general melancholy tone of the character that can be the narrator's too. For many writers consider that it is because they are melancholy that they write. They communicate very little verbally and their only way of expression is writing. As Montaigne has it : C'est une humeur mélancolique (...) qui m'a mis premièrement en tête cette rêverie de me mêler d'écrire (Essais II ch.8 p.11) and who is the broken-hearted teenager who has not started writing ? Suffering seems to be necessary to write. By catharsis, the writer inevitably transmits/conveys his melancholy to his characters and the fact that Moran writes at the end of his life may be symptomatic of his depression. Moran has given death to others. McQuaid remembers : Then I fired (18). Moran also probably shot men to death during the war ; he kills a bird (7), which is another way of regaining the power he is losing on his family.

 

Likewise, the fact that "there was no music" (42) makes his wedding rather resemble a funeral. On this very day, when Moran gets up, he has got the feeling of a death : "it's the end of one life" (39). By the same token, the presence of the yew at the entrance to Great Meadow is also a portent of death. In the Celtic world, the yew is a funeral tree. Moreover, it is a perennial and that is why it is often planted in cemeteries. It is all the more connected with death as the yew has venimous fruit : some of Caesar's soldiers committed suicide by eating the fruit of the yew. It is evoked p.3 : "the poisonous yew tree". We said that melancholy was partly due to the unachievement of dreams and hopes ; it may have a spiritual reason too : the melancholy man feels lonely, abandoned by everyone including God. Religion has become a fount of disappointment. Maybe faith was illusive, some kind of utopia : la mélancolie n'est que de la ferveur retombée, says A.Gide in Les Nourritures Terrestres and the characters' approaches of religion may be interesting to clarify.

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).

 

 

 

Characterization

 

Characterization is quite simply the study of characters in the novel. In AW, the main characters are members of the same family, the Morans. The novel can be considered as a saga since there are very few characters outside the family except Jimmy McQuaid (1), Rose's family, Jimmy Lynch, the postman (24), Ryan, the "observer" (163), Mr Rodden, the Protestant neighbour (163) or Annie and Lizzie (25), the only characters whose patronym is not known. Concerning names, some clues are given gradually : they enable the reader to understand that Moran, the pater familias is called Michael (Cf. p.11). Father and son are both called Michael Moran and, interestingly enough, the son looks like his father and gradually becomes his alter ego : about Michael, the narrative has it that "some gestures and mannerisms were clearly taken from the father but his nature was not dark" (170) and Michael is in love with a girl, because (he said) : "I never met anybody before who made me feel important" (171). His ego needs to be flattered. Love is, for him, a matter of pride and self-conceit. Likewise, in his relationship with Nell, "he was fifteen years of age and commanded the world" (103). In this, he looks like his father. On Moran's funeral, Michael speaks "combatively" (182) which has something aggressive, like his father's tone when he spoke. With his father, he spoke "resentfully" (94). Several clashes are noticeable either between father and children or between husband and wife but, in any case, Moran always takes part in it. The atmosphere of the house depends on his mood and he's really at the centre of the family circle. The subject of the very first sentence is "Moran", which is quite symptomatic of the part he is to play in the novel. Repeatedly, he shows an interest in anyone but himself : he had never been able to go out from his shell of self (12) ; p.56, his "self-absorption" is mentioned, and through various details that may pass unnoticed, the narrator underlines the same defects in his children who, again, look like their father : Michael and Nell talk together and Nell "looked at his childish egotism" (110). Likewise, Sheila is "self-centered" too (8) and ironically, Moran blames his elder son, Luke, for having no thought for anybody except himself (35). This same page is relevant concerning Moran's self-importance : his narcissistic behaviour is obvious a few lines above :

Moran ate alone in front of the big sideboard mirror (35), and p.40 : he went back to the shaving mirror. Don't forget that when he dies, the family covers every mirror (180). The mirror is clearly assimilated to Moran. Moran is a hubristic characterand this pride is at the source of his quarrel with McQuaid. The latter's remark : some people just cannot bear to come in second (22) is quite explicit and echoed by the narrator's remark later : he would not take a lesser place (37). This narcissistic behaviour is to be paralleled with the relationship he has with his double, the reproduction of himself, that is his son : there is something insane about it. As a widower, Moran sleeps with Michael, strokes him and tries to relieve his own sexual needs with him : this incestuous homosexual relationship is alluded to p.39 :

 

the boy was always more uncomfortable with these essays in tenderness than any sudden harshness. He sat up immediately in the bed to listen.

"They're up", he announced. "They're all up. Do you want me to draw the curtain, Daddy ?"

 

- "No. Not yet", Moran said but the boy had already drawn free from the kneading hand and was struggling into his clothes (39).

 

This is reminiscent of similar scenes in The Dark. These attempts make Michael loathsome about any physical movement towards his father : the boy touched the stubble more than the lips before backing away (118). For boys, it seems to be impossible to live with Moran ; that is why they leave. Luke sums it up clearly : only women could live with Daddy (133).

 

Narcissism is obviously linked to homosexuality and it is because Moran suffers from loneliness that he does so (he is not homosexual otherwise), he simply uses his son as an ersatz. Once he is married, he no longer sleeps in his son's bed and no longer looks at himself in the mirror. As Laplanche puts it in Vie et Mort en Psychanalyse :

 

Le narcissisme est un investissement libidinal de soi, un amour de soi - thèse qui apparemment n'a rien pour étonner - ; mais cet investissement libidinal de soi passe nécessairement chez l'homme par un investissement libidinal du moi ; et, troisième thèse, cet investissement libidinal du moi est inséparable de la constitution même du moi humain (...) Le narcissisme est vite repéré par les sexologues et par les analystes comme élément constitutif des perversions et d'abord de la perversion homosexuelle (...) <il s'agit d'un> repli de la libido : un repli sur la vie fantasmatique - ce que Jung dénomme "introversion" - et un repli sur cet objet privilégié qu'est le moi. (107, 109).

 

 Moran is so proud of himself that when Mr Rodden fixes the broken pins, he drives the tractor very fast "as if he was determined to put Rodden's adjustments to the test" (164). Not only is he self-absorbed, but he also strives to underestimate the others' gifts and successes.

 

He really takes himself for some kind of god, Jupiter for example, since the different images used by the narrator in his description of Moran's fits of anger are similar to claps of thunder : p.94, Moran has just spoken with Sheila about Michael ; he said "I may need your help to bring him to his senses" and the narrative goes on : "'to bring him once and for all to his senses' was like far-off thunder that could promise any sort of weather (94). He is a tyrannical father whose house is described as his realm on which he reigns as a despot, without sharing his power. When he is not working in his fields, he is sitting as "a king" (the term is to be found p.12 & 37) in the middle of the room on a car chair, a preposterous throne well-adapted to a miserly man who does not miss anything but who lives as a destitute. Around him, his subjects are busy, worrying about his comfort, fearing his dreadful changes moods and his uncontroled violence. Order reigns in Great Meadow and the tyrant keeps on reminding his subjects of their duties of obedience and the central place he owns. He is really the center of the family circle. Their family is described as a "closed circle" (101 & 171) and in its middle, the father acts like a magnet, attracting all that turns around him :

 

No matter how far in talk the sisters ventured, they kept returning, as if to a magnet, to what Daddy would like or dislike, approve of or disapprove of (131). Furthermore, the title of the novel is quite relevant and symptomatic : who is amongst women but Moran himself ? Dying, Moran is still at the center of the circle : they were all gathered around him (180). But once dead, Rose becomes the center of the circle : Rose, surrounded by the girls , left the graveside (183). Nevertheless, he had always been at the very living center of all parts of their lives (183). In fact, Moran's power on his family was so great that his family has become the extension of his self :

 

All his dealings had been with himself and that larger self of family which had been thrown together by marriage or accident (12). You can also read p.22 : That larger version of himself - his family. This is reminiscent of Spinoza's theory (Ethique) which has it that any substance can not be divided : Les parties dans lesquelles la substance serait divisée retiendront la nature de la substance (children look like their father and retain his nature, to a certain extent) ... d'une seule substance, plusieurs substances pourront être formées. Family is some kind of unity divided into several parts. It is to maintain this unity that Moran compels his family to say the rosary every day : they say the family that prays together stays together (137).

 

Family is to be seen as a jigsaw puzzle which is nonsensical and meaningless if it is not a whole ; the parts alone are quite useless :

 

Beneath all differences was the belief that the whole house was essentially one. Together they were one world and could take on the world. Deprived of this sense they were nothing, scattered, individual things (145).

 

Strength lies in union and unity whereas multiplicity is no good. It is because Moran has always strived to create deep unity in his family - and he is quite angry with Luke precisely because he destroys this unity - that at the end of his life, his daughters feel that he is "such an integral part of their lives" (177). Moreover, the fusion is so deep that at the end of the novel, it was as if each of them in their different ways had become Daddy (183). Communion entails metamorphosis. This man is really the protagonist of the novel. There is a huge number of examples illustrating his authority, his aggressivity, and this authority is strengthened by the framework of the novel which is nearly always located in Great Meadow. His daughters are never depicted in their own houses. The closed universe of the Morans spreads on the whole book and even when they are far from home, the children are motivated either by desire or refusal to go back to their father's house. As adults, they spend their lives coming and going between their houses and their father's home : the girls need their father's agreement before marrying, before buying a house and they hope for his blessing when they show him their own children : they began to be in Great Meadow more than in their own homes (178). That is why we do not know anything about Luke, except his obstinacy never to come back ; Michael, whose love affairs are minutely described, is nothing but a silhouette once he leaves home. But his destiny is different from his brother's in so far as he reconciles with his father. As for the three girls, they are mostly defined by their comings and goings to their father's house : pp.77, 93, 130, 142, 168, 169, 177... To quote a sentence from The Barracks, the road away becomes the road back. So, in spite of the tyranny of a father who bullied them in their childhood, who violently expelled one of his sons, threatened the second one with a weapon, prevented one of his daughters from becoming a doctor as she wished, reduced his wife to a slave, the Morans prefer to forget these bad memories to go on being led by the nostalgia of original home:

 

Forgotten was the fearful nail - biting exercise Monaghan Day had always been for the whole house ; with distance it had become large, heroic, blood-mystical, somthing from which the impossible could be snatched (2).

 

As G. Bachelard writes in Poétique de l'Espace : Les souvenirs du monde extérieur n'auront jamais la même tonalité que les souvenirs de la maison (26). What is the profit for these characters who, instead of blossoming far from the tyrannical violence of their father, come back joyfully to submit themselves to his power ? Why does the text insist on their incapacity to exist outside their birthplace ? Great Meadow is a bubble that prevents them from growing but in which they feel safe. Characters find their identities only in their connection with Great Meadow : the repetition of "but together" (2) highlights this question of unity (Cf. p.2). As adults, they idealize this family connection and are completely blind about their father's personality. Yet he always acts or speaks sharply (18), tersely (125), drily (138), aggressively (49), fiercely (39), acidly (54), angrily (163). By the same token, he is always denying, refusing and is really assimilated to negativity : you often have short negative sentences about Moran at the beginning of the novel :

 

p.18 : Moran did not answer,

p.19 : Moran did not laugh,

 

p.20 : Moran did not protest.

 

You also have many examples during the barn dances (36-38). In this, his son Luke resembles him since he keeps on refusing to go to Great Meadow.

His miserliness and his relation with money on the whole is also one of his major defects : he refuses to give money to his son, reproaches his wife with spending too much, bears in mind the sum he had to spend for his daughter's wedding and, when he visits her house, just says : It must have all come to money (151). Ironically enough, Rose chooses the most expensive coffin, which brings about someone's remark. In any reaction or word by Moran, there seems to be an absence of feeling, something mechanical. Besides, he liked mechanical things (46) and by dint of working with machines, he is absorbed by them and nearly becomes one of them : "you'd think the tractor and Daddy were parts of one another", Rose said (161). In his relation with people, he is very harsh : he breaks with McQuaid, beats his children. When Rose's mother tells them : "People say he used to beat ye" (34), they answer : "No... now and again when we were bold, but like any house". Shame as much as love prompted the denial (34). This word "denial", introduced by the narrator, gives reason to the old woman and implies that they are beaten indeed. Furthermore, this is clearly illustrated in Moran's clash with Michael : "he seized him and struck him violently about the head" (92). Last, when he tells him : "I want you to go to your room, take off your clothes and I'll see you there in a few minutes" (112), it is to whip him, a scene which is paralleled with the opening one in The Dark. Interestingly enough, Moran often uses ironical, sarcastic phrases or words when he speaks about Luke. Indeed, at the beginning, Luke is referred to as "that gentleman's body" (51), "his lordship" or "your man" (66) as if Moran implied that his son suffered from superiority complex. But what is interesting is that Michael, the second son, repeats his brother's story, since he becomes rebellious in his turn and is called "that gentleman" (93) by his father too, a term he uses again five pages after (98), but this time, talking about Luke and then, "that gentleman" which is to be picked up twice (112 & 120) again deal with Michael. Here again, his two sons are like one and people seem to go by pairs in the book. The father is the only unique element that resists any union and avoids binarity.

The relationship he has with his daughters seems to be much better, but it is described as being "one way" :

 

Then, in a sudden flash that he was sometimes capable of, he acknowledged his daughters' continuing goodwill and love, love that usually he seemed inherently unable to return (6).

 

Furthermore, he does not seem to be warmer as a grandfather than as a father since Sheila finally decides not to take her children with her to Great Meadow any more. It must be noticed that it is the first time in McG's fiction that there is a third generation.

With women now and with his wives, his power is always shown : it is interesting to notice that you cannot find the least clue or track from the dead mother in the house. She seems to be forgotten, to have passed unnoticed, silently, without leaving any tracks but children. With Rose, Moran argues twice in the book (54-56 & 69-71), two passages which will be explained in TD ; one of the disputes ends with when he got into bed he turned his back energetically to Rose (56). Yet, unlike Moran, Rose is quite a positive character. She seems to be easy-going, helpful and loving. She is clever and careful: for example, she understands that it is better to attract children in her mother's house before accepting to go to Great Meadow. But, once in the family, Moran still contests the legitimacy of her place in the house : we managed well enough before you ever came round the place (69). It is by slavish submission, through restless activities and a total resistance to her own desires and personality that she gradually manages to acquire recognition in the house. It would never be over but Rose's place in the house could never be attacked or threatened again (73). Waking up before others, Rose is the perfect home-maker, who is described lighting the fire, rubbing and painting, making the walls clearer, planting a pleasant garden where there was nothing but grass. She paints the house several times (Cf p.48 & 77). She embodies change. Nevertheless, Moran soon disrupts her enthusiasm : he cannot bear her going to her mother's house : Any constant going out to another house was a threat (68). Of course, he fears that Rose might give things from Great Meadow to her family, he is also afraid of her telling them about what happens in his house and he is afraid that she shuns his grasp, for leaving the house means to deny the father's sovereignty ; it is illustrated by Moran's reaction to Luke's departure. In fact, Moran's power on Rose is so strong that she gradually loses ground and is forced to submit to his will. This is conspicuous when she integartes his words and repeats them : when they discuss about their wedding, she uses with her family the same arguments as those he had used with her. By the same token, when Moran says about Maggie : She'll have a roof over her head as long as I'm above ground (49), Rose, who does not want to thwart him, says the same thing : this place will always be here for her to come home to as long as I breathe (50).

By dint of annihilating herself in front of her husband, Rose becomes "free of all self-assertiveness" (55), that is a real slave who acts "abjectly" (54) : they were mastered, can be read p.46 concerning Rose and Moran's daughters. This deliberate slavery is reminiscent of an old French treaty written by Etienne de la Boétie : le Discours de la Servitude Volontaire (you have the phrase "voluntary slavery" p.65) in which he said - he was a friend of Montaigne's, lived in the 16th century, so his language has something obsolete - :

 

A parler à bon escient, c'est un extrême malheur d'être sujet à un maître, duquel on ne se peut jamais assurer qu'il soit bon, puisqu'il est toujours en sa puissance d'être mauvais quand il voudra (...) je ne voudrais sinon entendre comme il se peut faire que tant d'hommes (...) endurent quelquefois un tyran seul, qui n'a puissance que celle qu'ils lui donnent ; qui n'a pouvoir de leur nuire, sinon qu'ils ont pouvoir de l'endurer ; qui ne saurait leur faire mal aucun, sinon lorsqu'ils aiment mieux le souffrir que lui contredire (...) voir un million d'hommes servir misérablement, ayant le col sous le joug, non pas contraints par une plus grande force, mais aucunement enchantés et charmés par le nom seul d'un, duquel ils ne doivent ni craindre la puissance, puisqu'il est seul, ni aimer les qualités, puisqu'il est en leur endroit inhumain et sauvage (...) Mais, ô bon Dieu ! que peut être cela ? Comment dirons-nous que cela s'appelle ? Quel malheur est celui-là ? Quel vice, ou plutôt quel malheureux vice ? Voir un nombre infini de personnes non pas obéir, mais servir ; non pas être gouvernés mais tyrannisés (DSV 131-134).

 

When you read p. 161 : Before the marriage Maggie had been little more than a drudge round the house. Rose set her free. It clearly implies that, after marriage, Rose has become the drudge. This book is really an interesting sociological document concerning the female condition of the time. You can also read somewhere else that the narrator speaks of their acceptance of human servitude (79). Once Rose and Moran are retired, the narrative has it clear about their working conditions before : they did not need to slave at land any longer (172). Anyway, it must be borne in mind that Moran does not marry out of love, unlike Rose, but just to avoid loneliness and have a slave at home. A passage makes it clear :

 

he saw each individual member gradually slipping away out of his reach. Yes, they would eventually all go. He would be alone. That he could not stand. He saw with bitter lucidity that he would marry Rose Brady now. As with so many things, no sooner had he taken the idea to himself than he began to resent it passionately (22).

 

Anyway, the charcters are far from an equal relationship between man and woman. The short description of McQuaid with his wife (p.13) is a good illustration. You see the husband is at home to sleep, eat and yell and his speech is strewn with imperative forms. I remind you that Moran, on his death bed, still gives an order to his family : "Shut up !" (180) and often acts with Rose as McQuaid with his wife :

 

God, O God, O God, did she not know anything ? Look at the holes in these socks. "Where, O God, is that woman now ? Has a whole army to be sent out to search for you whenever you're needed ?" She did not try to defend herself. "Coming, Daddy. Coming", she would call, often arriving breathless. Not once did she protest at the unfairness (68-69).

 

Likewise, Moran's wedding is as he wants it to be and the problem is that the wife does not have a say : she is as silent as children. During disputes, Rose prefers to shut up and go away rather than arguing. She assumes her slavish role : She was glad to do whatever he wished (31). Yet, Moran despises women, but materially depends on them : that is why he remarries. In this, Michael resembles him : From Moran he inherited a certain contempt for women as well as a dependence on them (91).

The image of woman in this society is really contemptible. Another example : <Moran> did not respect Sean. Now he despised him for running to a woman with his story (158). Anyway, Moran's sons-in-law are two good-for-nothings : the first one, Mark O'Donoghue does not assume his responsibility as a father. He is an alcoholic and spends his money in bottles. Maggie, as her own father, is then obliged to be more authoritative and will probably assume the role her father had in Great Meadow. The second one, Sean Flynn, Sheila's husband, seems to be a lazy guy who benefits from the civil service because he earns money without doing any work. His laziness is conspicuous p.157 : Sean expected to be liked without effort. He answered Moran lazily. His answers are very short, laconic (as if it was tiring to speak more and find arguments). The sentence "Flynn defended as well as he was able" (157) implies he is not able of doing much... and here again, it is his wife, a worthy daughter of her father, who takes his defence and argues with Moran. The third girl, who remains a spinster, Mona, shows her authority too. The five children really look like their father. It is visible in the description of girls p.66 :

<Mona> was extremely stubborn (...) once she took up a position - or got caught in one - she was obstinately immovable and this had often brought her into conflict with Moran (66).

As for Luke, as I said before, we hardly know anything about him, except his conflict with Moran. His sentimental life is not described. His professional one is hazy and he effectively appears for the first time in the novel at its end (p.143). Michael seems to be much more open ; he is frank, natural, laughs easily and often cries too. He always shows his feelings. His evolution is clearly presented :

- His father beats him when he comes back late and he reacts as a child : "he hit me", the boy sobbed (93).

- Then, as a teenager, there is something ambivalent about him : he is both a man and a child : He was poised on the blurred height, as eager to come down and be cradled and fussed over as to swagger and tomcat it out into the wild (95) or Michael suffered keenly the incongruity of his position - a man with a woman by the sea in the early day and now a boy on his knees on the floor (109). His liaison with Nell is precisely a way of giving up his childhood : she received him as if he were both man and child (114).

 

- And then we can guess that he has grown mature and a man when his father orders him to go up to his room to be flogged : So quiet and authoritative was Moran's voice that Michael actually moved to go to the room ; suddenly he realised what he was being asked to do and stopped.

"No !" the boy shouted in fear and outrage (112).

The evolution of his maturity is clearly and progressively depicted in the novel.

 

The other characters are not really described, except a few lines such as those concerning the protestant man, Mr Rodden (163), because Moran's family lives on its own in a closed circle. They do not welcome or visit anyone. That is why the real characters are just members of the same family. The reader is not allowed to get out of the house either, to a certain extent.