The Walking Dead" and the "bridegroom to the Goddess" in Works by John Millington Synge and Seamus Heaney

“The Walking Dead” and the “Bridegroom to the Goddess” in Works by John Millington Synge and Seamus Heaney

The Irish literature is characterized by discussing a lot of social and psychological issues and depicting many mythical images. The Irish writers’ approach to presenting the common theme can be extremely different with references to using irony and satire or mild and pessimistic tone. The play The Playboy of the Western World by John Millington Synge and the poem “The Tollund Man” by Seamus Heaney have few similar features, but the authors discuss the theme of death, accentuating the violent death, in their works. Although Synge and Heaney use rather opposite approaches to presenting the controversial theme of death in their works where Synge concentrates on satire to depict the social and psychological issues and Heaney pays attention to the spiritual context of the question, the authors provide their vision of the violent death from the social perspective and with references to the persons’ inner world.

In his play The Playboy of the Western World, Synge emphasizes the fact of murdering as the starting point to develop the play’s plot. Thus, the idea of murder is used to represent the problems and conflicts typical for the Irish society of the 1900s along with accentuating the personal attitude to the question as the reflection of the society’s sickness. Christy Mahon, the main character of the play, is inclined to attract the public’s attention in the tavern with stating that he has murdered his father. Thus, Mahon depicts his action saying, “I just riz the loy and let fall the edge of it on the ridge of his skull, and he went down at my feet like an empty sack, and never let a grunt or groan from him at all” (Synge 113). The irony of Mahon’s actions is presented with references to the specific language used by the author (Brazeau 160). The unemotional language based on the simple enumeration of the stages of murdering a person helps present the character’s experience and emphasize the irony of the audience’s interpreting the fact of killing.

Synge stresses the satiric inappropriateness of interpreting Mahon’s actions as heroic with the help of remarks. For instance, Michael reacts to Mahon’s words about murdering with the great respect and states, “That was a hanging crime, mister honey. You should have had good reason for doing the like of that”, and Mahon answers in a reasonable tone, “He was a dirty man, God forgive him, and he getting old and crusty, the way I couldn’t put up with him at all” (Synge 106-107). From this point, the fact of murdering a person makes Mahon be a hero in this small community of a tavern. The reasons to explain the phenomenon can be found with references to analyzing the figures of the listeners. The community of County Mayo needs sensations to discuss, and the personality of Mahon becomes the most interesting