This is the second play I read within last few months where one reads Shaw's take on Irish versus English and while at first - at least in the other play, John Bull’s Other Island - it seems broad strokes with stereotypes and cliches, the pleasure grows during reading of this one and one begins to realise the subtlety of Shaw's portraiture of the two nations that were his.
Irish were ruled by Britain and Ireland is still partially under British rule in form of Northern Ireland, ironically so since now Scotland and Wales are increasingly growing towards more of an original identity with or without full political separation from England. Most Irish were not willing participants in this, especially post the botched up execution carried out locally of the first few that were protesting the British rule with weapons rather than with words - which until the said execution was a very different picture, so much so the poor locals pelted the first freedom fighters with rotten vegetables and more as they were being taken away after being caught (they hardly had enough to fight successfully, being but a handful of the poor Irish after all).
The division of Ireland into two separate identities, while not as entirely accurately counted as British rulers would have the world believe, was partly by introducing another faith and partly by counting the British that went to work in Ireland and settled as Irish. As for the faith part, who knows better about how the ruled are converted by various means including temptations of better prospects and freedom from persecution and - this is the heartbreaking part - freedom for your family from starvation by death when food of the nation is taken away from the poor farmers and people, and given to the soldiers of the ruling!
So naturally Irish were far from willing participants along the allied forces, which were perceived as chiefly British or England, and were just as likely to sympathise with the enemy of the enemy. This is more so about the poor and the relatively uninformed, which amounts to most populace of the nation - in any nation, for that matter. This, coupled with the fact that for various reasons from sheer need of food to whatever else, Irish men did fight in the war alongside the English in the British army (or other branches of the military for that matter), makes for the main spine of this play.
A young boy is afraid of the mother who is strict and loving and tells of good and bad, and then finds out that the world is not quite as she painted for him but from a protective loving instinct of a young boy or man for an old loving but uninformed mother lies to him - he hardly told her the truth twice a year what with being scared or protecting her, he says at one place - and then he goes off to the war to see the world for himself willy nilly, and so grows up far beyond it all. Then to see the home sweet home with the new eyes and being unable to keep up the façade any longer, is the main body of the play.
This is fleshed out with the interaction between the Irish soldier and his English landlord, who happens to be also his commander in the army, with the landlord being shorn of various illusions by the Irish boy now grown into a man who has seen the world - about the Irish, the English, and about his own mother.
Most telling - the geese.
Thursday, May 8, 2014.
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