When the Force of a Personality can Conjure Up a World... Wider Reading (Drama) 21: Misterman

"I look up to where I want to be. Up there, safe in the clouds and far away from Inishfree... And God has placed his hand around my shoulder. And me and God smile down on all my good work. It's going to be such a beautiful place, Lord. Such a beautiful place."

Inishfree might seem like a quaint Irish town, but fierce evangelist Thomas Magill knows better. He knows that jovial Dwain Flynn is a miserable drunk, that Timmy O'Leary enslaves his lovely mother, and that sweet Mrs Cleary is a blasphemous flirt. It is down to Thomas (and don't call him Tommy) with God on his shoulder, so save this sinful place. But the townsfolk are not listening, an angel is misbehaving and a barking dog will not be silenced. Just how far will Thomas go in his quest for salvation?

In his searing one-man play, Irish playwright Enda Walsh has anti-hero Thomas Magill portray the population of an entire town as he desperately, and sometimes violently, attempts to mould their religious identities to fit his own, whilst simultaneously developing his own identity as best he can within his relentless isolation. One could even argue that this young man is performing his own version of Genesis, by creating the world in his own image.

As always with Walsh, even the words themselves become kinetic throughout the play. Thomas’s monologue, while at first suggesting mere loneliness, is a combination of sacred and graphic imagery, with lofty biblical cadences wrestling with the nagging patterns of daily patter on petty subjects. His talk seesaws between heaven and hell, as do his actions. Magill, unable to establish even the most basic forms of human intercourse, aims to form a working community out of the inhabitants of Inishfree, not realising that he is the most isolated of them all.

Misterman - Identity Quotations

The Obscenity Trial that Started a Revolution, and the Poem that Rocked a Generation. Wider Reading 20: Howl

Comprising 251 lines and nearly 3000 words, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” is truly a poem of epic proportions. Dedicated to his close friend Carl Solomon, Ginsberg recounts the stories of “the best minds of [his] generation”; poets, artists, political radicals, jazz musicians, drug addicts, and psychiatric patients who he encountered throughout the 1940s and 50s.

Throughout the poem, Ginsberg explores many aspects of an identity struggle, primarily that of homosexuals with the restrictive society of the 1950s. As a dedicated gay rights activist, Ginsberg was very concerned about the effect of closet homosexuality on those he knew. The individuals within the poem reflect this, and appear to seek escapism in drugs and illicit sexual activity.

The language is candid and graphic as the poet describes the scrapes and homosexual encounters experienced by those around him. So graphic, in fact, that the first public reading of his poem earned him an obscenity trial for his troubles. This was well-publicized. The judge ruled in favour of Ginsberg, however, stating that the poem was “of redeeming social importance,” and it went on to be one of the most widely read poems of the century, translated into more than twenty-two languages. Ginsberg went on to be one of the most influential individuals in the Beat generation of the 1950s.

Howl - Identity Quotations

Christopher and his Kind... Wider Reading 19: Goodbye to Berlin

Although The Diary of Anne Frank is considered by many to be the foremost manuscript on the subject of the holocaust, there are other texts which link in both form and content. The diaries of Christopher Isherwood which include Sally Bowles and A Berlin Diary, collectively titled as Goodbye to Berlin, also provide a first-hand account of Jewish mistreatment at the hands of the Nazi party, but this time through the eyes of an Englishman visiting the Weimar Republic’s capital during Hitler’s rise to power. Though the novelist himself experiences an identity struggle of a different kind, namely that of a Briton and homosexual in an increasingly anti-English/gay country, both Frank and Isherwood express their desire for the improvement of matters in their personal, and now famous diaries.

Isherwood is also well-known for rubbing shoulders with the famous English-American poet W.H. Auden, with whom he collaborated on three plays and became his literary mentor. It was Auden who compelled the writer to travel to Berlin in the first place, on the promise of a thriving, illicit sexual underworld populated by “boys.” It was here that Isherwood met his “first great love,” a young German boy named Heinz Neddermeyer. The pair left Berlin in 1933, he and Heinz moved around Europe, living in Copenhagen, Sintra and elsewhere. Heinz was arrested as a draft-evader in 1937 following a brief return to Germany after he was ejected from Luxembourg as an "undesirable alien". He was sentenced to six months in prison, a year of state labour and two years of compulsory military service.

Isherwood’s sexual orientation was of course shunned by his upper middle class upbringing. It was partly this reason that he travelled to the city which would provide so much of his artistic inspiration: being unable to express himself at home, he journeyed to Berlin due to its reputation for sexual freedom. The capital, at this time, was rapidly developing its own sense of identity. The fierce power and organisation of the Nazi party was empowering to the German people after the disaster of the Great War, and people voted for Hitler in their thousands. The increasing threat of war radiating from Britain gave many citizens a sense of antagonism towards anybody who was English, which forced Isherwood to leave to ensure his own safety and that of Heinz.

The stark clarity with which the writer records his experiences recalls the exact quality of a photograph, rather than a writer. Isherwood himself, in fact, recognised this, and begins his collection with the statement that:

“I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.”

Yours, Christopher

The Spirit of a Nation in Five People, Two Days, and One House. Wider Reading (Drama) 18: Dancing at Lughnasa

It is 1936 and harvest time in County Donegal. In a house just outside the village of Ballybeg live the five Mundy sisters, barely making ends meet, their ages ranging from twenty-six up to forty. The two male members of the household are Brother Jack, a missionary priest, repatriated from Africa by his superiors after twenty-five years, and the seven-year-old child of the youngest sister. In depicting two days in the life of this ménage, Brian Friel evokes not simply the interior landscape of a group of human beings trapped in their domestic situation, but the wider landscape, interior and exterior, Christian and pagan, of which they are nonetheless a part.

National identity is a topic frequently favoured by Irish playwrights and their work, and Dancing at Lughnasa (pronounced loo-nasa) is no exception. Ireland has always been one of the less affluent nations of Western Europe, but in 1936, trapped within the height of the world-wide Great Depression, that chronic economic hardship is aggravated. The village of Ballybeg is the playwright’s own fictional creation, and is the location of many of his plays. Donegal, on the other hand, is a real place, one of the counties making up the Republic of Ireland. Friel has deep personal connections with his place; as a child he spent an extensive amount of time there, summering with his mother's sisters, and he has since settled in Donegal himself.

In addition this personal significance, Donegal also occupies a distinctive place in the Irish national consciousness. The county is shrouded in romantic mystique, and has always lagged behind the rest of Ireland in terms of economic and social development. However, because of this economic backwardness, many of the customs, beliefs, and cultural practices of traditional Irish life have been preserved in Donegal. And it is in Donegal where the ancient festival of La Lughnasa is perhaps most vividly celebrated. The title of the play refers to the celebratory dancing associated with this pagan festival. The setting is thus a kind of mythical location, a small sanctuary of authentic Irish life that modernity has yet to reach. Or is it? As the narrator, states in the opening monologue, his memories of Ballybeg in the summer of ‘36 are full of "a sense of . . . things changing too quickly before my eyes." He recalls a "widening breach between what seemed to be and what was, of things . . . becoming what they ought not to be." It is the experience of change played out against the deeply traditional Donegal setting that provides much of the play's discord and pity.

Dancing at Lughnasa - Identity Quotations

When the Body is the Last Resource for Protest... Wider Reading (Poetry) 17: The Rhythm of Time

Bobby Sands was an Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and member of the British Parliament. He was twenty seven years old when he died on the sixty sixth day of hunger-strike in the H-Block prison hospital, Long Kesh, on the 5th May 1981.

The young IRA Volunteer had spent the last nine years of his fleeting life in jail as a result of his Irish republican activities, but became, by the time of his death, world-famous and a household name for his election to the British parliament and withstanding of political pressure from all sides to abandon his fast of over two months. His aim was to counter a criminalisation policy by the British government. His sacrifice (as did that of those who followed him) overturned British propaganda within Ireland and had a profound effect in advancing the cause of Irish freedom.

In ‘The Rhythm of Time’ Sands stresses that the spirit of freedom and reflex to fight against injustice has been inherent to man from our very beginning, and here he draws upon their surfacing against the evils throughout history. The persecuted early Christians, American Indians, peasants, slaves, and Irish republican freedom fighters share the stage of history against tyranny. The fractured stanzas may reflect how broken he has realised society is, and the relentless, driving rhythm and rhymes doubtless show the monotony of his incarceration.

The driving force against oppression, as Sands concludes, is the moral superiority of the oppressed. In tracing this spirit across the ages Sands demonstrates an exceptional grasp of history and memory recall, especially considering that he had been denied books, newspapers, radio or TV, and mental stimulation for the last four years of his life. Wat the Tyler, for example, was an English peasant who, in 1381, challenged and led an uprising against the English monarchy. His poetry also gave hope to many of his fellow inmates, as this was their only entertainment, and, in doing so, Sands let them know that their cause was right, and they would someday triumph.

The Rhythm of Time - Identity Quotations

Whodunnit? Wider Reading 16: The Lovely Bones

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6th, 1973. My murderer was a man from our neighbourhood. My mother liked his border flowers, and my father talked to him once about fertilizer.” This is Susie Salmon, who watches from heaven as her family and loved ones try to come to terms with her death, unsolved ever since she was raped and dismembered by a neighbour in the cornfield opposite her house, who left no evidence behind, save an elbow and copious amounts of blood. The writer Alice Sebold is herself a rape survivor; however another girl also fell victim to an attack in the same tunnel, but was not so fortunate as to survive. Many critics speculate that the novel was Sebold’s attempt to voice that girl’s story, not least since her own was told in her first unpublished memoir, "Lucky."

Many instances of a struggle for identity occur within this novel, the most prevalent of which is the individual (and rather selfish) struggle experienced by Susie’s mother, Abigail Salmon. Every character within the novel is forced to use a different way of recovering from Susie’s death. Susie, as our narrator, observes them as they struggle through the painful experience of losing a daughter/sister, and the profound affect it has had on each person. Her sister Lindsey wants to live away from Susie’s shadow. Her young brother Buckley wants to be let in on the secret of her death, and, when he is, allows himself to miss her and to honour her. Her father Jack wants to avenge his daughter’s death by finding her killer. Abigail, on the other hand, does not want to face Susie’s death and instead hides from her family, withdrawing into herself and eventually running away. It seems that Abigail never wanted to have a family in the first place, and she is punished for it by losing Susie physically, and Lindsey and Buckley psychologically, through her neglect.

The religious element of this novel is entirely questionable, as some readers may argue that the heaven Susie is transported to after her death is of a Christian nature, while others argue that, as neither God nor Jesus is involved, it cannot be. Susie’s soul accidentally “touches” classmate Ruth Connors as it leaves earth, and for the f=rest of her life Ruth finds herself constantly exploring the idea of spirits and death.

Some characters in the novel also experience a struggle for sexual identity. Ruth Connors is more intensely affected by the dead than others, especially Susie, and finds herself struggling to make friends and relate to other people. She is also a lesbian, but in the 1970s this would have been considered unacceptable, and is unable to act on it or even tell anyone. Susie herself manages, by some complicated soul-exchanging mechanism, to make love to her almost-boyfriend Ray Singh through Ruth’s body, and Ray finds himself torn between his friendship with Ruth and his lingering love for Susie. Both Ray and Susie find solace in The Act; afterwards, Ray feels able to cherish his memory of Susie whilst moving on, while Susie moves on entirely, to a larger Heaven.

A small element of a national identity struggle can be found in "The Lovely Bones" as well. During the initial search for Susie’s murderer, Ray Singh is an immediate suspect due to his unusual Indian heritage. Despite the police eventually realising that he is innocent, the immediate accusal has a great effect on Ray and his family.

The Lovely Bones - Identity Quotations

Destroying Evil or Mindless Slaughter? Wider Reading (Drama) 15: The Crucible

Arthur Miller’s classic parable of mass hysteria draws a chilling parallel between the Salem witch-hunt of 1692 and the McCarthyism which gripped America in the 1950s – two of the strangest and most awful chapters in human history. The story of how the small community of Salem is stirred into madness by superstition, paranoia and malice, culminating in a violent climax, is a savage attack on the evils of persecution and the terrifying power of false accusations.

The religious (and racial) identity of each character is at stake as the events of the play unfold, and their ultimate demise or salvage depends almost entirely on their reputation. Tituba, as a black slave, has the lowest social standing of all the characters and is quick to be accused. However, she acquires immense power over her superiors as she accuses others of witchcraft. Contrastingly, characters with impeccable reputations such as Elizabeth Proctor or Rebecca Nurse find their names dragged through the mud in their situations.

The age-old question of guilty or not guilty is explored with tact and accuracy within this play. The extreme strictness prevalent within Salem causes guilt to be bottled up within the citizens, acting as a catalyst to the mass rush for confession and punishment. The playwright himself ascertains that the Salem witch-hunt was an opportunity for the stifled members of the community to both declare their own sins and publicly identify those of others. This is what motivates not only the witch hunts themselves, but also the actions of most of the focal characters. Abigail is constantly reprimanded by her reputation-destroying fun in the woods, while penitence over his infidelity plagues her secret lover Proctor. Meanwhile, Reverend Hale must attempt to undermine the court that he helped create as atonement for his own sins, but is now spinning out of control. This is the ultimate and tragic irony of the Salem witch-hunts: not only that the sins of the trials themselves uncontrollably overtook the sins of the original crime, but that there was rarely an original crime to begin with.

The Crucible - Identity Quotations