Ireland Truly Revealed In J. M. Synge's Two Plays

It's an interesting phenomenon that there are so many eminent writers in such a geographically small country named Ireland. Of these Irish writers, J. M. Synge is outstanding for his dramas that reveal the true Irish life. During the last six years of his brief life, he produced six dramas, on which his reputation would permanently rest. Synge's plays have long been considered to be safely ensconced in the canon of Irish literature.As a striking character type in J. M. Synge's drama, the vagrant has attracted some attention from scholars. Synge most values vagrants and artists, both of whom are marginal to society. Their vision is continuously epitomized as controversial to the everyday world. The result is usually the same: the hero leaves the stage in the hope of searching for an enhanced reality. But this reality can exist only at or beyond society's boundaries.Besides, Synge pays most attention to the peasants'difficult life. His plays originate from his experience on the Aran Islands. His realistic accounts of peasants, especially in the play The Playboy of the Western World, gave rise to riots and protests during its performance in the Abbey Theatre. Synge challenges his audience to receive the seamy sides of their own national character.Most critics believe that Synge's language is one of his great contributions to the development of the Irish literature. His language is a heightened form of natural peasant speech. Synge put special importance on those particular sides of peasant dialect which have their sources in Gaelic speech and syntax.Synge demands that"On the stage one must have reality, and one must have joy". Synge has an unusual view of the world. He has produced his own aesthetic. This thesis aims at presenting a true nineteenth century Ireland revealed in Synge's two plays The Well of the Saints and The Playboy of the Western World. The Ireland that Synge describes is one in which poetic words and gestures of personality are of chief importance, in which the appraisal of freedom becomes the subject of the plays.