Purgatory
(1953)
is a play written by William Butler Yeats which only consists of two male
characters in the story, Boy and his father, Old Man. The two characters are
set outside from an old house which is actually the house where the young Old
Man stabbed his own father using the knife he uses to cut food and to kill the
Boy. Purgatory presents the different treatment of representing the class
distinction not only in economy but also in gender. Boy is represented
inhabiting the lower economic place while the Old Man is on the higher place.
Boy is also represented only as Purgatory’s
hearer while Old Man is as its speaker. Boy is placed by the play as
subordinate to Old Man as if woman to man. It represents Purgatory’s another treatment of class-distinct body not only in
economy but also in gender. The representation is gathered in two ways, first
is done by Purgatory’s process of projection
of images, and second, by Purgatory’s
properties of stage.
Old Man’s head which is operated as the
play’s images projector signifies his power of control. It can be seen on the
play that Old Man’s voices dominate the whole plot. The story goes as well as
Old Man speaks about his own story. He projects his whole body and soul not
only to Purgatory’s audiences but
also to Purgatory’s entire theatrical
sphere (to the house, tree, and windows) which I argue as one of the aspects of
discriminating “the silent Boy” as Purgatory’s
lower body. It is Old Man who projects his voice to Boy who can only follow and
even absorbs the voices, as writes Breen (1989) “talking and seeing, not
listening, determine the father's (Old Man) relation to his son (Boy)” (51). It
is indeed that Boy is also given the voices too in speaking but not for showing
his independence and existence, but rather to speak for echoing the image which
is projected by Old Man. In replying to Old Man’s image projection to Boy about
“…come to sixteen years old my father burned down the house when drunk” (432),
Boy is presented as a mimic of the Old Man in the same term of “almost the same
but not quite” (Bhabha 1949). Boy tries to be the same as the Old Man by
replying “but that is my age, sixteen years old,” (ibid) which signifies that
the way Purgatory projecting its
images supplies Old Man’s autonomy power in Purgatory.
Boy who plays the role only as an Old
Man’s dark side reflection also represents how Purgatory deal with the class distinction. Old Man holds a power in
projecting his father’s image to Boy by assuming that Boy will be the same as
his father if he gives him the money (434). This scene of Boy’s failures in
taking Old Man’s bundle of money represents Old Man’s economical power and Boy
is economical-weakness. The situation which presents Old Man as economically
powerful is also symbolized more thoroughly by the appearance of property
belong to Old Man, “Grand clothes and maybe a grand horse to ride” (432).
Boy
as the subordinate body which is presented entirely not having any kind of
property, not appreciated in speaking his equal economy privilege but only to
lose and still following Old Man’s muttering, identifies that Boy is placed in
a lower economy class than Old Man by the way Purgatory projecting its image to Boy and audiences only through
Old Man.
Old Man asks the Boy to ‘study that
house’, ‘study that tree’, and ‘look at the window’ without answering Boy
communicatively represents that Old Man does not hear or even see Boy equally
with him. Boy is only presented to hear the Old Man and Old Man is presented to
come in a monologue (not communicating with anyone beside himself) implies Purgatory’s
significance in representing Boy as an image of female which produced by the
male’s point of view, as Breen writes;
In
a play which focuses simultaneously on the inextricability of male from female
identity and the irreconcilability of upper- and lower-class voices, language
does not exist so much between characters as within the ear of each (1989: 51).
Purgatory
represents its specific treatment of class-distinct body not only through its
image projection but also through the stage and actor’s properties. The knife
is to symbolize the Old Man’s both economical and sexual power over the Boy.
Knife is also economical because it represents the situation of man owning
property like what I argue before. Boy is designed as an object to Old Man
since he is presented to follow all of the Old Man’s passions and to have
nothing at all even his own privilege in controlling himself are one of the Purgatory’s elements of the subjectivity
of Old Man over-controlling the Boy’s body and soul through a symbol of knife.
Knife is economical when it extends Old Man’s mental and physical strength to
control the body and soul of the weaker who owns nothing, the Boy Boy’s but it
is also sexual when knife is used to kill Boy’s body and soul which is
presented as a place of Old Man to project his sexual desire to reach an orgasm
;
“My father and my son
on the same jack-knife! That finishes- there- there- there- [He stabs again and
again. The Window grows dark.]” (435).
That Old Man kills Boy
with passion. The play presents the character’s tension of a very strong
feeling of satisfaction by “he stabs again and again”. The Old Man which is
presented enjoying the sensation of stabbing the Boy’s body is regarded as
sexual. Purgatory claims Old Man’s sexual power and desire over the
body-without-soul by that stabbing action (put a vital ‘tool’ in and out
towards a body). Through that sexual representation, it is Old Man who is
presented as a subject who does something to Boy, as an object. Old Man is only
satisfying himself but leaving a sorrow to Boy just like the cases of woman who
is rapped by a man. It then comes as a representation of how the lower class
body is treated sexually yet violently in Purgatory.
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