Purgatory: Analysis of Major Characters
"Purgatory: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the complex dynamic between a father and son as they navigate their shared history and familial trauma in a decaying landscape. The central characters include a bored sixteen-year-old boy burdened by his father's incessant memories and a nostalgic Old Man who is haunted by his past. The boy feels disconnected and resentful, viewing his father's recounting of their family's former wealth with skepticism and disdain. He grapples with feelings of inadequacy and a desire for inheritance while also confronting dark family legacies, including violence and betrayal.
The Old Man, meanwhile, is steeped in memories of his luxurious childhood but is also consumed by rage towards his own father for the loss of their estate. His visions of the past blur into a painful present, pushing him toward a tragic confrontation with his son. The story illustrates themes of inheritance, identity, and the cyclical nature of familial trauma, culminating in a violent climax that underscores the characters' struggles with their shared history. As both characters confront their purgatorial existence, they embody the tension between nostalgia and disillusionment, revealing how the past continuously shapes their present.
Purgatory: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: William Butler Yeats
First published: 1939
Genre: Play
Locale: Ireland
Plot: Fantasy
Time: Early twentieth century
Boy, a sixteen-year-old. He has accompanied his father too long, wandering through the Irish countryside. He feels like a packhorse, burdened with his father's bundle, and is tired of listening to the Old Man's continuous talking. The boy shows only vague interest in his father's description of the ruins of an old house before them. Considering his father silly, he ignores questions about their surroundings, for these merely delay their reaching a destination. He obeys his father's command to stand in the doorway to look for someone inside the house's shell, but he cannot see what his father sees there. Arguing with the Old Man's insistence that someone is, in fact, inside, the bored boy describes what he sees: emptiness, with only a piece of eggshell, doubtlessly dropped out of a bird's nest. He dismisses as lunatic ravings the Old Man's musings about purgatorial spirits returning to their earthly homes. Only when the Old Man identifies the house as their family's does the boy show interest. He challenges his father's condemnation of his grandmother's hasty marriage choice, defending his grandfather's luck in getting both the woman and her money. His interest in the Old Man's story is not in the stormy relationships but in the bounty it evokes: a young woman, horses, a rich library, clothing, and drink. He resents the Old Man having enjoyed wealth and learning without passing any on to him. Intrigued that he is the same age as his father was when the great house burned, the boy chooses that moment to ask about whisperings he had heard on their travels that the Old Man had murdered his dissolute father. His interest in violence links him to his father and grandfather. When the Old Man is lost in a vision of the grandmother and grandfather having sex, the boy grasps the moment to steal the Old Man's bundle of money, in an obvious parallel to the grandfather who seized the grandmother's estate. Selfishly, the boy argues about his right to his inheritance, to spend on drink if he chooses, echoing the grandfather. After a violent struggle, the boy threatens to kill the Old Man and replicate the former parricide; at that moment, he can see for the first time the Old Man's ghostly vision. The sex in the nightmare and the boy's violence are linked. As he covers his eyes, he is stabbedtodeathbyhisfather.
Old Man, a wanderer drawn to the scene of his childhood, a ruined old house. He tries to pass on to his young son his fond memories of the luxurious life there when he was a boy. He is easily lost in reveries about the great lives robustly and affectionately lived there. He is also furious that his own father cut down ancient trees to pay gambling debts. The Old Man declares that wasting a great house with noble history is a capital offense. He ignores his son's envy of the luxury the Old Man had as a boy; indeed, he ignores the boy's scoffing pronouncements on his shaky sanity and continues to point out the ghostly scene inside the house. Reliving his resentment of his dissolute father—his low class, drinking, whoring, squandering the estate by gambling, and refusing to educate his son—he passes on his resentment to his own son, calling him a bastard who also would probably become a drunkard. His anger flares hottest as he observes his father and mother's ghosts in the sex act. Clearly, his affection for his mother tortures him as he watches her phantom lead his father's phantom to the bedroom. Trying to enter the vision, he hopes to break the cycle of sex, betrayal, and destruction by warning his mother to flee. Even though he is disgusted, he cannot tear himself from the spectral sexual union of his parents, which suggests an oedipal fascination with his mother. When the Old Man sees the young boy steal the bag of money, repeating the cycle of the grandfather squandering the grand-mother's wealth, he is livid. Blending rage at his father's callousness with fury at his son's resemblance to the wastrel parent, the Old Man wildly stabs the boy to death. Grotesquely, he sings a lullaby to the boy's body and afterward addresses his mother, excusing his violence as a release for her purgatorial reenactments. Contritely, he promises to become a harmless old storyteller in distant lands. As he hears the ghostly hoofbeats of his father's ghost again, it is clear that in spite of the Old Man's prayer for his mother's release, the eerie cycle will begin anew. Her purgatory is his also.