Revised Final 25-11-09

The Treatment of the Relationship between the Traditional and the Modern in John McGahern’s Stories by Deirdre McMahon

Access to Arts and Human Sciences - Literature in English EX401 Stanley Van der Ziel 1st December 2009

We are fortunate that John McGahern was born in the time that he was. His was an eloquent voice chronicling for us a country in transition, a country that was newly independent and with that came an uncertainty: ‘like an inheritance that nobody quite understood or knew how to manage’ (McGahern, 2006, RTÉ Radio 1). The Ireland of McGahern’s writing is a country in the grip of the Catholic Church with an oppressed society. Ripples of fear and insecurity run through it. We see the struggle and tensions between those reluctant to let go of the traditional and those eager to grasp the new modern ways. Humanism, beauty and stark honesty grace the pages of McGahern’s writing as he captures the mood of this changing society. McGahern’s acute understanding of his people comes through in the subtleties and nuances with which he represents the mannerisms and complexities of his characters. His treatment of a way of Irish life that is fast dying is sometimes nostalgic, sometimes regretful. This is played out in the narrative and in his characters. His characters also represent the new confident Ireland emerging, and therein lies the conflict. This essay will demonstrate the tensions that occur and the struggle that existed as Ireland was pulled reluctantly into the latter part of the 20th century.

The very opening of John McGahern’s collection of short stories, Creatures of the Earth, displays a resistance to the new. The story is ‘Wheels’. The description of sitting in the modern train station with nothing to do, of ‘grey concrete’, ‘steel and glass’ and the ‘slow raindrip’ brings a shudder of cold and negativity. ‘Loose wheels rattling’ evokes a feeling of emptiness. The narrator goes on to describe ‘nothing to do but wait and watch and listen’, (McGahern, 2006, p. 3), which indicates a feeling of discontentedness and a mind not at ease. Jane Austen’s quote which appears later in the collection comes to Deirdre McMahon

2

mind, ‘a mind lively and at ease with itself is content to look at nothing’ (McGahern, 2006, p.326). The lack of verbs distances the narrator in the opening passage. The reader is never told the son’s name, the central character of the story and one who represents a new generation. The absence of names for McGahern’s modern characters in his stories is conspicuous. The story goes on to tell of the father’s discontent to stay in a changed landscape and dying community. In contrast to the opening, the closing passage is one of nostalgia, beauty, sensuality and warmth as the narrator reminisces of happier times. The stream of the river that is described becomes symbolic of the passing of time: ‘The farther flows the river the muddier the water’, that is to say, as they go on things become complicated. ‘..the light was brighter on its upper reaches.’ (McGahern, 2006, p.12). In other words, things were better before. So as the collection opens, the unease is felt as the modern world emerges.

The wheel itself is a reoccurring theme used by McGahern. In the closing line of ‘Wheels’ it is symbolic as the narrator reflects on a childhood that had all the hope of how things would be in the future, but that did not happen: ‘the wheel we watched so slowly turn, impatient for the rich whole that never came but that all the preparations promised.’ (McGahern, 2006, p.12). There’s an air of disappointment. The wheel is used to represent the ritual of life. A pattern the son breaks from.

The result of the son’s break from tradition is told in ‘Gold Watch’. Here the clash between the traditional and the modern is played out through the father and son characters, who reoccur throughout McGahern’s writing, and the tension is palpable between the two. The son is now university educated, a professional. A reading of the Deirdre McMahon

3

story ‘Oldfashioned’ leaves no doubt as to the father’s attitude to education: ‘a woeful waste of fire and light.’ (McGahern, 2006, p.249). His response to news of his son’s successful university scholarship is ‘you’ll be like the rest of the country - educated way beyond your intelligence.’(McGahern, 2006, p.259). In ‘Gold Watch’ we see the success of this educated class. In an interview with Hermione Lee (April 7, 2004) McGahern refers to the new meritocracy that emerged. He tells how his was the first generation to whom such an education was available and the professional success they achieved. Tension between the generations builds in ‘Gold Watch’. The son, with much apprehension, brings home his future wife. All the father’s hate and bitterness comes out. She’s a modern, educated, professional, woman. He can’t touch her. So spiteful is he that he says the one thing that he knows will hurt deep. It is the only thing he says – a jibe at her age.

The father’s gold watch, to which the title refers, would normally be a proud gift to pass down, a reward for achievement or the customary gift upon retirement. This is significant here, as the son’s passing into his new life gets no such blessing. The old gold watch and its modern replacement, which in a complete reversal of custom and destruction of tradition becomes a gift from son to father, and which is ultimately, ferociously, destroyed, come to represent all the hatred and resentment of a life gone by and the father’s resentment of his son’s ability to embrace the new.

In the same interview with Hermione Lee, (7 April, 2004), we get an insight into the roots of the attitudes of the older generation who had fought in the War of Independence and the Civil War. McGahern tells of their dream of a new, democratic Ireland and their Deirdre McMahon

4

dislike of the new middle class who had allied themselves to the Church and taken over the country. He speaks of the bitterness and anger that existed in Ireland in subsequent years. The complexity of this is played out by Brother Benedict’s character in ‘Oldfashioned’ when he comments about the father: ‘he’s a survivor and far from being without guile. Like the rest of the country he has a great store of negative capability. He’d much prefer not to.’ (McGahern, 2006, p.249). Having fought on home ground for his country, the father also clearly takes a dim view of the new generation of young men seeking opportunity abroad: the usual fool of an Irishman who rushes to the railway station at the first news of war.’ (McGahern, 2006, p.250). There’s a line from ‘Wheels’ that comes to mind here in capturing the tensions that existed between those with traditional and modern attitudes: ‘Be quiet, trembling between timidity and the edges of violence as the rest of your race’. (McGahern, 2006, p.6). It is clear that the modern Ireland and societal change which is emerging is of great disappointment to those with traditional views on how it might have turned out. ‘The rich whole that never came’ (McGahern, 2006, p.12) comes to mind again.

There were also tensions between traditional institutions and new, foreign influenced, modern attitudes. In 1945, the Church, feeling under threat and acutely aware of the changing mannerisms in those men who went to rebuild Britian, aligned itself with a reinvigoration of the Irish language, in an effort to ‘keep much foreign corrupting influence out’. (McGahern, 2006, p.239). The modern, brash attitudes emerging could pose a threat to a traditional society and loosen the Church’s grip.

Deirdre McMahon

5

Church ground was certainly shifting. ‘Oldfashioned’ shows the transfer of power from Church to State as the queues of people transfer from the presbytery to the politician’s clinic to sort their lives’ official business. The portrayal of the new attitude is one of slight vulgarity. Where once they brought to the priest matters relating to births, marriages and deaths, or the odd complaint about a neighbour, now they seek to get ‘drunken driving convictions squashed’ or ‘planning applications decisions that have gone against them reversed’. Car radios blare, engines run on cold nights, ‘no one thinks it wasteful any more.’ (McGahern, 2006, p.261). McGahern reminds the reader here of the cold nights when the Protestant Colonel’s wife, Mrs Sinclair, sat for hours outside Charlie’s pub, sipping one of her 3 nightly gin and tonics, listening to the BBC World Service. Locals passing wonder at the ‘engine running wastefully’ (McGahern, 2006, p.240) to keep her warm. Inside Colonel Sinclair explains to the bar owner, Charlie, that ‘women of her generation were brought up never to set foot in bars’. (McGahern, 2006, p.240). A contrast indeed to the later character of the son’s girlfriend in ‘Gold Watch’, who declares ‘I don’t want to be married. But we can move in together’ (McGahern, 2006, p.135). McGahern shows how time has moved on and attitudes have changed since the Sinclairs’ time in Ireland.

Colonel and Mrs Sinclair represent a dwindling Protestant community of 1940s Ireland. The narrator’s tone in the description of this fading community is nostalgic. McGahern’s own love of literature was brought to life as a child when he was allowed use of a Protestant neighbour’s library. ‘Oldfashioned’ transports the reader into the Sinclairs’ gentle, sophisticated world while being reminded of the prevailing attitude of suspicion towards them: ‘They’re strange. They’re different. They’re not brought up the like of Deirdre McMahon

6

us.’ (McGahern, 2006, p. 240) In the captivating imagery and atmosphere in the description of Colonel Sinclair’s Christmas walk, the passing of time in a changed community is portrayed. ‘Gerald Dodd, Town Commissioner’ joined the ‘formidable roll call of the Staffords and King Harmons’ on the town clock memorial stone. ‘The Staffords would have been outraged’. (McGahern, 2006, p.256). ’ Things have moved on.

There is a tone of unease as stark imagery marks the passing of time. Modern technology has arrived and the bicycle is replaced by the motor car, the horse and cart by the Algier tractor, which takes on a sinister tone as the narrator describes the sound of ‘low-flying airplanes’, due to it being powered by the World War II fighter aircraft ‘Messerschmitt engine’ (McGahern, 2006, p.239). A new secondary school opened by the Christian Brothers stirs ‘race memories’ of poor children who attended the underground hedge schools: ‘as boys, like uncertain flocks of birds on bicycles’ (McGahern, 2006, p. 239) travelled from far and wide to study ‘calculus’, itself the study of change, along with works of Byron and ‘the delta of the River Plate’. (McGahern, 2006, p. 239). The insecurity and dark imagery in the description of the boys symbolises a community’s fear and uncertainty to change. A community however that has changed it’s priorities as now the glow of light from the television sets replaces the little red lamps set before the Sacred Heart. (McGahern, 2006, p.238, 261). The crassness of the modern priest is portrayed as he tells the distracted congregation that God wants them to have bungalow bliss, a car and colour television. (McGahern, 2006, P 260).

Deirdre McMahon

7

As ‘Oldfashioned’ draws to a close, Johnny’s grown up character returns to make a television documentary. There will however ‘be no people in it. The people that interested him were all dead’. (McGahern, 2006, p.262). There is regret of a world now gone. Demonstrating the change in authority, the producer of the documentary, so out of touch with how things have moved on, makes the mistake of inviting the priest instead of the politician to dinner.

John McGahern returns to familiar themes again and again throughout his stories, the approach from a different time period giving the reader new perspective and a reflection at each stage of the prevailing society. In the three stories discussed in this essay, whether it be the vying generations of father and son, the impenetrable modern character of the girlfriend, new foreign influence or the changes in landscape, we see the resistance and tensions in the relationship between opposites as each tries to grapple with change some keen to grasp the opportunities a new modern society brings, others regretful and nostalgic of a time gone by. In the recently published Love of the World: Essays John McGahern said: ‘Through words I see’, (McGahern, 2009, p. 9), and through his writing he has allowed us also to see the struggle of the relationship between the traditional and the modern in a changing Ireland.

Deirdre McMahon

8

Bibliography

Dungan, Myles (2006) Rattlebag: John McGahern Remembered, RTÉ Radio 1, 30 March. http://www.rte.ie/arts/2006/0330/mcgahernj.html (accessed 5 November 2009)

Lee, Hermione (2004) Conversation with John McGahern, The Lannan Foundation, 7 April. http://www.lannan.org/lf/rc/event/john-mcgahern/ (accessed 25 October 2009)

McGahern, John (2006), Creatures of the Earth: New and Selected Stories (London: Faber and Faber).

McGahern, John (2009), Love of the World: Essays (London: Faber and Faber).

Deirdre McMahon

9