Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1989. 19/3. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 19)

Bertha, Csilla: Distortions of Character in John B. Keane's Peasant Plays

- 48later turns back, intrudes and helps bring resolution to it. The wheel turns full circle: Neelus realizes tils imaginary union with the legendary princess in her grave through a life-saving self-sacrifice. (He jumps into the grave - the abyss - carrying Dinzie on his shoulders.) His deed cao be interpreted on two levels simultaneously: first, his selfsacrifice for his sister elevates him to the status of a hero; and, second, he fulfils the prophecy of the legend that Sharon will stop suffering and her handmaiden stop cursing only when "the bodies of two young men are cast into the hole. One will be small and ugly and wicked and the other will be tall and straight and pure..." (317) In other words, in his action life comes to imitate fantasy. Also, life (that of Peadar and Trassie) can go on safely in reality only at the price of Neelus's pursuit of his fantasy. Neelus's self-sacrifice opens another dimension of the relationship between reality and fantasy: the two, combined, link the present to the past, the actual to the mythic and spiritual. The platonically ideal, the devilishly physical and destructive, and the tiealthy, liuman attractioo of the three men in the play can be seen as representing iieaven, hell and earth. These levels confront one another: the Satanic (Dinzie) wants to destroy the good on earth (Peadar and Trssie) but first has to get rid of the presence of angelical innocence (Neelus). At the end the good wins, when the harmless and gentle Neelus becomes the angel of vengeance and carries away Dinzie to death. Sharon's Grav

e is, however, nothing like a miracle play or morality. It is not written within the framework of Christianity, but rather presents a mixture of Christian and pagan belief, much as in the Irish country people's way of thinking, pre-Christian beliefs, fears and superstitions are peacefully built into, and live side-by-side with, more orthodox Christian dogma. Neelus's self-sacrifice evokes a basic mythic situation where sacrifice is necessary in order to assure the continuation or revival of life. The image of the innocent young man picking up and carrying away the ugly, devilish, deformed creature on his back, can be regarded as a naive-grotesque presentation of a mythic Saviour or even of a Christ, who takes Evil upon himself, dies under it and enters into the other world, while saving the people in this one.