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T.S Eliot Murder in The Cathedral Vs W.B. Yeats Purgatory

The document summarizes and analyzes two plays: Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot and Purgatory by W.B. Yeats. Murder in the Cathedral is about Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is martyred after confronting the king. Purgatory tells the story of an Old Man who recalls burning down his family home and killing his father, and later stabbing his son to death. Both plays involve men committing violence. The analysis focuses on the characters and themes of the plays in relation to social Darwinism, which argues that competition and struggle between individuals and groups drive social and political development.

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567 views2 pages

T.S Eliot Murder in The Cathedral Vs W.B. Yeats Purgatory

The document summarizes and analyzes two plays: Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot and Purgatory by W.B. Yeats. Murder in the Cathedral is about Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is martyred after confronting the king. Purgatory tells the story of an Old Man who recalls burning down his family home and killing his father, and later stabbing his son to death. Both plays involve men committing violence. The analysis focuses on the characters and themes of the plays in relation to social Darwinism, which argues that competition and struggle between individuals and groups drive social and political development.

Uploaded by

John Normandia
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Murder in the Cathedral (Drama)

by T.S. Eliot

Purgatory (Drama)
by W.B. Yeats

Murder in the Cathedral is a fictional verse drama of the suffering of St. Thomas Becket
first performed in 1935. Created and performed at the time when fascism was in the rise
in Europe, the drama considers the agency of the individual in resisting secular
authoritarianism.

The story deals with the troubled political relationship of King Henry II with the Archbishop
of Canterbury (the highest church office in England), Thomas Becket. The king
condemned the Becket for excommunicating the Archbishop of York and two other
bishops for presiding over the coronation of Henry II’s son, which was supposedly the
traditional right of Canterbury.

The Archbishop seek refuge in France and the counsel of the Pope. After seven years he
decided to go back to England even though he was both aware of he danger and had
predicated his own death. After his return, four knights came to Canterbury Cathedral, hid
their weapons outside and demanded that Becket leave with them by order of the king.
When he refused, the knights gathered their weapons outside, went back to the cathedral.
The killed Thomas Becket and cut off his head.

Becket was canonized just three years after his death and is revered as saint in both
Catholic and Angelican faith.

Purgatory was first performed at the Abbey Theater on 19TH August 1938 a few months
before the writer W.B. Yeats death. The drama invites audience to assume that it will
take place in an inhuman setting. Yeats makes it clear from the scene that the world he
tends to examine is not hypothetical and fictional – the afterlife, but rather an easily
recognizable earthly landscapes.

The story relays the declining saga of a family. The father (Old Man) tells to his son (A
Boy) the history of a burnt house they visit. The Old Man reveals that the house is his
family’s former house. His mother came from money and his father is a drunkard. His
mother died upon giving birth to him and his father squandered all her mother’s wealth.

Intoxicated, his father burned the house. While the mansion was burning, he stabbed
his father to death and charred with the building. The Old Man ran away, lived on the
streets and became a peddler.

The Old Man and the Boy then talked about the bag of money his father have, the son
questioned him about is inheritance and refused to give the bag. The father argues that
he (the boy) might squander the money like what his father did with his mother’s fortune.
The Boy rebutted that that is his to squander, the father has no right to question.

They both argued and fought over the bag of money. In their struggles, the Old Man
stabbed the Boy multiple time with the same knife he stabbed his father.

In the end of the drama, the Old man justified his act through the memory of his mother.
He debates that if the that lad has grown up, he would also stroke a woman like his father.
The drama ended with a prayer from him asking to release his mother from this world,
from the living and the dead.

Purgatory is the recurring memory of the Old Man of his depressing and murderous
pass and how is trapped in a loop like in the actual spiritual purgatory.

Men, God and Violence

Men commit most of the world’s murders. They are branded as the bearer of violence in
the society. Violence may be used to flex dominant traits for survival or to be part of a
social competition.

Problem:
This study aims to analyze the correlation of men and violence in the Play Murder in the
Cathedral by T.S. Eliot and Purgatory by W.B. Yeats. Specifically, this focuses on: the
characters, and theme.

Theory:
Social Darwinism (Joseph Fisher) is any of various theories of society which emerged
in the United Kingdom, North America, and Western Europe in the 1870s, claiming to
apply biological concepts of natural selection and survival of the fittest to sociology and
politics. Social Darwinists argue that the strong should see their wealth and power
increase while the weak should see their wealth and power decrease.[citation needed]
Different social-Darwinist groups have differing views about which groups of people are
considered to be the strong and which groups of people are considered to be the weak,
and they also hold different opinions about the precise mechanisms that should be used
to reward strength and punish weakness. Many such views stress competition between
individuals in laissez-faire capitalism, while others were used in support of
authoritarianism, eugenics, racism, imperialism, fascism, Nazism, and struggle between
national or racial groups (Wikipedia).

The simpler aspects of social Darwinism followed the earlier Malthusian ideas that
humans, especially males, require competition in their lives in order to survive in the
future. Further, the poor should have to provide for themselves and not be given any aid
(Wikipedia).

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