Because of my trip to London, I missed our class discussion of John Millington Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World." After reading it on the bus to Cork on the first leg of my journey to London, I began to think about Ireland and what it means to be Irish. Synge's characters are very distinctly Irish- from the way that they act to their manner of speaking.
This play was one of my favorite pieces we read throughout the class- something about it really attracted me (much like the women in the play are mysteriously attracted to Christy!). When Christy first entered the play, I wasn't exactly sure how to take his character. I didn't want to like him, obviously, because he had claimed to have killed his own father! But then all the women start going crazy over him- who gets to make his dinner, whose house he gets to stay in, etc.- and me as a reader wasn't sure what to think anymore.
In the end, I decided that I disliked Christy, not only because he lied about murdering his father, but he became very clingy towards Pegeen at the end- claiming to be in love with her when he had only known her for a few days, etc. I couldn't understand Pegeen's response to Shawn at the end of the play, when she said "Quit my sight. Oh my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only Playboy of the Western World," I was surprised that she would be so sad about losing a man who was a liar, and possibly even a murderer.
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