Translation Essay

7 Pages 1816 Words

Look Again at Act Two, SCENE ONE, from “OWEN: What is happening?” to “OWEN: A perfect congruence with its reality.” Do you agree that this exchange between Owen and Yolland represents a pivotal point in the play as a whole? Use a close examination of this extract as your starting point.

This section of the play is very important as it contains the major theme of the play: language. We are also informed about Owen and Yolland’s views towards language. It encompasses what has happened and we are led into the rest of the play, with hints of what is to come.

Owen was brought up in Ireland by his father, Hugh. Hugh is the master of the local hedge school, he is a drunken old man who “[carries] a stick” with him to look very authoritarian. The hedge schools were first created when in the seventeenth century Catholic and Gaelic education was outlawed in the Ireland, they were mobile or secret schools. When the laws were relaxed the schools were moved to barns. However, we see the threat to the Hedge school very early on in the play. The national schools are going to bring about free education in English and it is difficult to see that parents will pay out money for hedge schools when this happens, the conflict and threat of the English are bestowed in the novel via the national School. Manus is the first person to mention the national school in the play; he is Hugh’s older son and is a character full of “zeal”:

“Manus: …she forgot who she was dictating to: ‘The…schoolmaster and that
lame son of his are…wasting people’s good time and money.’…’Thank God one of them new national schools is being built…’”

Manus practically runs the hedge school and we realise that he also plays the housekeeper for his father as he is asked to fetch “a bowl of tea…and a slice of soda bread” soon after Hugh enters the set. Manus seems interested in one of the young girls who attend the hedge ...