Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Names
The final part of Act 1 is a conversation between Owen and his brother on his brother's name. The English officers pronounce it wrong and Manus seems to take offense to it, finding it to be the English men's way of reducing the value of the Irish. I think that he thinks the English see the Irish as less of a person, and they do not even make an effort to learn about the culture, and this mispronunciation is one more way they can do it. Owen makes the argument that however they pronounce it, he is still the same person, but I think Manus argument, and I might agree with him, is that if you take the culture out of a name, you lose a part of yourself in the process. It will be interesting to see how this mistake in translation affects the rest of the novel.
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hey Diana,
ReplyDeleteyour interpretation for Lancey may be right, but I'm not sure about Yolland...he apologized for not being cultured and loved the beauty of the land; yes?
j
i agree with you on taking Manus' side of the argument, and maybe that's because of my Irish heritage and knowing that the English do not treat the Irish very well. but i also feel that the English's disregard to the native Irish culture is similar to the American views of other countries. Many Americans will not learn the native language of a country because they know that those places will have people that speak English there. And maybe these countries don't help themselves by introducing English classes to students at a very young age, while American schools do not offer foreign languages for other students. But visiting another country and not experiencing their culture because it has so much American culture takes away the beauty of that place's culture.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading more of the play we are able to see Yolland's reaction to learning Owen's real name. I think this showed that it was an honest mistake. He could not believe it when Owen corrected him.
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