29 pages • 58 minutes read
Brian FrielDancing At Lughnasa
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1990A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Marconi Radio/Music
In Dancing at Lughnasa, music is closely aligned with both the old Irish pagan traditions and the stirrings of romance, excitement, and pleasure that Kate identifies with “paganism.” With its mysterious start-and-stop quality—seemingly uncontrollable despite efforts to fix the radio—Marconi seems “possessed” by spirits, enchanting the sisters to dance with abandon as though through “voodoo” (2). In keeping with this tension of “possession,” the lyrics and tone of Marconi’s songs often interact with (and sometimes influence) the mood of the scene. For example, “The Mason’s Apron”—a traditional Irish reel that would likely be performed at the Lughnasa Festival—incites the sisters to abandon their chores and dance wildly. When Gerry converses with Christina in the garden, the song “Dancing in the Dark” evokes a romantic mood and inspires them to dance passionately. As both a signifier of pagan tensions and sputtering, irregular music, the radio is notably “linked” (2) to Jack, a stand-in for his fragmented thoughts.
Dancing
Dancing is a rich and fluid symbol in Dancing at Lughnasa whose associations include fun and abandonment, old pre-Christian tradition and Irish pagan celebration, excitement and pleasure, romance, hope and longing for romantic connection, and—ultimately—the atmosphere of romantic potential that has passed by the sisters. Dancing is most explicitly tied to romance through Christina’s roaming lover, Gerry, who teaches dance lessons (in a Catholic church, no less) and remarks that “everyone wants to dance” (38). When Gerry dances with Christina, the atmosphere of her life is briefly transformed, and “her whole face alters” (33), a transcendence that can be aligned with religious experience.
Michael also suggests that in some ways, dancing serves as its own social code and physical language, facilitating a kind of non-traditional union between his parents as they move “in ritual circles…No singing, no melody, no words. Only the swish and whisper of their feet across the grass” (42). Furthermore, he insinuates that memory is akin to dancing, filled with ethereal, shifting images that move as “if language no longer existed because words were no longer necessary” (71).
Kites
Young Michael spends the first act of the play making kites. These kites serve as a stand-in for childlike hope (of flying high, of rising above one’s situation) that is frequently suggested to be a little embarrassing. When Maggie sees Michael’s kites, she tellingly ribs him about them—“God help your wit” (7)—and bets him that the kites will never fly. True to her prediction, the kites fail to take off, and in Act Two, Maggie jokes that Michael owes her money. Mid-construction, however, the kite sticks are used by Jack as he beats out the rhythm of an African dance. Disconcerted both by the “pagan” dance and the escapist pleasure it represents, Kate gently embarrasses him, explaining, as though to a boy, “We’ll leave these back where we found them, Jack. They aren’t ours. They belong to the child” (42).
The artwork of the kites—crude drawings of frightening faces—is not revealed until the final moments of the play. These faces can be interpreted as facsimiles of the sisters, whose faces “alter” (33) in the midst of pleasure.
Bikes
The “manly” (29) black bike from Kilkenny that Gerry promises Michael serves as another stand-in for childlike hope of a better future. In this case, for Michael, the bike is tied to hopes that Gerry will be united with himself and Christina as a family unit. However, the play makes it resoundingly clear that this hope will never be fulfilled. Act Two establishes a tone of unsatisfied longing, beginning with Michael’s letter to Santa. Therein, he asks for a bell he does not need to add to the bike he will never receive.
Gerry, however, receives his own “manly” black bike as a motorcycle dispatcher in the Spanish Civil War (44). He ironically injures his legs on the bike, which prevents him from dancing and cuts off his bond with Christina. The bike is positioned as the beginning of the end for their relationship (and the beginning of a new relationship in another town that results in the birth of another boy named Michael).
Clothing
As Friel notes in the play’s exposition, the plain clothing of the sisters “reflects their lean circumstances” (ii). Thus, any unusual clothing is especially noteworthy. Rose’s shoes are particularly significant, as she only possesses two pairs of equally inappropriate shoes: a pair of rainboots (her day-to-day shoes) and a pair of fancy dress shoes. When Agnes remarks that Rose left from berry-picking wearing her fancy shoes, Maggie immediately knows that Rose has dressed up to visit Danny Bradley. This choice alerts the viewer to Rose’s consciousness and mindful intent, suggesting she may be fully aware of Danny’s physical longings and even complicit with them.
Jack’s uniform—a “magnificent and immaculate…dazzling white [with] gold epaulettes and gold buttons” (ii) serves as a stand-in for the person Jack used to be, the sister’s idealized saint-like image of their brother, and the impossible hope offered by the British army to the subjugated Irish. The later interpretation is suggested most strongly in the moment when Jack emerges wearing his twenty-five-year-old army suit, trying it on before Gerry leaves to join his own brigade in the Spanish Civil War. The suit appears “very soiled, very crumpled” with epaulettes “hanging by a thread” and gold buttons “tarnished,” the uniform “so large that it looks as if it were made for a much larger man” (68).
