454364
2012
LAL21410.1177/0963947012454364Language and LiteraturePrusse
Article
Repetition, difference and
chiasmus in John McGahern’s
narratives
Language and Literature
21(4) 363­–380
© The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/0963947012454364
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Michael C. Prusse
Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich (Zurich University of Teacher Education), Switzerland
Abstract
The fiction of John McGahern is characterized by repetitions and circular constructions but never
gives the impression of labouring an issue or of repetitiveness. His narratives are frequently
structured by natural cycles and by man-made repetitions. Moreover, the author resorts to
recurring names, themes and settings and thus creates a unique local universe. In previous
analyses of McGahern’s fiction the conspicuous cyclical constructions have been shown to be also
recurrent at a micro-level within his texts in the form of chiasmus. The writer may unconsciously
have imitated the chiastic structures that are typical of the Bible. McGahern’s distinct narrative
style can be illustrated with examples from both his short fiction and his novels. Examples
examined in this article show how the author’s frequent resorting to chiastic structuring succeeds
in foregrounding specific themes or crucial moments in his narratives.
Keywords
Chiasmus, difference, existentialism, John McGahern, parallelism, repetition, stylistics
It always has fascinated me that if you change a single word in a sentence all the other
words demand to be rearranged.
(John McGahern)1
1 Repetition and difference
The writer Leo Rafkin, who is one of the protagonists in Lodge’s play The Writing Game,
describes the magic formula of writing as knowing when to repeat yourself and when to
differ from your previous texts (1991: 45). Lodge, with his dual career as a writer and
university professor and, hence, a thorough grounding in theory, here may well have
Corresponding author:
Michael C. Prusse, Pädagogische Hochschule Zürich, Postfach, CH–8090 Zürich, Switzerland.
Email: [email protected]
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wanted to make a sly allusion to Deleuze’s Difference and Repetition (1994 [1968]). In
any case, the concept of repetition and difference is a distinguishing feature of literature
in general as Attridge argues when he defines its singularity as due to its cardinal nature
of ‘translatability and imitability’ (2004: 75): ‘Literary identity … involves both repetition of what is recognized as “the same” and openness to new contexts and hence to
change’ (2004: 75). The concept of repetition and difference, Rafkin’s magic formula,
may readily be applied to the fiction of McGahern, whose texts abound in repetitions and
circular constructions but never give the impression of labouring an issue or of repetitiveness. Or, as Malcolm puts it succinctly, ‘McGahern’s oeuvre is coherent and cohesive
without being inert’ (2007: 6). His novels and stories are frequently structured by natural
cycles such as the seasons or day-and-night sequences as well as by human routines such
as the rituals of church or school. Moreover, the author resorts to recurring names, themes
and settings and, by means of these reappearances, he creates a distinct local universe. A
number of critics, such as Lloyd (1987: 6) to take an early example or McCarthy (2010: 5),
who published a recent monograph on McGahern have commented on this phenomenon,
arguing that the author always writes about the same people and places (Lloyd’s debatable line of argument suggests that Willie in The Barracks becomes young Mahoney in
The Dark and later Patrick Moran in The Leavetaking). While many a critic after reading
Memoir might want to entertain similar ideas, namely to consider McGahern’s fiction as
thinly veiled autobiography, there are also numerous aspects in these three novels that
run counter to this notion. Besides, although McGahern even recycles the names of his
protagonists in some of his texts, the character of Rose in the short story ‘Gold Watch’,
for instance, is not quite the same as the one of Rose in Amongst Women – even if they
are both married to a similar type of husband and live on a similar kind of farm. The
existence of Luke Moran, who is brought home in a coffin from Korea in the eponymous
short story, ends in a pompous funeral while Luke Moran in Amongst Women escapes the
violence and oppression of the patriarchal farm and lives on quite happily in his exile in
London. The names, the circumstances and the settings may be familiar but in each narrative there are distinct elements that succeed in raising the reader’s interest in a subtle
fashion. The close attention that the author pays to such reiterations of external details is
also an indication that his immediate concerns rather lie with people and places, and the
actions that are performed in their daily lives, than with plot:
I write about what interests me, and in a way the story plot doesn’t interest me. Always the
ordinary, or the boring, always [sic] interests me much more than the exciting or the spectacular,
so in a way I would want to cut all excitement or suspense out of the novel in order to deal with
what interests me. (Gonzales Casademont, 1995: 22)
An avid reader in his youth, McGahern at quite an early stage clearly perceived the
essential nature of literature – a perception that undoubtedly influenced his own narrative
style. In Memoir he relates how he came to recognize stories as variations on repetition
and difference: ‘The story was still important, but I had read so many stories that I knew
now that all true stories are essentially the same story in the same way as they are different: they reflect the laws of life in both its sameness and its endless variations’ (2005:
41). The author is thus conscious of his preferred expedient to structure his narratives and
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he resorted to it, even when writing an apparent anti-novel such as That They May Face
the Rising Sun. In an interview he described the structuring devices of the latter as ‘the
day, the seasons, the community’ (O’Hagan, 2005). Asked whether he considered his
story, ‘The Stoat’, as a failure because the ending was the same as the beginning,
McGahern replied: ‘I don’t know. I rather like the idea of a short story, or anything else,
ending as it began: “In my end is my beginning”’ (Collinge and Verdanakis, 2003: 12).
The author here quotes the famous adage by Mary, Queen of Scots (see Prusse, 2009b:
169), but it may just as well be a reference to TS Eliot, who makes use of this ring metaphor in ‘East Coker’ (1979: 27). McGahern’s novels and short stories are thus replete
with repetitions and circular constructions and motifs, as quite a few critics have pointed
out in their analyses of the Irish author’s fiction.
2 Aspects of McGahern’s style
A further feature that is regularly introduced into the critical discourse on McGahern is
the fact that his fictional prose is described as poetic and lyrical. The notable exception
is Coad: he argues that McGahern’s style is simplistic and classifies him as a minor Irish
writer (1995: 62). Coad belongs to the small group of dissenting voices, of critics who
dislike McGahern, and describes McGahern’s prose as ‘flat, deadpan and dreary’ (1995:
61). While Maher argues that McGahern is merely slaving away to get the right word
(2003: 3), this article aims at establishing by means of the ensuing examples that his narrative style, both in his short stories and his novels, is consistently elaborate and poetic,
characterized by repetitions and chiastic constructions that frequently designate key
moments or themes in his texts. Banville perceives McGahern’s ‘plain prose’ as ‘true and
tough, shot through with hard-won lyricism’ without explaining how he arrives at this
conclusion (2010). Hughes similarly affirms without offering further evidence that
McGahern’s writing ‘is marked by an unusual capacity for tenderness and lyricism’
(1992: 105). McGahern himself is attracted to poetry and The Barracks and The
Leavetaking, in particular, bear evidence of this affinity by means of reference and allusions to various poets and poems. The author himself admitted to feeling beguiled by the
repetitive nature of verse and explained his fascination in an interview with Sampson as
follows:
I have always admired in verse this sort of refrain, ‘Daylight and a candle end,’ when that’s
repeated at the end of every verse. I have always been fascinated by that because I actually
think it is the truth, and I think that kind of repetition you are talking about in prose, if it’s
successful, is the same kind of thing as refrain in verse. (Sampson, 1991: 14)
The lyrical quality of McGahern’s writing is the result of obeying similar rules as
poets would when writing poetry: the patterned repetition of lines and stanzas is just one
example – the extremely careful arrangement of the words another. The influence of
Flaubert (‘le mot juste’) must be a further reason for this property of the author’s style;
McGahern quoted extensively from Flaubert’s letters in his essay on Dubliners
(McGahern, 2009: 202–204). In his first novel, The Barracks, the repetitions are a deliberate element that underlines the narrative’s focus on daily and seasonal chores.
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McGahern’s focus on the ritual of lighting the lamp at dusk, a recognizable point in the
day–night cycle, can be perceived both as a structuring organizer of the novel and as a
symbolic highlighting of the novel’s theme. There occur altogether six passages that
include the habitual lighting of the lamp in a novel of 232 pages. Of these, four passages
are relatively short, varying in length between three and five lines (1990b: 72, 100, 103,
184). The two passages framing the narrative (1990b: 7–8, 232), however, run over half
a page and are to a large extent identical. Yet it is repetition with a difference: the narrative opens with Elizabeth Reegan being present at this ceremony and it ends with her
being absent from it; Willie, the sergeant’s son, asks the same question – at the beginning
he poses it to Elizabeth, at the end to his father. His sisters turn the lowering of the blinds
into a race and appeal to Elizabeth at the beginning and to Guard Mullins at the end to
declare one of them victorious. Louvel (1995: 95–96) calls this particular circle a spiral,
which is probably more adequate as a description of the phenomenon since, as Heraclitus
famously proclaimed, you cannot step twice into the same river. Similar circles or spirals
– a repetition of one or more entire paragraphs describing a particular situation – are typical of McGahern’s narrative style and can also be observed, for instance, in ‘The Stoat’,
in The Pornographer, Amongst Women, and in That They May Face the Rising Sun (see
also Sampson, 1993: 26–27; and see McCarthy, 2010: 284).
3 Chiastic structures as a special type of repetition:
Spirals within paragraphs
In previous analyses of McGahern’s narratives it has already been pointed out that the
countless cyclical constructions around the seasons and the accompanying work such as
haymaking on a farm or the almost mythical conflicts between fathers and sons are also
recurrent at a micro-level within his texts (Prusse, 2009a, 2009b). Like a poet, McGahern
resorts to chiastic structuring to emphasize specific features of his narratives, for instance
when he wants to impart the notion of continuity and transience that comes up regularly
in his fiction. Chiastic structures in his prose are thus important symbolically as well as
syntactically. The rhetorical term ‘chiasmus’ refers to a construction that involves ‘repetition of words or elements in reverse order (ab:ba)’ (Wales, 2001: 53). A chiasmus is a
specific form of repetition that is not referred to in Halliday and Hasan’s analysis of lexical cohesion in texts (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 14) since such mirror constructions are
more than just repetitions. They do not simply link words or passages anaphorically or
cataphorically but create a forward and backward movement (see also Simpson, 1998:
107). In stylistic terms, chiasmus may thus be understood as a specific kind of parallelism in which word order is reversed or phrases are repeated in reverse order (Leech and
Short, 2007: 113). McGahern’s prose is thus marked by instances of formal and structural repetition (parallelism) and by mirror-image patterns (chiasmus). The rhetorical
effect of such chiastic structures can be one of reinforcement (see Leech and Short, 2007:
113) or foregrounding (Simpson, 1998: 200). Nänny extended the concept of chiasmus
to cover not just lexical but also semantic repetition including such equivalents as synonyms and antonyms, paraphrases, metonymies, or pronouns (1997: 157). Moreover, he
argues that the placing of words or phrases in a chiasmus may be perceived iconically ‘as
an enactment of a sequence of events or situations in time’ (Nänny, 1997: 159). He uses
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numbers to mark out the positions of the chiastic elements: 1>2>3:3<2<1 (1997: 159).
Since the numbering is a useful device it is also used in the following when describing
chiasmus in McGahern’s texts. Many chiastic structures comprise no more than three
levels but more elaborate ones of four or five words or phrases in mirror position can also
be found; the complexity of a chiasmus can also increase if there are additional repetitions that interrupt the clear positioning of the words in a regular chiasmus. Furthermore,
Nänny suggests that a chiasmus may not only perform a back and forth movement but
can also ‘enact a cyclical movement that begins at 1 and comes full circle in 1 again’
(Nänny, 1997: 159).2 As a consequence, chiastic structures are also a means of underlining the words, passages or sentence(s) at the centre by means of putting them into a
prominent semantic and narrative position. The words or passages furthest from the centre of the chiasmus may form an iconic frame that puts the focus on the words or passages at the centre and, hence, chiastic constructions somewhat counteract linear notions
of sequencing. However, this is merely the case if readers have been alerted to the presence of chiastic structures and those who remain unaware of them may well suffer from
the ‘bathtub’ effect and rather focus on beginnings and endings (Aitchison, 2012: 157).
In any case, Nänny argues that in Hemingway’s prose ‘the formal device of chiastic centering … may highlight the important theme or central issues of a passage, scene, or
story’ (1998: 183). This is also relevant to McGahern’s chiastic prose: ‘The recognition
of this formal focus may give us a clue to our interpretation’ (1998: 183). It is an open
question whether the author resorted to them either consciously to provide certain passages with a particular emphasis or unconsciously because this kind of patterning fitted
his artistic sensitivity. Whatever the reason, the artistic design is striking and similar to
the striving for balance in the work of a painter or an architect. Last but not least this
balance, which results from the use of chiasmus, is the consequence of repetition with a
difference, namely a repetition in reverse order.
The discovery of the parallels regarding topic, setting and structure between
McGahern’s ‘Korea’ and Ernest Hemingway’s ‘Indian Camp’, which results in recognizing the Irish short story as an adaptation of Hemingway’s narrative, originally led to the
conclusion that McGahern had resorted to such constructions – consciously or unconsciously – in order to imitate Hemingway’s narrative style (Prusse, 2009a).3 With hindsight and a more comprehensive view it can be assumed that ‘Indian Camp’ appealed to
McGahern because it was so similar to his own narrative style. Later, the detection of
chiastic constructions in further short fictions such as ‘Gold Watch’ or ‘Like All Other
Men’ confirmed the impression that they are characteristic of the author’s narrative style
in his short stories, which are by definition closer to the lyrical poem than the novel.4
After close reading and analysing the novels the conclusion is that chiastic structures are
also recurrent in these longer texts and that they are yet again used to foreground certain
key passages. Maher argues in his From the Local to the Universal (2003: 3) that
McGahern’s style has undergone a distinct evolution from his early texts to the later ones
and that he dealt with his materials in ‘a progressively more effective way’. But there
must be a caveat against this sweeping assertion of an evolutionary development, at least
regarding the meticulous composition, the chiastic structures, and the carefully set repetitions, which have always been there. The author once stated that when he was setting
out as a writer, he had noticed a significant aspect of the process of composition: ‘As
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with most serious things, it began in play, playing with the sounds of words, their shape,
their weight, their colour, their broken syllables; the fascination that the smallest change
in any sentence altered all the words around it, and that they too had changed in turn’
(McGahern, 2009: 9). This heightened awareness of the form of the language must have
left some traces in his manner of composition; hence, the chiastic structures are quite
possibly one result of the writer’s sensitivity.
To find instances of chiasmus in McGahern’s fiction all of his novels were reread with
a specific regard to mirror-image repetitions of words or phrases that take the positions
1>2>3:3<2<1. While an acute sensitivity for such constructions and a careful scanning
of the text provides certain results, the figures as such must be read with caution and the
reservation that even a most diligent single reader may well have overlooked a number
of chiastic constructions. The resulting figures in Table 1 demonstrate that the occurrences of chiasmus in relation to the numbers of the pages of his novels do not show a
clear pattern (for instance, it cannot be said that this is a rhetorical feature that he increasingly relies upon in the turn of his writing career). Nevertheless, there are instances of
chiasmus in all his novels and, as will be shown in the following, some of these instances
occur arguably in key passages of his longer narratives.
Table 1. Novel
Number of pages
Chiastic structures
Ratio
The Barracks
The Dark
The Leavetaking
The Pornographer
Amongst Women
That They May Face the Rising Sun
232
191
171
252
184
298
18
9
4
17
19
32
12.89
21.22
42.75
14.82
09.68
09.31
When McGahern is not writing fiction his prose is similar and yet different: the number of repetitions in Memoir can be compared to the reiterations in his fiction. A good
example in Memoir concerns the many instances in which he describes their walks to
school when his mother was back home after her first cancer treatment. These precious
walks to school – precious because they provide the future author with an opportunity to
be alone with his mother after her first absence caused by her illness – are to the boy a
sacred ritual, and McGahern confesses that they left a lasting impression: ‘I am sure it is
from those days that I take the belief that the best of life is life lived quietly, where nothing happens but our calm journey through the day, where change is imperceptible and the
precious life is everything’ (2005: 80, underlining is mine). Even in this short quotation
from Memoir the repetitions are conspicuous as the underlined words show (the noun
‘life’ is repeated three times and, in addition, there is also the verb ‘lived’). However,
even though Memoir is a carefully constructed text, a close reading reveals that unlike
his fictional prose it contains no discernible chiastic constructions.
As to the influence that led McGahern to write fiction in this particular fashion one can
only speculate. Perhaps, the writer consciously or unconsciously imitated the chiastic
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structures that distinguish the Bible. The dominance of the Bible in the environment in
which McGahern grew up is openly acknowledged in Memoir where the author states that
‘Religion and religious imagery were part of the air we breathed’ (2005: 10) and that the
Church was his ‘first book’ (2005: 203). The language of his novel Amongst Women has
even been compared to biblical language (see Whyte, 2002: 209). The fact that the Bible
features chiastic constructions is widely known amongst religious scholars. The following
two quotations from the New Testament may serve as illustrations. The underlined words
are the ones that are arranged in a chiasmus and – in order to make the chiasmus graphically visible, the table below the extract shows how the words or groups of words correspond from the position (1) to (4), (4) being closest to the centre.
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a
beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam of thine own eye; and then
shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye. (Matthew, 7:4–5)
1 thy brother
2 pull out the mote out of (thine own eye)
3 behold
4 beam … thine own eye … (cast out)
4 beam … thine own eye
3 see
2 cast out the mote out of
1 thy brother(’s eye)
The basic pattern of the chiasmus, which includes a pair of synonyms (‘behold’ and
‘see’), is interrupted, by additional repetitions of the verb ‘cast out’ and the noun ‘eye’
(as shown in the brackets). Moreover, the words at the centre, ‘Thou hypocrite’, are
foregrounded by means of the surrounding words and phrases in their chiastic position
and thus the essential message of this passage is underlined rhetorically. The second
example provides a particularly elaborate construction since it combines repetition
(words – to be more precise – synonyms and antonyms in the same sequence) and a
chiasmus (words mirrored in the text): ‘A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit’ Matthew (7:18).
1 2 3 3 2 1 good (tree)
bring forth
evil (fruit)
corrupt (tree)
bring forth
good (fruit)
The words in brackets, tree and fruit, are part of a parallelism while the other words form
a chiasmus (good > bring forth > evil : corrupt < bring forth < good). A closer look at
McGahern’s prose reveals that his narratives contain similar constructions – there are
some purely chiastic structures but similar constructions as the two biblical ones just
shown can also be found.
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4 Chiasmus in the short stories
Before taking a closer look at some chiastic constructions from the author’s novels I will
refer to two particularly noteworthy examples from his short stories. One is taken from
‘Like All Other Men’ and the other from ‘The Stoat’. The chiasmus from ‘Like All Other
Men’ is an especially fine example since it reflects one of McGahern’s regularly repeated
convictions and establishes the focus on the circularity of his narratives (see Prusse,
2009b: 170):
The river out beyond the Custom House, the straight quays, seemed to stretch out in the
emptiness after she had gone. In my end is my beginning, he recalled. In my beginning is my
end, his and hers, mine and thine. It seemed to stretch out, complete as the emptiness, endless
as a wedding ring. (1994: 280)
1 seemed to stretch out … the emptiness
2 my end
3 is
4 my beginning
he recalled
4 my beginning
3 is
2 my end
1 seemed to stretch out … the emptiness
The art of this chiasmus lies buried in the fact that its circular movement creates an iconic
representation of the wedding ring at the end of the paragraph (Prusse, 2009b: 170).
Apart from the chiasmus this passage also contains an allusion to TS Eliot (Four
Quartets) and much more could be said on its contents. However, the focus of this article
is on chiastic structures and ‘Like All Other Men’ has already been discussed elsewhere
(see for instance Gueguen, 1995: 187–194 and Prusse, 2009b: 169–171).
As mentioned earlier, ‘The Stoat’ is a short story that has its third paragraph repeated
word for word at the very end – a good example of both the possibility and impossibility
of repetition, which is also shown in Borges ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’.
However, the focus will now be on the second paragraph, which contains two examples
of chiasmus (see Table 2):5
The rabbit still did not move, but its crying ceased. I saw the wet slick of blood behind its ear,
the blood pumping out on the sand. It did not stir when I stooped. Never before did I hold such
pure terror in my hands, the body trembling in a rigidity of terror. I stilled it with a single stroke.
I took the rabbit down with the bag of clubs and left it on the edge of the green while I played
out the hole. Then as I crossed to the next tee I saw the stoat cross the fairway following me
still. After watching two simple shots fade away into the rough, I gave up for the day. As I made
my way back to the cottage my father rented every August, twice I saw the stoat, following the
rabbit still, though it was dead. (1994: 152)
While the repetitions in the short stories confirm the general expectation that these
short narratives place an emphasis and a weight on individual words, the following
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Table 2. Chiasmus 1
Chiasmus 2
1 The rabbit
2 ceased
3 did not stir … terror
3 rigidity of terror
2 stilled
1 the rabbit
1 I saw the stoat … following … still
2 two
2 twice
1 I saw the stoat, following … still
excerpts will serve as a proof that McGahern’s novels also feature chiastic
constructions.
5 Chiasmus in the novels
As was pointed out previously, there are numerous repetitions in The Barracks. Of particular interest are the recurrences at the beginning and the end, which depict the same scene,
once with Elizabeth at its centre and, in the end, without her. Furthermore, the narrative
contains quite a few chiastic constructions; from the 18 instances detected in The Barracks
the moment where Elizabeth attempts to write to a former friend – a moment that could be
described as a meta-fictional comment by the author on writing in general – is interesting
because it consists of longer expressions (and not just words or groups of words).
Things get worse and worse and more frightening. But who’d want to come to a house where
times got worse and no one was happy? And on the cold page it didn’t seem true and she
crossed it out and wrote, Everything gets stranger and more strange. But what could that mean
to the person she was writing to – stranger and more strange, sheer inarticulacy with a faint
touch of craziness. So she crossed it out too and wrote: Things get better and better, more
beautiful, and she smiled at the page that was too disfigured with erasions to send to anyone
now. (1990b: 187)
1 Things get worse and worse and more frightening
2 she crossed it out and wrote
3 stranger and more strange
But what could that mean …
3 stranger and more strange
2 she crossed it out … and wrote
1 Things get better and better, more beautiful
The question regarding the meaning of life, in particular under the circumstances in
which Elizabeth lives, is at the centre of this passage, neatly embraced by the phrases
arranged in a chiasmus. At its extremes stand sets of antonyms as possible outlooks
on life in general and Elizabeth’s situation in particular. In addition, a regularly discussed aspect of McGahern’s fiction, his seemingly depressing and bleak description
of life in Ireland in the 1950s, may be raised at this point: Is Elizabeth’s letter a
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comment on her helplessness at this junction in her life, where she faces death, or is
it a statement on the happiness which people find in their daily lives – and even in
rather dire circumstances? Elizabeth’s happiness is tangible in many parts of the
novel, as is her despair. Sampson suggests in Young John McGahern that in The
Barracks the author responds to the challenges provided for him by the existentialism
of Camus and Beckett (2012: 56–57).
In The Dark the notion of living the same day again and again – a standard theme in
McGahern’s writings – is one prominent feature of the novel; another one is the narrator’s routine act of masturbation. Once again the repetitions are conspicuous throughout
the novel. A significant moment in The Dark occurs when the narrator decides to bring
his sister home after learning that the owner of the shop, where she works as an apprentice, is in the habit of sexually abusing her:
‘I’m sorry but she has to come with me tomorrow.’
‘You’re being very sorry but what has she to say for herself?’
‘What I say,’ and you felt your control of yourself slip, you had to cut it short before you
were driven to attack. ‘I’m sorry. I must go. Be ready tomorrow, I’ll call for you before the bus
time.’ (1983: 95)
1 come with me
2 tomorrow
3 sorry
4 say
4 say
3 sorry
2 tomorrow
1 call for you
The pair of verbs, ‘come with’ and ‘call for’, provide the chiasmus with movement,
first the sister’s movement towards the narrator and then the narrator’s movement
towards his sister. Young Mahoney is at a decisive junction in his life: on the one
hand he feels attracted to the security of a life in the service of the church, rejoicing
in the salvation of his soul while, on the other hand, he is yearning for sexual fulfilment and dreams of a bourgeois existence with a wife. Father Gerald’s sexual
advances allow him to reject the life of a priest; his sister’s plight – also the result of
sexual advances – provides him with a reason to stand up to his father whose wrath
he is certain to incur by taking his sister home (since there will be another mouth to
be fed).
In The Leavetaking the protagonist, Patrick Moran, reflects on how the school
routine took place without him before he was appointed as a teacher there and how it
will continue when he is no longer a member of the staff – another circular routine
that persists relentlessly. There are two specific passages in The Leavetaking that may
be perceived as central to the narrative and that contain chiastic structures: the first
one can be found at the very end of Part One of the novel and features some of the
prevailing issues in McGahern’s fiction, namely both the contrast of light and darkness and the circle of life. Moreover, the following excerpt shows how the author first
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uses the lemma ‘shape’ and then changes the morphology to come up with ‘shaped’
and ‘shaping’.
The shadow had fallen on the life and would shape it as the salt and wind shaped the trees the
tea lord had planted as shelter against the sea: and part of that shaping lead to the schoolroom
of this day, but by evening the life would have made its last break with the shadow, and would
be free to grow without warp in its own light. (1984: 82)
1 The shadow
2 the life
3 shape
3 shaped
3 shaping
2 the life
1 the shadow
The mother’s death, which overshadows Part One of the The Leavetaking, is identified
as the defining moment in Patrick Moran’s life. The impact of this loss links the past
with the present – losing his mother is blended with his present fate, namely the losing
of his job as a teacher. The crucial difference, of course, is that the first is an ordeal that
is forced onto the protagonist while the second is faced voluntarily – as a matter of
principle and maybe as a necessary step to close this particular chapter of the protagonist’s life.
The second passage occurs at the very end of the novel and appears to mirror the
first one – but in a more optimistic mood. While linked to the general theme of life and
death, emphasized by the reference to the couple’s orgasm – in French sometimes
referred to as ‘la petite morte’ – the central focus of this chiasmus is the period of calm
weather that strikes a positive note and provides an element of hope at the end of The
Leavetaking:
The odour of our lovemaking rises, redolent of slime and fish, and our very breathing seems
an echo of the rise and fall of the sea as we drift to sleep; and I would pray for the boat of our
sleep to reach its morning, and see that morning lengthen to an evening of calm weather that
comes through night and sleep again to morning after morning until we meet the first death.
(1984: 195)
1 sleep … morning … morning
2 evening
calm weather
2 night
1 sleep … morning … morning
The sea imagery including the boat that carries its passengers into a common future is
part of another circular construction in this novel as it links back to the sea imagery
of the shadows of the floating seagulls at the very beginning. The movement from
‘evening’ to ‘night’ intimates progress and thus yet again a spiral rather than a circle.
The word ‘shadow’ (1984: 195) also recurs in that passage at the end of Part One. The
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sea (also linked to the ‘sea of faith’ and echoing Arnold’s ‘Dover Beach’) is moreover
introduced as an objective correlative of sex and death earlier on in the novel (1984:
62–63). Yet again, two decisive moments in a McGahern narrative are highlighted by
means of a chiasmus. Moreover, this passage carries haunting echoes of Beckett and
Joyce (‘The Dead’); thus it underlines the intertextual nature of McGahern’s fiction.
In other words, the resonances of, allusions to, and quotations from other authors
provide a variation on the theme of repetition and difference since McGahern adapts
texts by other writers and repeats them in a different context.
A key passage in The Pornographer once again articulates the novelist’s deepest concerns since it contains both the circle imagery, referring to the circle of life, and an intricate chiasmus at the same time. There is much in this short excerpt that would deserve an
extended discussion but the focus will be limited to just one aspect of style. Michael, the
first-person narrator, sits in a cab with his new beloved, a nurse in the cancer ward of the
hospital where his aunt is dying. This particular constellation causes him to pursue a
philosophical line of thought:
The taxi turned in the hospital gates, went past her window, the moonlight pale on the concrete
framing the dark squares of glass. The wheel had many sections. She had reached that turn
where she’d to lie beneath the window, stupefied by brandy and pain, dulling the sound of the
whole wheel of her life staggering to a stop. I was going past that same window in a taxi, a
young woman by my side, my hand on her warm breast. (1990c: 172)
1 taxi
2 went past … window
3 the wheel
window
3 the … wheel
2 going past … window
1 taxi
This chiasmus emphasizes the word ‘window’, which can be found both at its very
centre and also as part of the frame (if one perceives the words closest to the centre
of a chiasmus as belonging to the core then the words at its extremes could be said
to form a frame or ‘hub’) – an iconic representation that underlines McGahern’s
craftsmanship as a writer. The frame encapsulates the dying of the narrator’s aunt,
while for himself life asserts itself in the form of the beautiful nurse who sits next to
him in the taxi.
It is hardly surprising that there are also numerous chiastic constructions in
Amongst Women – the most elaborate ones can be found in those instances when
Moran quarrels with Rose. These struggles for supremacy in the house and in the
family (for this is what they essentially are) reveal the brute face of patriarchy and
the subtle and subversive web that the women of the family spin against it. In the
following exchange between Rose and Moran the latter has to apologize for his rude
treatment of his second wife – his apologies and her replies forming another highly
crafted chiasmus:
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‘I suppose I should be sorry,’ he said at length.
‘It was very hard what you said.’
‘I was upset over that telegram my beloved son sent. It was as if I didn’t exist.’
‘I know, but what you said was still hard.’
‘Well then, I’m sorry.’ (1990a: 56)
1 I … be sorry
2 was … hard
3 what you said
4 I
5 was
5 was
4 I
3 what you said
2 was … hard
1 I’m sorry
Yet again this chiasmus contains progression as Moran moves from ‘should be sorry’ to
‘am sorry’ and so ultimately utters an actual apology.
Since That They May Face the Rising Sun simply revolves around the ordinary lives
of the people living throughout the seasons by the lake and lacks a coherent plot it is difficult to home in on a passage that is central to the development of the plot and would
thus be considered as a key passage. Nevertheless, also in his last novel McGahern often
resorts to chiastic structures to highlight specific events in the text. One such passage
occurs when John Quinn turns up at the Ruttledges to inform them about his forthcoming
marriage:
‘The Lord God has said, ‘Tis not good for man to live alone, and John Quinn always took this
to heart,’ he continued smoothly, softly; ‘and when the mountain doesn’t go to Mohammed then
Mohammed must go to the mountain. So John went to the Marriage Bureau in Knock where
Our Lady appeared to the children. (2002: 133)
1 The Good Lord
2 John
3 the mountain
4 go to
5 Mohammed
5 Mohammed
4 go to
3 the mountain
2 John
1 Our Lady
McGahern gives the performance of the hypocrite John Quinn a nice touch by having
him quote a well-known saying about Mohammed (which is chiastic as such) and by
further framing this with a reference to the Catholic faith (its essential identity is here
expressed by means of the reference to two of its central pillars, namely to God (the
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Good Lord), and to the Virgin Mary (Our Lady) – these two may be read as equivalents
if not synonyms in this context). The chiastic structure thus underlines the essential character of John Quinn who only seeks to maintain his own advantage and in this selfish
pursuit employs any means that may help him in succeeding.
6 Repetition as an existentialist notion?
It would be easy to continue in this fashion and provide further examples from
McGahern’s novels; however, the selection of specific (key) passages from all of his
novels has shown that chiastic constructions are noticeable and recurrent in his fictional
prose and that they serve the purpose of underlining those themes that he considers to
be at the heart of human existence. They accentuate his essential philosophy and his
vision of life as a circle, a wheel that has to be trod in the light – while people essentially
come from the dark and disappear into the dark again. In his short story, ‘The Recruiting
Officer’, this is expertly expressed in the awareness of the narrator that ‘If one could
only wait long enough everything would be repeated’ (1994: 108). The eternal repetition provides a certain safety but is not taken as given because progressing time introduces change. Thus the chiasmus at the end of the long short story, ‘Love of the World’,
sounds like a comment that the author makes on the nature of his repetitions and on his
perception of life in general: ‘Who would want change since change will come without
wanting?’ (1997: 250).
A first conclusion may be drawn, namely that repetition and difference are essential markers of McGahern’s style. Critics who compare McGahern to Beckett have a
point (see for instance Sampson, 2012: 53): McGahern’s interest in boredom and
repetition is similar to the focus on repetition and boredom in, say, Waiting for Godot.
Its setting on an eternal Saturday that follows Good Friday but never becomes Easter
Sunday would most probably have appealed to McGahern since Easter plays an important part in his last novel, That They May Face the Rising Sun (2002). However, the
comic elements that recur in Waiting for Godot (Beckett, 1988) are less pertinent to
McGahern’s repetitions. And yet – the obsessive repetition of prayers in Amongst
Women, of masturbation in The Dark or of the writing of pornography in The
Pornographer – create a somewhat comic distortion and give certain habitual repetitions a touch of the absurd. McGahern himself commented on his reiterations in The
Barracks in a conversation with Ollier, singling out the lighting of the lamp and the
lowering of the blinds, and then concluding that both Beckett and he himself worked ‘in
the same material’ (Ollier, 1995: 77). The foreshadowing of death in the ‘drawing-down
of blinds’ is also due to the echoes of Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ (Silkin,
1981: 184). In Difference and Repetition Deleuze also refers to Beckett’s writings –
specifically to Molloy, Murphy and Malone Dies – when he wants to illustrate ‘the
inventory of peculiarities pursued with fatigue and passion by larval subjects’ (1994:
79). Apart from the Joycean connotations one may also assume that Sampson is correct
and another modernist influence has to be included: certain lines from TS Eliot’s
‘Burnt Norton’ might well be at the root of McGahern’s style: ‘Words, after speech,
reach / Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, / Can words or music reach / The
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stillness’ (Eliot, 1979: 17; Sampson, 1993: 206). It is this striving for stillness that
McGahern pursues in his careful arranging of words – for instance, in his strategically
placed chiastic constructions. While a large number of critics understand the writings
of McGahern as bleak and depressing – an example is Coad who sums his impressions
up as ‘a depressingly dismal view of the world where hope is non-existent’ (1995: 62),
the author himself was not quite happy with this label (see Gonzales Casademont,
1995: 19). Rereading his narratives provides reasons to sympathize with his discontent – and there are other readers who do so too. Goarzin, for instance, in her Reflets
d’Irlande emphasizes the significance of light in his writings and perceives
McGahern’s fiction as far less bleak than one might have thought at first glance (2002:
177). And it must be emphasized that his protagonists experience a remarkable degree
of happiness while they are busy with their chores.
‘Il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux’, in English ‘One must imagine Sisyphus
happy’: there is happiness in the repetitive action of pushing a rock up a hill according to Camus in his essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (1994: 168). Whether Camus really
was a major influence on McGahern is a bone of contention among critics (McGahern
himself denied it, Sampson, 2012: 56 asserts it). In any case, one of Elizabeth’s musings in The Barracks appears to hint at the French existentialist’s work: ‘Life for her
these days happened much the same everywhere, she’d not enough illusions left, it
had to be endured like a plague or transformed by acceptance’ (1990b: 69, italics
mine). McGahern here seems to allude to Camus’ eponymous narrative of the plague
in Oran, Algeria, and, at the same time, to The Myth of Sisyphus.6 Another mythological figure suffering a similar fate as Sisyphus is Atlas, who is referred to two
pages later when Elizabeth complains of feeling ‘as tired as if the whole weight of
the world was on my shoulders’ (1990b: 71). The novelist sees hope and joy in
chores – in repetitive actions, which define the individual’s daily life and which are
normally perceived as constricting. This satisfaction that McGahern’s individual
derives from repetitions can be contrasted to what happens when they are interrupted
against the individual’s will. Hence, when the narrator of ‘Gold Watch’ sees the
meadows all cut on returning home for the annual haymaking, he is unhappy:
‘Though I had come intending to make it my last summer at the hay, I now felt a keen
outrage that it had been ended without me’ (1994: 222). Like Deleuze, McGahern
appears to be convinced of the notion that chores are significant even to the most
reduced individual or ‘dissolved self’: ‘In all its component fatigues, in all its mediocre auto-satisfactions, in all its derisory presumptions, in its misery and its poverty,
[it] still sings the glory of God – that is, of that which it contemplates, contracts and
possesses’ (Deleuze, 1994: 79). A very similar mood can be observed in Memoir
where McGahern’s joy in perception, even if it is a perception of dreary and frightening circumstances, may well allude to or be similar to the way Camus understands
the fate of Sisyphus:
We grow into an understanding of the world gradually. Much of what we come to know is far
from comforting, that each day brings us closer to the inevitable hour when all will be darkness
again, but even that knowledge is power and all understanding is joy, even in the face of dread,
and cannot be taken from us until everything is. We grow into a love of the world, a love that is
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all the more precious and poignant because the great glory of which we are but a particle is lost
almost as soon as it is gathered. (McGahern, 2005: 36)
The analysis of chiastic patterning in McGahern’s fiction is by no means the end of the
discussion: as mentioned earlier, there is a remarkable number of further chiastic structures in the novels and more research is needed to further specify their essential function
in the author’s fictional prose.
Ultimately it can be said that by describing common everyday experience and, moreover, by shaping the words into circular patterns as well, McGahern’s texts effect a vision
of reality that distinguishes the author as an original craftsman and a stylist who patterns
his prose in view of transcending the banality of the everyday. In a conversation with Lee
the author himself pronounced repetition as ‘one of the most important things in life. I
mean, each day repeats itself and yet doesn’t repeat itself. Everything happens the same
but always slightly differently. I think that repetition is very close to happiness and it’s
the dear, precious life’ (Lee, 2004). Leech and Short have pointed out that the iconicity
of language also comprises ‘the miming or enactment of meaning through patterns of
rhythm and syntax’ (2007: 189). As has been shown, McGahern’s focus on circles is
indeed mirrored within his texts – and surfaces in key passages in the shape of rhetoric
(chiasmus, in particular). Keeping the existentialist parallels mentioned earlier in mind,
it is reasonable to understand this as a motivated stylistic choice.
Notes
1. Quoted in L Collinge and E Verdanakis, (2003: 2–3).
2. Nänny’s recognition of chiasmus in Hemingway’s short stories moves beyond a description
of the cohesive elements in analyses such as Gutwinski’s Cohesion in Literary Texts (1976)
and demonstrates that the arranging of the words in a short story can be of similar significance
as in poetry.
3. McGahern was familiar with Hemingway’s texts and, according to an oral comment provided
by Liliane Louvel at the Rewriting/Reprising in Literature Conference in Lyon (14 October
2006), actually taught ‘Indian Camp’ while working as a lecturer at Colgate University (see
also Prusse, 2009a: 31n).
4. McGahern himself was convinced of the truth of this perception and confirmed it in an interview with French critics (Collinge and Verdanakis, 2003: 12).
5. Danine Farquharson focuses on the same passage in her analysis of ‘The Stoat.’ She notes
repetitions and argues that the revised vision of the story ‘is more in tune with what so many
critics see as McGahern’s use of repetition as ritual’ (Farquharson, 2009: 152).
6. There are several instances that may remind readers of existentialism (and, in particular, of
Albert Camus). One example is the endless repetitions in Elizabeth’s chores and the needs of
the children (1990: 42); a further moment is when she notices the repetitiveness of the days:
‘They were all the same, they would not change, the same day would follow the same day and
day and day, nothing more would happen’ (1990: 160).
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Author biography
Michael C. Prusse is Head of the Faculty of ‘Upper Secondary Level’ at the Zurich University of
Teacher Education in Switzerland. In this function he is responsible for the Master programmes in
Science Education and in German Language Education. As a Professor of ELT Methodology and
Literatures of the English-Speaking World he trains English teachers both at lower and upper
secondary level. His main research interests are in postcolonial literatures, the twentieth-century
short story, children’s literature, and in the teaching of reading inside and outside the EFL classroom. Recent publications include articles on John McGahern, postcolonial fiction, bilingual language education and on innovative projects in English language teaching.
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