English Literature (9675) | Brian Friel - Translations

Welcome to the Tragedy of Language: Brian Friel's Translations

Hello there! If you're studying Brian Friel's Translations, you're tackling one of the most powerful and complex modern tragedies on the syllabus. Don't worry if it doesn't immediately feel like Shakespeare—there are no kings dying on stage in Ireland, 1833!

However, dramatic tragedy isn't just about literal deaths; it's about the catastrophic loss of a way of life, resulting from human flaws and inescapable forces. This play is a tragedy of language, identity, and colonization.

In these notes, we will break down how Friel applies the key aspects of the tragic genre (flaws, fate, catastrophe) to the remote Irish community of Baile Beag. Let's dive in!

1. The Type and Setting of the Tragedy

What Kind of Tragedy Is Translations?

The syllabus asks whether a tragic text is classical (about public figures) or domestic (about ordinary people).

Friel blends these categories:

• Domestic Tragedy: The setting is the intimate, local world of the hedge school—a small, rural community (Baile Beag, or small town). The suffering primarily affects ordinary individuals like Maire, Owen, and Yolland.
• Classical Stakes: Although the characters are ordinary, the consequences of their suffering are national and historical. The tragedy isn't just the destruction of one family, but the systematic erasure of an entire culture, language (Gaelic), and heritage. This gives the play a sweeping, public significance.

Quick Takeaway: It is a domestic tragedy with public, classical consequences. The loss is personal but represents the fate of a nation.

The Significance of the Setting (Place and Time)

The setting is intrinsically tragic because it represents a world on the brink of extinction.

• Place: Baile Beag, County Donegal, Ireland. It is isolated, steeped in oral tradition, and resistant to modern change. The setting is highly symbolic: the Hedge School, run by Hugh, is a fragile, informal place of learning, contrasting sharply with the structured, rigid military camp nearby.
• Time: 1833. This is a historically pivotal moment—the time of the Ordnance Survey (OS) mapping project, led by the British Army. This project was supposedly scientific, but its ultimate effect was political and devastating: renaming every single feature on the map from Irish Gaelic to standard English.

Think of the Ordnance Survey as the ultimate tragedy of setting. It's like rewriting a community's entire history and memory by simply changing the names on Google Maps—except in Friel's time, those new names are permanent.

This act of renaming is the central violent action of the play, even though it is linguistic, not physical (initially).

2. The Tragic Protagonists and Their Flaws (Hamartia)

In Friel's play, the role of the tragic protagonist is shared and complicated. No single character fits the traditional mold perfectly, but several exhibit flaws or blindness that contribute to the catastrophe.

Owen (The Facilitator)

Owen acts as the primary intermediary and catalyst for the tragic action.

• Flaw (Hamartia) and Folly: Owen’s flaw is his folly or misplaced optimism. He believes he can bridge the gap between cultures, translating the Gaelic names into English for Captain Lancey and Lieutenant Yolland. He refers to the mapping project as a mere "exercise in communications."
• Blindness: He is initially blind to the colonizing intent of the project, focusing only on the technical logistics. He thinks the British mean well ("They're civil servants!").
• Discovery and Learning: Owen’s tragic journey involves a devastating anagnorisis (discovery). By Act Three, he realizes his betrayal and the irreparable damage he has helped cause, leading him to abandon the project. This learning, however, comes too late to stop the machine of change.

Lieutenant Yolland (The Innocent Victim)

Yolland is perhaps the most sympathetic figure, a foreigner who falls in love with the culture he is professionally tasked with erasing.

• Flaw/Folly: His fatal flaw is his naïve idealism and pride in thinking he can be fully accepted by the community simply by loving it. He tries to escape his own identity by adopting the Irish one.
• Journey to Death: Yolland's disappearance is the tragic climax. His presumed death (often considered inevitable) is a direct result of his romantic folly and his presence in a volatile setting, highlighting how cultural conflict ultimately breeds physical violence.

Hugh (The Traditional Hero)

Hugh, the master of the hedge school, is a figure of tragic grandeur, reminiscent of classical heroes.

• Flaw (Pride): Hugh's pride (hubris) lies in his attachment to classical, outdated knowledge (Latin and Greek), neglecting the immediate needs of his students (like Maire, who desperately needs English to emigrate). His refusal to adapt makes his world brittle and ready to snap.
• Moral Values: Despite his flaws, Hugh embodies the moral value of heritage and the power of language. His final, poignant speeches (recounting memories and history) are his discovery—he understands the scope of the loss, leading to a tragic, hopeless insight.

3. Forces of Destruction: Opponent, Fate, and Structure

The Role of the Tragic Villain/Opponent

The syllabus asks about the role of a villain who engages in a contest of power and is responsible for the hero's demise.

In *Translations*, the opponent is not a traditional malicious individual (like Iago).

• The True Opponent: The systemic force of colonialism (represented by the Ordnance Survey). This force is cold, bureaucratic, and inescapable—far more devastating than any single human villain.
• Captain Lancey: He is the agent of the system. He is not cruel; he is simply efficient. He represents the clinical, emotionless power contest where military order must supersede local custom. His primary weapon is the map, not the gun.

The tragedy stems from the hero (the Irish community) engaging in a contest they were structurally designed to lose.

The Presence of Fate (Is the End Inevitable?)

The sense that the hero's end is inevitable (fate) is extremely strong in *Translations* because the play is rooted in historical fact (the real-life renaming of Ireland).

• Historical Inevitability: The audience knows that the English language and administration will ultimately dominate. This creates intense dramatic irony: we watch the characters fall in love, hope for the future, and debate translations, knowing their world is doomed.
• The Power of Language: Friel implies that once the language dies, the cultural death is inevitable. Hugh's final, confused recitation from Virgil emphasizes that their history is now just faint echoes, destined to be forgotten by the new order.

Structural Pattern: Order to Disorder (Complication to Catastrophe)

The play follows a classic tragic trajectory, moving from an initial state of relative peace toward absolute disaster:

1. Order/Prosperity: The opening scene shows the intellectual chaos and vitality of the hedge school—an established, if unorthodox, order.
2. Complication: The arrival of Lancey and Yolland, and Owen's enthusiastic translation work. This introduces the mapping project.
3. Climax: The personal tragedy of Yolland and Maire’s romantic, non-verbal connection, swiftly followed by Yolland's disappearance (the outbreak of physical violence).
4. Catastrophe/Disorder: Lancey announces retaliation—the destruction of property and livestock unless Yolland is found. The hedge school is closed, the community is threatened, and Hugh and Owen face an uncertain future. The old order is utterly destroyed by military rule.

4. Language, Violence, and Audience Impact

The Way Dramatic Language is Used to Heighten Tragedy

Language is arguably the central tragic device in the play.

• Miscommunication and Isolation: Most of the characters cannot fully understand each other (Gaelic vs. English). This barrier creates heartbreaking scenes, such as the romantic dialogue between Yolland and Maire, where they speak separate languages but communicate through emotion and gesture. This heightens the pity when their relationship ends in violence.
• Linguistic Erasure: The repeated translation and renaming of places (e.g., Poll na gCaorach becoming The Pool of the Sheep) shows language being stripped of its meaning, poetry, and history. This process is tragic because it systematically destroys collective memory.
• Irony: Friel employs profound irony. The audience hears all the characters speaking perfect English, which is the very language they are mourning the arrival of. This theatrical device forces the audience to confront the medium of the tragedy itself.

The Significance of Violence and Revenge

While the play contains little *onstage* bloodshed, the threat of violence and the violence of cultural annihilation are significant.

• Sublimated Violence: The mapping project is an act of linguistic violence—a non-physical assault on identity. The loss of a name is the first step toward the annihilation of the place.
• Physical Violence: Yolland's disappearance is the tragic tipping point. It signals the failure of language and compromise, leading directly to the military imposition of order (Lancey's threats of revenge). The violence offstage guarantees the impending catastrophe onstage.

Affecting the Audience (Pity, Fear, and Human Understanding)

The tragedy profoundly affects the audience by forcing them to recognize the pain of displacement and cultural loss.

• Pity (Pathos): We feel immense pity for the characters trapped by history—especially Maire, who wants to learn English for a better life but risks losing her soul in the process, and Yolland, who dies simply for loving a foreign land.
• Fear (Phobos): The audience experiences fear of the immense, faceless power of bureaucracy and colonialism. We fear the erasure of heritage and the vulnerability of identity in the face of unstoppable change.
• Understanding the Human Condition: The play is a profound commentary on communication and belonging. It shows that identity is not fixed but is contained entirely within the language we speak, and that true communication often happens outside of words entirely.