Purgatory

W.B. Yeats’s play “Purgatory” depicts the restlessness of spirit after the death and bothers the living beings. Purgatory refers to the place or state into which the soul

passes after death to become purified of pardonable sins before going to heaven. In the play, there are two characters as old man and his son. Beside that there is dead spirit who hovers here and there for his part. The play basically concerns with the sorrow of the dead and the consequences of the crimes of the dead upon the living ones. The father of the old man committed a great crime by wasting the property by drinking and destroying the honorable house and deprived his son from education and inheritance of the property. As a result, the old man, when he was sixteen, murdered his own father. In the play, the ruined house is often visited by the remorseful spirit of old man’s father and mother. The suffering spirit is not purified to enter the heaven because of its crimes and sins during alive.

During the anniversary of the old man’s mother’s wedding night, the old man finds that the suffering spirit visits the house again and again in the ruined house. The old man sees the ghost of his mother and hears the hoof-beats of his father’s horse. The boy sees nothing and calls his father mad. The old man discloses the history of the destroyed house to his son. The boy threatens to kill the old man. Now the old man is afraid of his son may repeat the disgraceful tradition of his father. The old man decides to stop the polluted tradition which may last for generations. In the meantime, the boy also sees the spirit of his grandparents and he becomes shocked. The old man suddenly stabs his son to death to finish all the consequences. The stage is darkened and the bare tree appears “like a purified soul” in the white light. The old man at the tree explains why he has killed the boy. He wants to put an end the chain of consequences. When he bends to pick up the scattered money, he again hears the hoof-beats of the dead spirit and sadly thinks that the consequence has not come to an end. He laments that he has killed his son without any obvious purpose. Finally, the old man prays to God to free the tormented soul and calm them.

Summary Written by-Binisha Ghalan