Previous
Themes
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Jerusalem, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Johnny “Rooster” Byron is a habitual liar. In the various monologues he delivers throughout the play, rarely does he tell a true story, and it is difficult to discern the truth from his lies. But Jerusalem does not present Johnny’s lies as malicious or immoral. Instead, the play presents a modern-day form of mythmaking in a world that would be spiritually empty without it. Everyone who hangs around Johnny is skeptical of his stories, yet they always encourage him to tell them. In one particularly memorable example, Johnny speaks of the time he caught a bullet between his teeth while still in the womb. When Ginger doubts the veracity of Johnny’s tale on the grounds that babies don’t have teeth, Johnny explains that all Byron boys are born with teeth, hair on their chests, and their own cloaks—details that are all clearly untrue. In general, whenever Ginger questions Johnny’s stories, they become more outlandish. Indeed, Ginger is generally the one who openly doubts Johnny, sometimes playful and other times angrily. However, his doubt only causes Johnny’s tall tales to expand and grow, making Ginger a coconspirator in the mythmaking process. Despite his constant doubts, then, Ginger actively encourages Johnny to tell stories and, suggesting that he secretly enjoys hearing them.
The most powerful story Johnny tells in the play involves him meeting a giant who gifted him a large drum. In Johnny’s story, the giant tells Johnny to bang on the drum whenever he was in trouble and the other giants will come running to help him. At the end of the play, while Johnny is still bleeding after Troy and his lackeys assaulted him, Johnny burns down his home and beats the drum, all while cursing the local council and the people forcing him to move. It is a moment of primal rage, as Johnny calls on the giants—whom he presumably invented—to come help him. In this moment, myth blends with reality. In the end, though, Johnny’s mythical giants fail to protect him from the government officials who have the legal power to force Johnny off his property. Thus, while myths can entertain and serve as a form of escapism, the play also suggests that such stories are limited in their ability to undermine the powerful institutions that shape reality.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Compare and contrast themes from other texts to this theme…
Lies and Myths ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Lies and Myths appears in each act of Jerusalem. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
How often theme appears:
act length:
Get the entire Jerusalem LitChart as a printable PDF.
Lies and Myths Quotes in Jerusalem
Below you will find the important quotes in Jerusalem related to the theme of Lies and Myths.
Prologue
Quotes
PHAEDRA: And did those feet in ancient time,
Walk upon England’s mountains green,
And was the holy lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen.
She beams, pulls a string and the wings flap.
And did the Countenance Divine,
Shine forth upon those clouded hills,
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among those dark satanic—
Thumping music. She flees.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Act 1
Quotes
JOHNNY: I ain’t scared of Kennet and Avon. I been running rings round that lot since before you were born. There’s council officials ten years dead, wake up in cold wet graces hollering the name of Rooster Byron. I’m in their dreams and their worst nightmares. Besides. My lawyers in New York deal with all that. Here, Davey? Did you smash my telly up?
DAVEY: No, son. You did. With a cricket bat.
DAVEY: You know what I reckon. I reckon she’s been got by a werewolf. She’s been turned away from The ‘Rakers, wandered off into the night, in tears, whereupon a werewolf has heard her tragic sobs, and he’s followed her through the brush and he’s pounced. He’s torn her arms and legs off and eaten her virgin heart. Seriously. In a day or two, someone’ll find a bloody patch of turf in a clearing, with just these pink fairy wings flapping in the breeze.
Act 2
Quotes
JOHNNY: It’s true. My mother was a virgin when she bore me!
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
JOHNNY: Always search a Byron boy at birth. You never know what he’s got on him. A Byron boy comes with three things. A cloak and a dagger, and his own teeth. He comes fully equipped. He doesn’t need nothing. And when he dies, he lies in the ground like a lump of granite.
JOHNNY: He said, ‘This is for you. If you ever get in any bother, or you need a hand, just bang this drum and us, the giants, we’ll hear it, and we’ll come.’
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
LEE: Ley lines is lines of ancient energy, stretching across the landscape. Linking ancient sites. Like this one, the one you’ve got her goes…(Thinks.) Avebury Standing Stones, through Silbury Hill, right down to Stonehenge, and on to Glastonbury. That ley line comes clean through here. We’re standing on it right now. Seriously. If you was a Druid, this wood is holy. This is holy land.
Act 3
Quotes
JOHNNY: School is a lie. Prison’s a waste of time. Girls are wondrous. Grab your fill. No man was ever lain in his barrow wishing he’d loved one less woman. Don’t listen to no one and nothing but what your own heart bids. Lie. Cheat. Steal. Fight to the death. Don’t give up. Show me your teeth.
JOHNNY: Come, you drunken spirits. Come, you battalions. You fields of ghosts who walk these green plains still. Come, you giants!
Relentlessly he beats the drum. Faster. Faster. Staring out. He pounds on and on until the final blow rings out and…
Blackout
Curtain.
The End.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
