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Dialect
Scene One
Explanation and Analysis—Old Ship:
In the following passage from Scene 1, Paddy uses imagery to paint a romanticized picture of the past, describing the voyage of an older merchant vessel, likely from the 17th or 18th century:
PADDY: Oh, to be scudding south again wid the power of the Trade Wind driving her on steady through the nights and the days! Full sail on her! Nights and days! Nights when the foam of the wake would be flaming wid fire, when the sky’d be blazing and winking wid stars. Or the full of the moon maybe.
In his monologue, Paddy uses vivid imagery to describe the ship of his imagination. The voyage this vessel takes is larger than life, moving through nights "when the foam of the wake would be flaming wid fire." While the waves could not literally be on fire, Paddy uses this bit of exaggeration to blend reality and fantasy. Paddy rejects modernity and industrialization, viewing these things as dehumanizing. Instead, he prefers to ruminate on imagined scenes of nature and epic voyage. For Yank, on the other hand, it is necessary that he find humanity in the industrialized, modern world because the alternative is too grim. In this way, Paddy and Yank emerge as foils for one another.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Nostalgia:
In Scene 1, Yank and Paddy serve both as debate partners and narrative foils, each representing a commonly held stance on "progress" during the modernist period. On the one hand, there is Paddy: a working-class man, to be sure, but a man fixed on the beauty of nature and the romanticism of the past. Paddy rejects progress and industrialization as antithetical to the human spirit, which he seems to think will languish if it becomes too dependent upon and integrated within the machine.
Paddy's nostalgia almost verges on unreality. Note, for instance, the following passage from Scene 1, in which Paddy describes an old ship sailing through the night:
PADDY: Then you’d see [the ship] driving through the gray night, her sails stretching aloft all silver and white, not a sound on the deck, the lot of us dreaming dreams, till you’d believe ’twas no real ship at all you was on but a ghost ship like the Flying Dutchman they say does be roaming the seas forevermore widout touching a port.
Paddy alludes to "old world" legends, comparing his imagined ship to the Flying Dutchman—a ghostly pirate ship of European myth. Where Paddy removes himself from reality, Yank does the opposite: he throws himself headfirst into prospects for the future, embracing modernity and seeing the potential for freedom in it. For Paddy, freedom lies in the past; for Yank, freedom lies in the future.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Industrialization:
In the following passage from Scene 1, Paddy delivers a monologue in opposition to the idea that men should make machines—in this instance, a ship—their home. In order to get across this sentiment, Paddy uses the following metaphor:
PADDY: Ho-ho, divil mend you! Is it to belong to that you’re wishing? Is it a flesh and blood wheel of the engines you’d be?
Paddy asks Yank how he pictures himself, crafting an image of a "flesh and blood wheel of the engines," a man fully integrated with the machinery. This metaphor reveals a great deal about Paddy's mindset: he views machines, and industrialization in general, as antagonistic to humanity. In the metaphor Paddy constructs, Yank would be simply a "flesh and blood wheel," forced to turn at the whim of the engines, lacking autonomy. In Paddy's imagination, the machines control mankind, not the other way around.
Paddy's stark opposition to technology places him in opposition to Yank, who believes that the working class must find a home within the industrial world and take charge of it. The two men are foils for one another, representing the push and pull of opinion between the older and younger generations that arises whenever modernity clashes with tradition.
Related Themes:
