“When I cast my mind back to that summer of 1936, different kinds of memories offer themselves to me.”
The events of the narrative are situated from the opening line as a recollection from an earlier time by Michael. Interestingly, Michael only appears in younger form on stage, but as a character identified only as Boy.
“When I saw Uncle Jack for the first time the reason I was so shocked by his appearance was that I expected—well, I suppose, the hero from the schoolboy’s book.”
Uncle Jack has been away from the family for twenty-five years in service as a missionary in Africa. His return brings a man who is not the same one that left. He is not just exhibiting symptoms of cognitive deterioration and possible mental illness, but has undergone a spiritual renovation as well. Dancing at Lughnasa is a play that pits traditional Irish Catholic traditions and ritual against its pagan counterparts within framework of how the introduction of new ideas transform convention and creates the tension which produces progress and evolution. Not by coincidence does Uncle Jack’s re-appearance from the past collide with the family’s first purchase of a new invention sweeping the world: the radio.
“Savages. That’s what they are! And what pagan practices they have are of no concerns of ours—none whatever! It’s a sorry day to hear talk like that in a Christian home. A Catholic home.”
Kate is the oldest of the five sisters in the family at the center of the story; a 40-year old schoolteacher called “the gander” behind her back who is the symbolic incarnation of Irish Catholic values and tradition who stands in thematic opposition to Jack and his adoption and admiration of pagan ritual during over the course of his quarter-century stay.
“Oh yes, the Ryangans are a remarkable people: there is no distinction between the religious and thei secular in their culture. And, of course, their capacity for fun, for laughing, for practical jokes—they’ve such open hearts.”
This is one of many observations about the pagan rituals of Africa which care placed in juxtaposition with Kate’s conceptualization of, well, pretty much any non-Christian belief system and exercise of ritual observation. Although it may sound as if this quote is a direct response to Kate’s commentary on savages, that is not the case. The two quotes come from different parts of the play, but together they work as a unified whole to reveal the thematic chasm represented by Kate and Jack.
