Summary
Not long after, Public is saying a rosary, kneeling with his back to the audience. Madge is standing nearby, and S.B. is kneeling near Gar. Private tells Public that he will be saying his rosary alone soon enough, unless Lizzy and Con do so. Private then goes on a monologue about the American women Gar is going to meet, and the fact that he is destined to be a bachelor. He narrates Gar's future thusly: "Fated to be alone, a man without intimates; something of an enigma. Who is he, this silent one? Where is he from? Where does he go? Every night we see him walking beneath the trees along the bank of the canal, his black cloak swinging behind him, his eyes lost in thought, his servant following him at a respectful distance."
Private imagines Gar meeting a beautiful 19-year-old girl when he is 43, and falling in love with her. Suddenly, Madge interrupts his fantasy to tell him to keep praying. Private continues, as Public prays, wondering if S.B. ever dreams, ever thinks of Gar's mother. Private goes through his own memory of a day 15 years earlier, in May, when the two of them went fishing in a blue boat. He says, "...between us at that moment there was this great happiness, this great joy—you must have felt it too—it was so much richer than a content—it was a great, great happiness, and active, bubbling joy—although nothing was being said—just the two of us fishing on a lake on a showery day—and young as I was I felt, I knew, that this was precious, and your hat was soft on the top of my ears—I can feel it—and I shrank down into your coat—and then, then for no reason at all except that you were happy too, you began to sing..."
As S.B. and Public begin to talk, Private urges Public to ask S.B. if he remembers the fishing day. Public sheepishly asks him what happened to the boat. S.B. remembers, but they are interrupted by the arrival of The Canon, who is there to play chess with S.B. As Canon speaks to S.B., Private Gar is able to predict every single comment he makes, then says that he can tell it's going to rain because his leg feels tense. As Madge comes in with tea and biscuits, she jokes to Gar that she wants to pour the tea water on the heads of the two old men. Public tells Madge to go visit her new grand-niece.
Madge agrees to go, and as she goes, Public asks her why his mother married S.B. and not Master Boyle. "She married the better man by far," says Madge. Public asks if Maire's leaving Boyle is what made him start drinking, and she tells him to ask S.B., before going. Public goes into the bedroom, while Private stays in the kitchen. Public mimes the actions of Private while Private stands between S.B. and Canon and dictates their chess game as if it were a sporting match. Private Gar notes that Canon is someone who can understand his and S.B.'s connection and translate it into "Christian terms that will make life bearable for us all." However, he gets annoyed that Canon refuses to do this.
Public puts on a recording of Mendelssohn and Private tries to get Canon and S.B.'s attention. "...Why can we not even look at each other?" he says to them, before saying decisively, "To hell with all strong silent men!" As Public sulks in his room, Canon and S.B. notice and acknowledge the music coming from Gar's room. "All he asks is to sit in there and play them records all day," S.B. says, and Canon asks about the fact that Gar is leaving the next day.
Part 2. "The small hours of the morning." Gar is in his room, while S.B. looks at Gar's things in the kitchen. When he coughs, Gar awakens and sees that he only has four hours until he has to leave. When Public and Private go into the kitchen, they are shocked to see S.B. sitting at the table. Private encourages Public to speak to his father candidly. Public tells S.B. a number of logistical points about things he left in certain places before his departure. S.B. begins talking about the fact that cans do not sell as well as they use to, since people don't use open fires as much.
S.B. tells Public that he was listening to the weather report for Philadelphia and heard it would be windy and rainy. He then tells Gar to sit near the back of the plane, since that would be the safest place to be if there was an accident. Public then asks S.B. if he remembers the blue boat. S.B. seems to recall it, and Public says, "It doesn't matter who owned it. It doesn't even matter that it was blue. But d'you remember one afternoon in May—we were up there—the two of us—and it must have rained because you put your jacket round my shoulders and gave me your hat—" He reminds S.B. that he sang "All Round My Hat I'll Wear a Green Coloured Ribbono." S.B. does not remember and thinks that it's more likely that he sang "The Flower of Sweet Strabane."
Private begins to mock Public and Public rushes away to the shop. S.B. goes off towards the scullery as Madge comes in from visiting her grand-niece. "They're going to call it Brigid," she says. As Madge takes off her coat, S.B. asks her if she thinks he'll be okay without Gar. He begins reminiscing about Gar wearing a sailor suit, refusing to go to school so he can help with the family business. He also remembers how happy and chatty Gar used to be. Abruptly, he wonders if he was too old for Gar's mother.
Madge begins to say that Gar's heart will break when he leaves, but gets distracted by her own disappointment about the fact that her niece did not name the baby after her. Suddenly, she remembers something and puts an envelope of money in Gar's coat. Public and Private come in and Public talks about the fact that Madge's niece has her name, but Madge does not correct him. Madge goes off to bed, and Private and Public are left alone. "God, Boy, why do you have to leave? Why? Why?" Private asks, to which Public replies, "I don't know. I—I—I don't know."
Analysis
In this final section, we see that Gar is not only leaving behind Ireland and the culture that he comes from, but also its religious structure. Episode 3 opens with Gar, S.B., and Madge all saying a rosary, a nightly Catholic ritual of devotion. As they do so, Private narrates to Public that he will likely be doing rosaries alone in America, and seems doubtful that Lizzy and Con say it. In this moment, we see that Gar is moving to a more secular and more religiously diverse society in America, where Catholicism is not as sewn into the fabric of the culture.
After the emotional outburst of the previous section, Gar is back to his lighthearted reveries in the beginning of Episode 3. While saying a rosary, he imagines his love life in America, the fact that he is destined to be a bachelor, and live as a mysterious character who answers to no one. He goes on an imaginative journey, pretending he will live with a servant and live out his days with short-lived romances. He is playful in his imaginings, picturing himself in a long cloak, falling in love with a young woman in his penthouse, attended by a respectful servant. This sequence shows just how emotionally complicated Gar's situation is; as much as he is heartbroken and scared to leave Ireland behind, he cannot help but feel excited about all of the prospects awaiting him in America. Private sings the song, as the rosary ends.
This affectionate reverie dissipates yet again when Gar finds himself yet again unable to communicate with his father. Canon, a friend of S.B.'s, arrives to play his nightly chess game with S.B. As Public Gar resigns himself to the interruption of his last evening with his father, Private Gar stays in the kitchen mourning the fact that neither Gar nor Canon will acknowledge the fact that he is leaving soon. This fact is all the more excruciating because he thinks that Canon might actually be able to put the momentousness of the evening in perspective. While S.B. seems incapable of expressive communication, Canon is a man who has some sense of meaning and significance, and the fact that he is not helping to bridge the gulf between father and son is that much more reprehensible. In an angry outburst, Private Gar says, "To hell with all strong silent men!" This line might be taken as a thematic center of the entire play, an indictment of the masculine silence that keeps Gar feeling so disconnected from the world.
In this final section, we finally hear from the ever-silent S.B. When he cannot sleep, he and Gar have a conversation in the kitchen that is interrupted by Gar's insecurities about being too sentimental in front of his father. After he's left, S.B. becomes forthcoming with Madge, telling her about Gar as a child, when he refused to go to school because he wanted to work at the shop. In this moment we see that the prospect of losing Gar is too painful for S.B. to handle, because he has such fond memories of Gar wanting to work for him. In this moment, we see that S.B.'s silence is not due to alienation from his son, but because of his deep and almost overwhelming identification with Gar, and his own emotional reticence.
The play, for all its emotional build-up, ends on an ambiguous note. When S.B. does not have the exact same memory that Gar has of fishing, Gar leaves the room, unable to bring himself to speak with his father anymore. Then, Madge arrives home, clearly upset that her grandniece is not named after her. S.B. asks Madge if she thinks he will be able to run the shop without Gar, and reminisces about what a chatty and eager boy Gar had been. Friel stages a group of people missing one another emotionally, withholding things, and fearing that they have said too much when they have barely said enough. In this way, the play stages the tragedy of the everyday, the ways that people's expectations are impossible to meet perfectly, and the disappointments that result. The final moment leaves Gar's future completely ambiguous. Private Gar asks Public Gar why he has to leave, and Public does not have an answer. The question of immigration is left up in the air, and the audience must wonder whether Gar actually goes through with it.
