Brendan Behan:Biography

“Good or Bad, It’s Better to Be Criticized than Be Ignored”

Brendan Behan has been described as a Dublin citizen who has worn many a hat. Some of these hats include that of a house painter, a drunkard, an acknowledged member of the I.R.A., and finally a playwright and novelist. A staunch nationalist and self-proclaimed “messenger” (Boyle 38) for the I.R.A., Behan experienced first hand the strife and complications of Ireland’s underground struggle against the rule of England, and many of his plays relate back to his experiences through military settings and themes. Behan’s two most popular works that Behan produced were “The Quare Fellow” and “The Hostage.” Both of these plays contain themes that repeat throughout Brendan’s other works, such as the negative effects of human cruelty, the struggle for one’s self-image, and the unpredictable and shapeless nature to society.

Brendan Behan, born into a lower class family in the tenements of Dublin, was raised with strong nationalistic beliefs. Brendan was officially accepted into the I.R.A. at the age of fourteen, and shortly thereafter began performing certain tasks. At the age of seventeen, Brendan was arrested in Liverpool for being involved in the I.R.A. In his possession police found explosives and a full “Sinn Fein’s conjuror’s outfit” (Borstal Boy). However, when Brendan Behan began writing his more popular plays, the strong-willed nationalist of his younger years came across to audiences as a playwright struggling to find any sort of cohesiveness or even plot in his plays. His most famous and acclaimed works were based on the time he spent in jail after his I.R.A. offenses. The traditional makeup of English theatre was shattered by plays like “The Quare Fellow” and ”The Hostage” or “An Gaill” as it was initially named when it was written in Gaelic. Brendan Behan creates a contemporary and isolated world in each of his plays. This approach reflected the current aspect of Ireland, trying to find its self-image in an era following the heroic battles taken toward liberty, and just before tensions rise again. In the two plays discussed above, Brendan Behan explores the self-image of an Irish republican, and contrasts different perspectives and stereotypes of the time.

Brendan Behan’s “The Quare Fellow” documents the different lives and emotions of prisoners the night before a fellow prisoner is to be executed. Behan explores the relationships between the prisoners that are serving short terms, or “lags,” and those that have life sentences, and how they react to the oppressive society in which they are forced to live. For the experienced prisoners, the horrors of execution and jail have been ingrained and have desensitized them to reality. The elder prisoners are stagnant in both their thoughts and their physical characteristics. For instance, Behan’s two younger inmates constantly wander the different wings looking to see the female washwomen and learn the stories of other inmates. One of the younger prisoners expresses this belief when he makes the statement, “I suppose when you get old though, you don’t much care about women” (Behan 54), exhibiting the optimism he still maintains that the elder prisoners have long lost. The other inmates, like Dunlavin and Neighbor, have relegated themselves to their own cells. Dunlavin constantly retreats to his cell, and must be called from his cell by the other prisoners in order to speak. Prisoner B and the others are completely consumed by the fate of the “quare fellow,” and whether he shall be executed in the morning, much like the Monsieur in “The Hostage,” who is completely brainwashed by the idea of revolution although he can do nothing about the outcome. In an attempt to disassociate themselves from the overbearing structure of the prison, the prisoners speculate and even bet on the death of the condemned man. The one character that has just been pardoned from execution cannot bear to listen to this type of dialogue because he still has not yet learned to adapt his social skills to this new humanity.

The dialogue between the prisoners resembles the dialogue in Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” because no epiphany is reached but the characters manage to create a surreal world on their own, desensitized from the normalcy of the real world. The experienced prisoners begin to discuss the two men facing execution and applaud one man for the way in which he murdered his wife, “But a man with a silver topped cane, that’s a man that’s a cut above meat-choppers whichever way you look at it” (42). The prisoners’ disparaging outlook on freedom and their nonchalant manner of discussing crime and murder force the newly pardoned prisoner to hang himself on his first day in the cell. In the beginning of act two, the prisoners are busy digging the grave for the man to be executed in the morning. Again the discussion of the impending execution scares the new life prisoner and he isolates himself. But even during a solemn and ritualistic task as this, they continue to make light of the situation by constantly demeaning each other and talking about the joys of smoking and drinking. While digging the grave, they begin to take bets on the possibility of the execution (76-77). Behan purposely illustrates this habit in order to satire the image of an Irish wake, where drinking and regaling of stories almost dominate the corpse and sanctity of the dead. Like the idea of the wake, the humor among the prisoners in “The Quare Fellow” is covering up a more tragic experience.

The surreal world that the prisoners recreate through their dialogue is confusing and unorthodox when compared to the standards and morals of the outside world. They pass judgments on their fellow cellmates on completely different criteria. Dunlavin’s agitation toward living next to a sex offender, or “a bloody sex mechanic” (62), is understandable. But when he discovers that the other fellow is a murderer, Dunlavin sternly says, “Killing your wife is a natural class of a thing, could happen to the best of us” (43). This example of how the different prisoners classify each other is a satirical representation of man’s ability to rationalize his own self-image.

Just like the family members at a wake, these men