Purgatory

Purgatory
                                                                                                    -W. B. Yeats


“Purgatory,” a play by W. B. Yeats, is about the sufferings of the spirits. Yeats believes in the life after death. “Purgatory” also presents a story of a soul that is unable to purge itself.

The play opens with the old man coming back to his old house with his son. His mother was a very rich girl who married a simple groom. The marriage was not approved by the family but the girl didn’t listen to anybody. But she faced her death while giving birth to the very Old Man. After the death of his wife, the groom began to drink a lot and misused the property which was not liked by the Old Man. When he was 16 years old, his father came drunk late night and put the house on fire. It made him furious. So, he killed his father with a knife and threw him into the fire. Then he fled to the other land fearing to be punished. He wondered here and there until he became a peddler on the road. He married to a tinker’s daughter and gave birth to his son. It was the anniversary of his mother’s marriage when he returned to his hometown.

The Old Man and the Boy are in front of the destroyed house. The Old Man sees the ghost of his mother wondering inside the house. The soul of his mother was unable to free itself from its memory, and was repeating the consequences again and again. Later, the Old Man saw his father going towards his mother to have relationship with her. The Old Man called his mother not to touch his drunkard father. When described by the Old Man, the Boy could not see anything but just the broken windows of the house.

The Old Man dropped some coins on the ground. The Boy planned to run away with the coins but the Old Man saw it and they quarreled to each other. The Boy threatened to kill the Old Man because he was the murderer of his grandfather and was very old then. But later, when he saw the ghost of his grandfather on the window of the damaged house, he closed his eyes. The Old Man murdered his son using the same knife that he used to kill his father thinking that the soul of his mother would be purged from its sin. But unfortunately, he heard the beating of his father’s horse, and knew that he was failed to free the soul of his mother. However, he hoped, one day the God would show sympathy to her and her soul would be purged itself from its sin.