BY THE BOG OF CATS
Act One
Green: critical viewpoints
Red: context
Blue: quotes from the text
Pink: language devices/methods
Orange: structural devices
Purple: comparison to the Penelopiad
Black: analysis
"Carr’s play is an outrageously gruesome rejection of “tradition,”"
Stagecraft
Colour palette
- "white landscape of ice and snow" reflects a frozen climate (time has stopped/the past
will forever remain/entrapment/preservation of past emotions) conveys purity and
foreshadows death (winter) (pathetic fallacy), "black swan" metaphor for an
unpredictable event (loyalty as they mate for life/seduction/dark feminine
energy/sexuality), "blood" symbol of trauma that "trail[s]" after the swan (Hester),
disrupts the white
- contrast of black and white imitates newspapers (holding stories of the catastrophes
during The Troubles)
- black swan = Morrigan: an Irish war goddess who changes form into a black raven to
perch on those who are soon to die/The Children of Lir: swan as a forewarning of death
and vessel for the soul
The Bog
- represents preservation (natural time capsule), liminality "testify to the complex
interaction of nature and human culture"
(https://breac.nd.edu/articles/dark-and-deepboglands-in-irish-literature/) associated with
reclaiming Ireland's national identity
- Carr's work uses… "the bog to stage a critique of the gender politics of land ownership in
a post-colonial context"
(http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1826/resurrecting-the-bog-queen-exploring-the-
gender-politics-of-irelands-bogs-in-postcolonial-and-nationalist-literature)
- This gendering of Irish land as virgin was used to justify colonial intervention
- Thus, the discourse of colonialism paints colonial land as passive, feminized, and awaiting
masculine, colonial intervention.
- new Irish nationalisms continued to fall into sexist traps that positioned women as idealized
“bearers of the nation” (McClintock, 1993, p. 62) without granting them political agency.
- Carr's critique contradicts the utopian Irish Celtic Tiger years (rapid economic growth
1990s-2000s that encouraged Irish to move past their history and embrace neo colonial
modernity) which resulted in the "forgetting" of the bog much like Big Josie
"forgot"/abandoned her daughter, similarly Carthage tries to forget Hester by taking full
custody of Josie/erase his violent past through his marriage and inheritance
Act One
Green: critical viewpoints
Red: context
Blue: quotes from the text
Pink: language devices/methods
Orange: structural devices
Purple: comparison to the Penelopiad
Black: analysis
"Carr’s play is an outrageously gruesome rejection of “tradition,”"
Stagecraft
Colour palette
- "white landscape of ice and snow" reflects a frozen climate (time has stopped/the past
will forever remain/entrapment/preservation of past emotions) conveys purity and
foreshadows death (winter) (pathetic fallacy), "black swan" metaphor for an
unpredictable event (loyalty as they mate for life/seduction/dark feminine
energy/sexuality), "blood" symbol of trauma that "trail[s]" after the swan (Hester),
disrupts the white
- contrast of black and white imitates newspapers (holding stories of the catastrophes
during The Troubles)
- black swan = Morrigan: an Irish war goddess who changes form into a black raven to
perch on those who are soon to die/The Children of Lir: swan as a forewarning of death
and vessel for the soul
The Bog
- represents preservation (natural time capsule), liminality "testify to the complex
interaction of nature and human culture"
(https://breac.nd.edu/articles/dark-and-deepboglands-in-irish-literature/) associated with
reclaiming Ireland's national identity
- Carr's work uses… "the bog to stage a critique of the gender politics of land ownership in
a post-colonial context"
(http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1826/resurrecting-the-bog-queen-exploring-the-
gender-politics-of-irelands-bogs-in-postcolonial-and-nationalist-literature)
- This gendering of Irish land as virgin was used to justify colonial intervention
- Thus, the discourse of colonialism paints colonial land as passive, feminized, and awaiting
masculine, colonial intervention.
- new Irish nationalisms continued to fall into sexist traps that positioned women as idealized
“bearers of the nation” (McClintock, 1993, p. 62) without granting them political agency.
- Carr's critique contradicts the utopian Irish Celtic Tiger years (rapid economic growth
1990s-2000s that encouraged Irish to move past their history and embrace neo colonial
modernity) which resulted in the "forgetting" of the bog much like Big Josie
"forgot"/abandoned her daughter, similarly Carthage tries to forget Hester by taking full
custody of Josie/erase his violent past through his marriage and inheritance
