Exploration of Different Kinds of Alienation in T.S. Eliot’s The Family Reunion

Abstract

The Family Reunion occupies a prominent place in the history of the revival of poetic drama. The play is full of incidents which present existential crisis. It talks of alienations, separation, meaninglessness, purposelessness, non-attachment, fragmentation and relationlessness. It is Eliot’s first flourishing endeavor at employing current setting and speech in drama. The play begins with the family party to have a good time the 16th birthday of Amy, mother of the hero. Harry and his brothers, John and Arthur are expected to come home to join the party. Amy’s sisters, Ivy, Violet and Agatha have already arrived home. Charles and Gerald, two younger brothers of her dead husband are also present with Mary, daughter of the deceased cousin of the Dowager Lady (Amy). This family get-together is arranged after a gap of eight years. Amy has developed old and so suffers from cold. She complains of cold, of winters that have grown longer, and of the springs that never arrive soon. She feels cold as she is aged and has lost her vigour and youth. Even Wishwood has always been a cold place. Ivy advises him to go south in winter. Violet detests this place as it is full of crude and uncivilised people. Charles agrees with her and prefers a London Club, while Gerald suggests East. Everybody comes to the agreement that the younger age group is profligate, it lacks endurance, stamina and a sagacity of liability. Amy tells all the members that nobody should cite to Harry the excruciating past and refer to his marriage or talk about his wife. All of them are told to welcome him cordially. On his arrival Harry stares at the Eumenides which have chased him during the last eight years. All the people present there wonder at his weird behaviour. He is obsessed by the past that, while sailing on a ship in the mid-Atlantic, probably, he pushed his spouse over and killed her. This feeling of remorse hangs over his mind so profoundly that he is unable to sustain even the usual relations with his kith and kin. The play closes with the birthday rituals of Agatha and Mary. They place a cake and candles, and on each round they blow a few candles and end it with the hope that the curse would be ended. The play conforms to the practices of existentialism.