“The mind-forg’d manacles I hear” – Invisible Imprisonments of Mind and Body in The Crock of Gold

 

Many students travelling with me in Ireland this semester are Criminal Justice majors.  They are taking a class in their area of study and seeing (or not really seeing) the Irish Guarda (police). They also hope to tour a prison.  They have noted that there seem to be fewer prisons, and it would appear that the police presence is not as visible on the streets as one might find in the states.  I think they use cameras for surveillance more, which is an interesting difference.  I wonder if the long history of law enforcement, from what some would call an occupying and oppressive force, creates a desire for a less visual presence of authority. 

In James Stephens’ The Crock of Gold, the police that come to arrest and imprison the Philosopher are a bumbling, comic, absurd lot. They are like a slapstick retelling of the old Keystone Cops.  For Stephens, part of the police officers’ problem is that they enforce un-natural law. The Philosopher, who is also a comic representation himself states “I do not see any necessity in nature for policemen, . . . nor do I understand how the custom first originated.  Dogs and cats do not employ these extraordinary mercenaries, and yet their polity is progressive and orderly” (93). The novel suggests that there needs to be a balance in all things, and yet it clearly presents the importance of the heart (instead of just the head), the passions (instead of only reason), and the “divine imagination” that can be awakened in all of us (rather the rigidness of mundane reality and law). 

At the end of the book, Angus Og (an old Irish god) has been reawakened, replacing the foreign gods (like Pan), and the newer man-made forces like the police. He tells his people “The dark people of the Formor have ye in thrall; and upon your minds have fastened a band of lead, your hearts are hung with iron, and about your loins a cincture of brass impressed, woeful!  Believe it, that the sun does shine, the flowers grow, and the birds sing pleasantly in the trees.  The free winds are everywhere” (140). In this hopeful conclusion, the Philosopher is freed from prison, and the people are freed from the prisons they have constructed in their minds.  We could hope the same for ourselves.