Mind Style and Characterization in John McGahern’s The Dark

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to offer an in-depth analysis of John McGahern’s critical statements on the Irish society of the mid 1960s. This is carried out by combining the notions of mind style (Semino, 2002), split selves (Emmot, 2002) and the blending theory (Fauconnier and Turner, 1994, 2002). The description of two of the main characters of the novel (Mahoney, a widower, and Father Gerald, a priest) and two of the most relevant scenes (the Corpus Christi procession and the young protagonist’s sexual arousal with an advert torn from a newspaper) are analysed in terms of multiple metonymic correspondences which interact within the blend to yield a series of antagonistic metaphors. Through the eyes of the teenage narrator, McGahern makes an outrageous ideological statement against Puritanism and Catholicism.