Existentialism in T. S. Eliot's The Family Reunion

EXISTENTIALISM IN T. S. ELIOT'S THE FAMILY REUNION EXISTENTIALISM furnishes a valuable key to the meaning of The Family Reunion for four reasons: (1) The underlying mood of the play is Angst, that is, existential anxiety. (2) The fundamental ontological assumptions in the play are essentially the same as those asserted by the important existentialist thinkers, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers , and even Sartre. (3) The structure of values presupposed by the play is basically existentialist. (4) Harry's situation and the pattern of his action in the play, too, are basically existentialist; indeed, Harry is the very model of the Existentialists' hero, an authentic, questing self in a world of inauthenticity. The compass of this article can hardly do more than suggest possibilities which an exploration of the relevance of Existentialism can have for an understanding of Eliot's poetry and plays. Nevertheless, the reader familiar with the works of Eliot will immediately perceive that similar analysis may be made of The Cocktail Party, ''The Waste Land," ''The Hollow Men," and other works. A recent article in Modern Drama has already noted the relevance of Kierkegaard's Sickness Unto Death to an understanding of the meaning of "happening" in The Cocktail Party;1 now the relevance of the whole substance and direction of genuine existentialist thinking (properly defined from study of serious existentialist philosophers, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Sartre ) to the writings of Eliot should be studied. This article, however, will confine itself to some existentialist ideas and concerns that have particular relevance to The Family Reunion. Eliot's proclaimed Christian orthodoxy encourages an existentialist reading of The Family Reunion, for the analysis of man's predicament and potentialities by existentialist thinkers is basically similar to that submitted by 'Orthodox Christian theology; indeed, the genesis of modem Existentialism in Kierkegaard had a profoundly Christian basis. Such recent titles as Carl Michalson's Christianity and the Existentialists2 and Will Herberg's Four Existentialist Theologiarl,sS suggest this close relationship, and the ontology of "atheist" Martin Heidegger has close parallels with orthodox Christian belief, as is indicated in John Macquarrie's An Existentialist Theology: A Comparison 1. Thomas Hanzo, "Kierkegaard and T. s. Eliot: 'The Meaning of Happening' in The Cocktail Party," Modem Drama, III (May, 1960), 5l1r-59. 2.. (New York, 1956). 3. (Garden City, N. Y., 1958). 174 1962 EXISTENTIALISM IN ELIOT'S THE FAMILY REUNION 175 of Heidegger and Bultmann.4 An existentialist reading of The Family Reunion, then, does not deny Eliot's Christian orthodoxy but rather helps to define more clearly the form it takes in the play. The underlying mood of The Family Reunion is anxiety. Both Harry and the rest of the family feel a certain dread; but in Harry this dread leads to his leaving Wishwood, while the family continue in their same patterns. Why? At this point the conception and analysis of Angst by existentialist thinkers helps to explain the situation and the basic difference between Harry's anxiety and that of the rest of the family. The major existentialist thinkers-Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Sartre-all assert that anxiety is the basic mood of human being-inthe -world. This basic or existential anxiety may be vividly recognized and felt or it may be repressed and unrecognized, but it is in either instance an underlying mood. This anxiety should not be confused with ordinary fear, for fear has an object, however precise or generalized; anxiety or dread, on the other hand, is a mood with no clearly definable object generating it.5 To be conscious of this dread is to feel true anxiety; to repress it results in a false or counterfeit form of anxiety.6 In the play, the vivid anguish of Harry corresponds to the true form of anxiety. The counterfeit form is displayed repeatedly in Amy and the family-more specifically Charles, Gerald, Violet, and Ivyas an effort to shut out and suppress unpleasant realities. In the counterfeit form, this anxiety occasionally disturbs the family but serves no positive purpose. The true form, in Harry, however, serves as an unrelenting spur to authenticity. The anxiety of the family is clearly an existential anxiety: it has no precise object. It is...