Discuss the Appropriateness of the title of Strife
Shakespeare is famous for giving proper titles to his plays. They at once conjure up the main point of the play-character, theme, incident, and moral of the play. John Galsworthy, too, is very cautious in assigning titles to his plays Silver Box, Justice, A Family Man, Loyalities, Exiled and the like Strife, conjures up the soul of the play. Strife means struggle and quarrels. In Strife, the struggle takes place on several levels -
(i) On the level of individuals,
(ii) On the level of groups, and
(iii) On the level of ideologies.
Strife on the Level of Individuals
In the present play, two individuals are at daggers drawn from the very beginning. They would rather die than bend. From many quarters they are told that the end of strife is devastation but to come to any compromise is alien to them. On one side is John Anthony, Chairman of the Trenartha Tin Plate Works and on the other, David Roberts, leader of the strikers.
They are representatives of capitalists and workers respectively. Both are great orators, having the capacity to draw the audience towards them by their superb oratory. Much of the stife of the play is the direct outcome of the unbending character of these two individuals.
The strike is 4-months long. The workers are starving but Roberts is not ready to agree unless every one of their demands in conceded. He knows the 'blood-suckers' most. He too, is, "thinking of the future of this country, threatened with the blackwaters of confusion threatened with mob government, threatened with what I cannot see." They remain always sticking to their guns. Both of them suffer tremendously, the one in the loss of fifty thousand Pounds and the other in the loss of his wife.
Both are "broken" but none of them budges a bit. William Arther, a good drama critic, informs that "The play arose in Mr Galsworthy's mind from his actually having seen in conflict the two men who were the prototypes of Anthony and Roberts and thus noted the waste and inefficacy arising from the clash of strong, accident that led him to place the two men in an environment of Capital and Labour."
Strife on the Level of Groups
It should be remembered that the above two main characters, Anthony and Roberts, may be individuals but they are types representing Capital and Labour respectively. Their thinking is poles, apart, always trying to defeat the other. Capitalists think that if one demand of the workmen is conceded they will raise six and at last a day will come when mobocracy will prevail.
Then their own condition will dwindle to the level of workman hence they should always be ruled 'with an iron hand. On the contrary, the other group of workers contend that their masters' sole aim is to fleece them and they have been doing so since the world started otherwise, doing nothing how they lead a life of six meals while workers, toiling day and night, are starving. This sense of explanation makes the labourers all the more pugnacious. In fine, if Anthony and Roberts had not been representing two different classes, the strife would not have lasted to such a bitter end.
Strife on the Level of Ideologies
Anthony and Roberts maybe two individuals or representatives of two groups and classes, the real strife is between two warring ideologies-capitalism and the working class. The capitalistic ideology takes exploitation as its birthright. It cannot tolerate the sitting of a workman beside it. Underneath it is afraid lest the workers should catch hold of the power. Then capitalism will face the same sort power of difficulty as the other side faces today. On the contrary, the other ideology is to strike when the iron is hot. They are always being fleeced and bled for the people who are most heartless. They do nothing but roll in every sort of luxury. In the play Strife Anthony stands for one and Roberts for the other. The one is time-honoured believing in the old order, the other is progressive, revolutionary, sacrificing and uncompromising believing in carrying on the strike till the end as it is the only weapon they have had to settle scores with the exploiters. Marx was right in declaring that these twin ideologies shall never meet.
Conclusion
So, throughout the play, strife is going on these three levels but these levels are not separate from one another. Both Anthony and Roberts are individuals, representatives of two different classes and have espoused particular ideologies that help them sticking to their particular places. It proves the appropriateness of the title 'Strife'. No other title could have been more suggestive of the theme of the play than the present one eternal strife "o' the country's body and blood against a bloodsucker."
Give in brief the essence of Strife
Galsworthy, having social problems as his theme, picks up the conflict between two individuals and then two groups of individuals who remain unbending to the last. Chairman, Anthony and Workman Roberts are chief antagonists, one representing the Capital and the other the Labour.
Both are extremists and fanatics, not stopping to understand the viewpoint of the other. Anthony thinks that Nature has created the Master and the workmen quite differently. Workmen cannot sit by the master. Master is master. He is born to rule the labourers with an iron hand.
If the workers' one demand is conceded they will raise six. On the contrary, Roberts believes that the sole aim of the capitalists is to suck the labourer's blood. They do nothing but roll in luxuries. They will not let even the coming generation of Labourers lead a life of their own choice. (He, therefore, is against producing children.).
Both want to dominate each other and are not prepared to listen even to the word 'Compromise'. Roberts has led a strike which is 4-month long. Such a long period has crippled the workmen. But he is not ready to accept anything less than what he has demanded.
Anthony, too, is not ready to concede to the least demand of the labourers because they are born to serve the Directors. These attitudes of both the persons, lead to nowhere. Mrs Roberts passes away unattended even when she is seriously ill and Anthony develops heart trouble. At last, both of them are overthrown not by their opponents but by their own men.
The dramatist is all for peace, compromise and harmony Roberts may refute and refute but for him the law of nature is to move towards harmony. Strife is against this law that fetches incalculable suffering and loss. Seventy-six-year-old Anthony has been associated with the Tin Plate Works since its very inception.
He breathes even for the welfare of the Company He has laboured hard to defeat the workers' strike four times Enid, Anthony's daughter, knows what would happen when he is outvoted hence she requests her brother, Edgar, to remain with the Chairman. Directors outvote him.
What he speaks then, is enough to bring home the untold misery of his mind. "Fifty years! You have disgraced me, gentlemen......". Roberts, too, undergoes similar mental agony. He has been fighting incessantly with the Directors for the workers without looking at even his own home. He even presented all the amount he has had to the cause of workers.
In his absence, the very same workers enter into a compromise with the Company on the very same terms which were chalked out four months back ie. before the strike began. Roberts is undone! His gentle wife is gone, his money is gone, his peace of mind is gone and gone is his position among the workers! He has this much to say, "Ye have gone back on me? I stood by ye to the death; ye waited for "that to throw me over!" And when Harness asks him to go home quietly, he is dumb-founded and is able to utter only two words "Home!.... Home!" and "remains motionless for several seconds."
Besides these two, others also suffer incalculably. It is winter, the coldest perhaps. Workers do have not enough clothes to put on, and no coal to keep the fire burning. Look at Mrs Annie Roberts. She is ill and is weak in her heart. She cannot bear the tension any more. Roberts is too busy to care for her medicines. When she hears that her husband is going to be overthrown, she cannot tolerate it and dies. Other women and their children are also facing similar fate.
With this intolerable suffering, we have also colossal waste. The strike has been going on for over four months. Trench, Secretary, informs that the Company has suffered a loss of fifty thousand pounds! It is not easy to make it up in the near future. Besides this material loss, the loss of men is not little. Anthony and Roberts could do a lot of good to society but their minds were diverted to unnecessary and fruitless uncompromising paths. Annic's death is an irreparable loss. What a fine bud on the tree of humanity she was who was nipped so ruthlessly!
To sum up, "The actual theme", says R.H. Mottraw, "later defined by Jack in letters that can be read, was not, of course, any actual strike or even industrial strife in particular, but that great wastage that takes place when antagonism is sufficiently bitter and sustained to leave the fighters, the best-equipped shock troops on either side, still fighting long after the principles for which they fight have been forgotten and most of their adherents made peace and gone home. That is the essence of the drama."
