Abstract
W. B. Yeats’s play Calvary (1920) may have inspired or influenced Jeffers’s Dear Judas (1928). Both use the Easter story to explore not only with betrayal and redemption, but also archetypes of betrayer and savior, solitary hero and communal man. Both examine the psychology of the participants in order to evoke the meaning of the events and their importance in western culture. Yeats conceived of his play as an illustration of the distinction in his visionary psychology between objective men who exist in relation to others and subjective men who exist for themselves. For Jeffers, conversely, communal man, absorbed in mankind, was subjective, while solitary man, open to the natural world, could be objective. Jeffers’ objective man is thus Yeats’s subjective man. Yeats’s Judas, possessing will to power, defies both God and fate through the act of betrayal, knowing only the one who betrays God can be stronger than God. Jeffers’ Judas, reversing this, is the one who possesses pitying love of mankind and Jesus the one determined to create his own destiny through power of will. In Dear Judas, Judas, not Jesus, makes the salvific sacrifice, and this shifts the focus to the destructive power of love, pity, and self-sacrifice. In both of these contrasting dramas of the Easter story, only human beings seek their self-affirmation in God, but, according to these dramatic works, they do so in vain.
Recommended Citation
Fleming, Deborah
(2009)
"Solitary Hero verus Social Man in Jeffers's Dear Judas and Yeats's Calvary,"
Jeffers Studies: Vol. 13, Article 6.
Available at:
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/js/vol13/iss1/6