The Irish playwright Brian Friel is known to be quiet and an infamous recluse. The Northern Ireland native was born on the 9th of January in 1929. He lived in Omagh, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland until he was ten years old when his family moved to the city of Derry, also in Northern Ireland. Friel was raised in a middle class Catholic home. His father was a teacher; a road Friel himself would follow until totally submerging himself in writing . He grew up in a depressing atmosphere and time period. Unemployment was high among the Catholic population, there was a corrupt electoral system which ensured a minimal amount of power among the Catholics, and the pressure just to survive was immense. "These factors have profoundly impressed themselves on Friel's writing in which the same blend of disappointment and unyielding pressure is found time and again to characterize the experience of his protagonists" (Deane 11). However, while he was growing up in Northern Ireland he spent many holidays in County Donegal in Southern Ireland visiting his mother's family. The contrast between his found memories of his trips to Donegal and growing up in Northern Ireland serve as an interesting mix and blend of Irish heritage and culture widely apparent in his works. Donegal "famous for the beauty of its scenery, although no more fortunate in its economic condition, ...remained for him as a powerful image of possibility, an almost pastoral place in which the principle of hope can find a source" (Deane 11-12). He was influenced heavily by the suppression of the Catholics and the political game played in Ireland. Friel's inspiration for writing is driven by the environment he grew up in and his experiences, but are not limited to one specific aspect of his life.
Many of Friel's short stories and plays give the reader a glimpse into his life and his experiences. His writing is representative of his environment and of the relationships between people. To Friel "politics is an ever-present force, but, conscious of the recurrent failures of the political imagination in Ireland, [he] is concerned to discover some consolatory or counterbalancing agency which will offer an alternative. The discovery is never made" (Deane 12). Friel uses his own experiences to help the audience or reader to relate with the characters.
Brian Friel tries to give the reader a complete story. He does not rely on one aspect to carry his stories. Instead, he brings the reader into the environment and also into his character's personalities. The "moods of his play and stories can change very rapidly from the farcical to the satirical to the sentimental to the tragic and at times the transition from one to another is disturbingly abrupt" (Deane 12). Friel "has always found it necessary to struggle with the problem of temperament an enhanced feature of people who are bedeviled by failure and compensate for it by making out of their own instability a mode of behavior in which volatility becomes a virtue" (Deane 12). This obsession of Friel's is apparent in Molly Sweeney and Translations. The feelings and emotions of the characters changes both abruptly and frequently. He doe this specifically to leave his audience feeling shocked and possibly disturbed by the abrupt change.
Although Friel has recently become internationally famous and has gained a well deserved reputation, he has not always been seen in such appealing light. In the beginning of his career critics found it hard to relate to his material and to Brian Friel the man. In his native country of Ireland his work was seen as a slap in the face, while the rest of the world found it hard to relate or understand the problems and controversy of a country that was misunderstood and young. Friel has a passive personality and his "public demeanor and sense of his status seem directly related to his experience of the writing life as 'a very private and personal existence' " (O'Brien vii). Friel has been described as "the opposite of cityish, witty, urbane, forceful" (O'Brien vii). However, even though he lacked the finesse of the political and social scene, his writing touched the readers. This is apparent in his achieving the international status and respect he now has. He writes about every day people and ordinary lives. He writes about the people he knows, their plight and the life of an everyday person.
Friel also links his writing to where he comes from and the struggles of his country. He uses his plays and stories as a forum to discuss and raise awareness of the unjust political atmosphere in Ireland. O'Brien argues, "Still, Friel's career is exemplary in its fidelity to his origins, its implicit belief that he could speak in his work to, and on behalf of, his immediate public" (vii). He "has become an elder statesman of Ulster writing" (O'Brien vii). Even though Friel's audience had difficulty understanding exactly who he was and interpreting his works, Friel attempts to link his typically Irish characters with lives and experiences to which the reader can easily relate to.
As Friel matured as a writer, he began introducing extremely heavy topics dealing with societal problems such as generation gaps, communication, cultural differences, and spiritual inadequacy in his plays. This maturity came not only from a personal evolution and refinement, but was also affected by what was happening in the world. All of Friel's major works dates from the mid-70's. He was inspired to write because the community he had known all of his life was in turmoil. It began to collapse in 1968. " From the first marches of that year, in the summer and late autumn, to the murder of fourteen civilian marchers by British paratroopers in Derry in early 1972, Northern Ireland entered on the first phase of its long, slow disintegration" (Deane 16). It was a time of riots, police, and guerilla warfare. This time was the time when Friel began to "reject his own writing past; in those years he also began to confront what would dominate his writing in the future-the sense of a whole history of failure concentrated into a crisis over a doomed community or group" (Deane 17). His next plays The Freedom of the City, Volunteers, Living Quarters, and Aristocrats, produced from 1973 to 1979, all involved a highly politically charged theme.
With the approach of the 80's Friel created Field Day theater company with Stephen Rea, an Irish actor. The company embraced three poets Seamus Heaney, Tom Paulin, and David Hammond. It was "founded to put on plays outside the confines of the established theater and, through that, to begin to effect a change in the apathetic atmosphere of the North" (Deane 20). Here his play Translations would debut followed by Three Sisters and Communication Cord. Friel would use his satirical twits and mixes of tragedy with comedy to express the vulgarity and hipocracy in Ireland.. It is a play about "the tragedy of English imperialism as well as of Irish nationalism" (Deane 21-22). The themes that run through Translations are only an indication of the subject matter Friel begins to base his writings on.
Brian Friel exemplifies one of Ireland's, specifically Northern Ireland, most prominent voices telling the tales of his generation and his people. His plays such as Philadelphia, Here I Come!, Translations, Dancing at Lughnasa have demanded the recognition of Friel as one of the best native Irish writers. "No Irish writer since the early days of this century has so sternly and courageously asserted the role of art in the public world without either yielding to that world's pressures or retreating into art's narcissistic alternatives. In the balance he has achieved between these forces he has become an exemplary figure" (Deane 22). It is through his ability to bring political and emotional issues to the forefront of the international world that has led to his success.