The study of symbols and its meaning of William Buttler Yeats' poetic drama - 'Purgatory'

Literary works have a relation to human life. Through deeper analysis, the readers can get more knowledge about human life of which the positive aspects can be applied in the real life. The writer chooses a poetic drama as her study object since it can broaden and stimulate her mind in the human sympathy and problems and also a poetic drama is beautiful, pleasant and interesting to be analyzed and read. The author of this play is William Butler Yeats. The writer chooses him because his lyrics are among the most beautiful and the most powerful ever written. His greatness lies in his ability to communicate the power and the significance of his symbols. He elaborated a symbolic system of his own based on the variety of sources, which enabled him to strengthen the pattern and coherence of his poetic imagery. The idea of this play was about death, punishment, and internal repetition This drama arouses 'pity' for the misfortune and the tragedy and 'fear' that we may be overcome by the same evils. This study is a literary research and it is considered a qualitative and analytic research. The writer discusses poetic drama, characters, setting and symbols and related study as review on the related literature. The characters were only an old man and a boy - a father and a son. The old man hated his father very much and he killed him during the burning of their house. He considered his father as evil and also a curse that could be inherited by the descendants. Several years later, the old man had a son, and his son was almost identical with his grandfather- the old man's father. The old man remembered his hatred and then he killed his only son using the same knife he was used to kill his father. For all this time the old man was haunted by his mother's ghost, he wanted to bring his mother's soul into light because she was in the purgatory and being purified by the fire for her sin, which was choosing the wrong man to become her husband. The old man thought by killing his only son he had erased all the consequences and could bring her soul into light In the end, he realized that everything he had done was useless and the only one who could release his misery and save his mother's soul was God so he uttered a pleading prayer to God to ask His mercy to release his misery and also his mother's soul. A symbol points beyond itself to greater and more complex meaning and it might also be regarded as a substitute for the elements being signified. A symbol possesses its own meaning and is trying to represent another thing through the continued used and common understanding. The symbols convey a deeper meaning of the author's point of view and sometimes the symbols make a literary work more mystic