lks through it for the first time. He states:I was wandering out along the one good roadwayof the island, looking over low walls on eitherside into small flat fields of naked rock. Ihave seen nothing so desolate. Grey floods ofwater were sweeping everywhere upon the limestone, making at times a wild torrent of the road Whenever the cloud lifted I could seethe edge of the sea below me on the right, andthe naked ridge of the island above me on theother side (Synge 2)The most vivid aspect of this passage is the diction, which Synge uses to describe the islands environment. More than once Synge uses the word naked to refer to the rock. He also builds further that image by calling the land desolate and wild. Synge also makes an important play of the colors of the Aran Islands. He uses the images of grey and black quite often throughout the book. At one point he states that everywhere he turns he finds, the same grey obsession twining and wreathing itself among the narrow fields (Synge 46). By describing the island thus he helps the reader build the image of the Aran Islands as something quite distinct from the lushness of the Irish mainland. The contrast between the environment of the islands and the mainland is important for Synge to establish, as the readers understanding of the landscape is essential in any type of anthropological study. Synge explores at length the incredibly intertwined relationship between the people of the Aran Islands and their surrounding environment. When Synge views the relationship between the inhabitants and nature as both primitive and knowledgeable. Synge comes to understand the primitive nature of the Aran Islanders when he comes to realize that time on the island is determined by the wind and not clocks, as they do not exist in the Aran Islands. Synge goes on in a different passage to bring to light one of the differences between the unadulterated habits of the islanders and those of the people on the...
