Under Milk Wood

“I never done what she said I never.”

The drowned dead men of Captain Cat’s dreams declare their innocence from beyond the grave. The grammatically incorrect phrasing of the declaration jumbles the reality of what is being denied. The Third Drowned man is claiming to not have done whatever the woman claimed that he did not do, even though this may not be his intention. The lack of clarity is important, indicating that—in the world of the dead—reality is in perpetual flux. As Rosie no longer remembers existing, the Third Drowned man barely remembers whether he has done whatever he was accused of doing. All that is left is the emotion, the sense that he has been wronged.

“Ach y fi! Ach y fi!”

“Ach y fi” is a Welsh expression signifying disgust. Jack Black is the town’s chief moral agent of disgust, chasing lovers through Milk Wood to root out their sinfulness. He is introduced to the play in a language that few others speak, announcing his disgust in a way that is tolerated but not understood by the community. While Jack may be appalled by what happens in Milk Wood, so many other characters venture there for illicit affairs that he is very much indicative of a Welsh-speaking minority.

“There’s a husband for you.”

The gossiping neighbors criticize everyone around them. Their snippets of gossip are removed from their actual identities, as these comments are presented only as being said by neighbors. Their mentions of everyone’s business are held up against an idealized version of a “husband” (9), against which a man’s actions must be measured. The gossiping neighbors and the striving efforts to measure up to unwritten standards are an essential part of life in Llareggub.

“I’m widower Waldo now.”

Mr. Waldo ends the story in an illicit meeting with Polly Garter. He begins by redefining his identity in terms of loss. He is no longer Mr. Waldo, as his wife is dead. Her absence shapes his identity, as he defines himself in relation to his wife’s death. He is widower Waldo, rather than Mr. Waldo, signifying the ways in which he is trying to process his grief. This burden of grief is shared by Polly, hinting at why they might seek solace in each other’s company.

“And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes.”

Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard has survived two husbands, but she cannot abandon her duties. They come to her as ghosts, and she harries them with criticisms of what they should be doing. These demands become increasingly absurd and idiomatic, as she insists that they make the sun wipe its shoes before they let it into the house. The nature of these demands hints at why the men might have been driven into early graves; Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard is such a domineering personality that she will not let her husbands rest, even in their graves.

“Call me Dolores / Like they do in the stories.”

Mae Rose-Cottage is only 17 years old, but she dreams of love. These dreams are influenced by romantic stories that she has heard, rather than her own experiences. She reshapes her identity around cultural ideas of love, singing her request that she be called Dolores, in line with “the stories.” In a small town, Mae’s ideas of love and what it means to be loved must rely on fiction and song rather than firsthand experience.

“Stand on this hill. This is Llareggub Hill, old as the hills, high, cool, and green, and from this small circle of stones, made not by druids but by Mrs. Beynon’s Billy, you can see all the town below you sleeping in the first of the dawn.”

The ancient druids of Wales built stone circles for religious ceremonies. These ancient stone circles are a part of Welsh culture, but the modern stone circles built by Mrs. Beynon’s Billy are evidence of the ways in which cultural practices reverberate across the ages. Billy does not build the stone circle because he is a druid or because he believes in a pagan religion. He does it because it has always been done, so he is continuing a tradition and unwittingly constructing an idea of Wales that endures beyond time and place.

“That picturesque sense of the past so frequently lacking in towns and villages which have kept more abreast of the times.”

The Voice of a Guide-Book gives a more objective, outsider appraisal of Llareggub. The town is on the decline in a material sense, as the realities of post-war Britain take their toll on the small community. Something nostalgic lingers on, however, as even the objective outsider is able to discern a “picturesque sense of the past” that defies the unimpressive architecture and economic stagnation (19). The nostalgia represented by Llareggub is overpowering, even to an outsider.

“Dear Gwalia! I know there are / Towns lovelier than ours.”

The Reverend Jenkins delivers his daily sermon by hailing his home country. Gwalia is an archaic name used for Wales, twisted and knotted through English and Latin. Jenkins acknowledges that there are other, lovelier towns, but there is something about Wales—even with all its complications, linguistic and otherwise—that he cannot find anywhere else. For this reason, his homeland remains dear to him.

“For having babies.”

The judgmental Mrs. Pugh hopes that the full power of the British legal system can be wielded against Polly Garter as punishment for her sexual liaisons. She wants Polly to be arrested, even as Mrs. Pugh’s own husband plots to murder her. In the small community, women embracing their sexuality is equated with “promiscuity” and considered far more of a crime—Mrs. Pugh seems to believe—than killing one’s wife. That she is so outspoken about Polly’s sexual inclinations indicates the extent to which sex—in all its unspoken dimensions—dominates the conservative mindset of the community.

“Was I wounded?”

The morning after a drunken, raucous night, Cherry Owen and his wife laugh about his escapades. As she relates his mischief back to him, he asks her to affirm that he was “wounded” (26), a slang term for overly drunk. Cherry knows that he was drunk; he just wants his wife to gently chastise him for his behavior. They are both in on the same joke, ironically discussing the matter as though it were a deep and grievous situation. In contrast to many of the sad and lonely people in the town, Cherry and his wife have found a way to have fun.

“He’s the biggest liar in town.”

Throughout Under Milk Wood, Mrs. Beynon convinces herself that her husband is selling cat, dog, and even human meat in his butcher’s shop. She may have lived with him for many years, but even their young maid is aware that Mr. Beynon is the biggest liar in Llareggub. His lies amount to an innocent joke with his wife, but her inability to parse his humor and his refusal to back down from the joke make his lies more serious. Mr. Beynon makes no effort to work around his wife’s credulity, instead recommitting to lying for fun more than his marriage.

“I don’t know who’s up there and I don’t care.”

While everyone goes about their day, Nogood Boyo lies in a boat and stares up at the heavens. He is not an atheist or a religious man. Instead, he doesn’t care about any world beyond his own. He is content in his own ignorance. His self-declared agnosticism contrasts with the gossipy townspeople, who do not know what happens behind closed doors but spend their lives speculating about such matters.

“You can tell by the noise of the hush, it’s Polly Garter.”

The blind Captain Cat lives in a dark world. He relies on his hearing to understand what is happening around him. While he can navigate the busy hum of the community, the ostracized Polly Garter is defined by her silence. The hush that falls over the chattering crowd when she arrives at the water pump enables Captain Cat to immediately recognize her. In his world, only one person can stand out through such silence.

“Men are brutes on the quiet.”

The nameless women of Llareggub chat with one another. The community of the town still operates along traditional patriarchal lines, in which men hold the power and women are expected to be subservient. This quiet misogyny of everyday life has been internalized by the women, who are more likely to blame other women (such as Polly Garter) who do not adhere to the strict patriarchal expectations of how they conduct themselves. When chatting, however, the women slip in an acknowledgment of their condition, voicing for the first time the quiet brutality of the male-dominated community.

“Too rough for fishing today.”

The people of Llareggub exist at the mercy of the natural world. Whether they blame God or luck, the fishermen of the town can only do their work when the seas are calm and plentiful. When the sea is too rough, they must stay on dry land. The local economy operates at the behest of the weather, a seemingly archaic arrangement in the modern world, which hints at why the town is in decline.

“I’ll never have such loving again.”

Polly’s song explores the tragedy of her character. She loved Little Willy Weazel, but he died young. Since then, she has tried to fill the gaping hole in her heart with a string of replacements, but no one can provide her with the love she once had. Her shallow sexual relationships have led to her social ostracization and are driven by a need to replace a love that she lost. At the end of the play, she meets with Waldo. Though they may not love one another, they are still both grieving the loss of a loved one. Polly’s trips to Milk Wood have nothing to do with sex but are a deep, pressing urge to mollify her unresolved grief.

“I don’t care if he does drop his aitches.”

Even in a small fishing community, social class is a pressing concern. Sinbad Sailors and Gossamer Beynon are in love with one another, and, though they insist that it should not be an issue, they are both deeply aware of their different standings in the community. Given that the material conditions of the people of Llareggub are not overly diverse, social class manifests in different ways. Gossamer is the educated schoolteacher, while Sinbad runs a pub and drops “his aitches,” a manifestation of his working-class dialect. The characters hyper fixate on these small differences because the idea of abandoning social class is inconceivable.

“She was martyred again last night in Milk Wood.”

Mrs. Pugh’s dislike of Polly Garter manifests as a seething resentment. She closely monitors Polly, registering every trip that Polly takes to Milk Wood to meet a lover. Mrs. Pugh frames each trip as a martyrdom, a bitter comment that frames Polly’s trips as a kind of self-sacrifice undertaken for the good of the town. Her bitterness and the close attention that she pays to Polly, coupled with her own husband’s desire to murder her, suggests that Mrs. Pugh is envious of Polly’s attitude to love. She hates Polly so much because she wishes that she were the martyr of Milk Wood.

“I have forgotten you.

I am going into the darkness of the darkness for ever.

I have forgotten that I was ever born.”

In the dreams of Captain Cat, Rosie Probert dies a second death: She is beginning to forget what it was to be alive. Captain Cat’s dreams are extensions of his own personal fears, as he tries to cling to the memories of those he has lost. He sees these people at night, but they are becoming fainter. As they forget him, he is forgetting them. Together, they are locked into a spiral of entropy.

“Look up Bessie Bighead in the White Book of Llareggub and you will find the few haggard rags and the one poor glittering thread of her history laid out in pages there with as much love and care as the lock of hair of a first lost love.”

Bessie Bighead is one of the most tragic figures in Llareggub. Born into a poor family and only ever receiving a single kiss from a man who did not love her, she nevertheless finds a reason to live. Despite the tragedy of her circumstances, she is also entered into Reverend Jenkins’s big book of the town’s history. The book is not just a document of the most important or wealthiest people in town. The book is a symbol of the community and, as a result, even the most tragic and poorest members are included. Bessie is given equal space in the book, even if she is not treated as an equal by the rest of the community.

“Righteously says Cherry Owen who bas just downed seventeen pints of flat, warm, thin, Welsh, bitter beer.”

Sitting in the Sailors Arms, the drinkers judge the young people who wish to go dancing. They impose their strict moral expectations on the young while acting in their own immoral fashion. This hypocrisy is seen in the behavior of the supposedly righteous Cheery Owen, who spent the previous night dancing on tables and weeping, only to find himself in the pub all over again, drinking another 17 pints of “flat, warm, thin, Welsh, bitter beer” (59). Cherry and his fellow drinkers resent the youth of the dancers, so they frame this bitterness in moral terms while hypocritically ignoring their own debauchery.

“The memorial of peoples that dwelt in the region of Llareggub before the Celts left the Land of Summer and where the old wizards made themselves a wife out of flowers.”

Reverend Jenkins writes in his book about the people of Llareggub. They are not unique, he suggests, but they are important. They are the vestigial remains of the same enduring Welsh identity that once belonged to Celtic warriors and the legends of the wizards who used the same stone circles that are now built by Billy Beynon. The sense of magic, mystery, and cultural heritage is an important cornerstone of the way in which Reverend Jenkins frames his love for the small town, as though it is perpetuating an ancient idea of Welshness in defiance of the advancing modernity of the rest of the world. Jenkins links the contemporary community back to the ancient, legendary world as a justification for the enduring nature of his parochial existence.