RAYMO 0
J.
W I LSON
369
aga inst shirking responsibility, Yeats de monstrates the consequences of so
doing . T he first diffe rence is tha t be tween rea listic short sto ry and poetic
d rama. By being nar rative, " In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" creates two
cente rs o f inte rest. A twenty-one-yea r-old expe ri e nces a d ream, a nd hi s
past-time story strikes the reade r immediately; but consideration of the na r–
rative fo rm reveals a second cente r o f inte rest, the present-time narra to r.
The slightly olde r narrator is free of the corrosive compulsion for self-excul–
patory rhetoric. T he tone embodies the genre-based contrast; drama, except
by artificial devices such as the voice-over in a film , does not pe rmit the pa r–
ticular duplicity by which Schwartz presen ts his character.
Secondl y, Yeats's old-man pro tagoni st is o riented to the past, while
Schwa rtz's young man accepts responsibility for his future, a difference that
highlights the theme o f self-rej ectio n or self-accep ta nce. T he oldste r has al–
ready allowed hatred and resentment to spoil his life, hatred of his fathe r and
resentment toward his mother for accepting the father. He extended his
selt~
rejection to the woman who accepted him and to their son. T he man had not
taugh t the you th to read because" I gave the education tha t be fits / A bas–
tard that a pedlar got / Upon a tinke r's daughte r in a ditch." Mutual hatred
simmers between the Old Man and the boy, beginning in the first line of the
poem. Yeats's Old Man rej ects even the little time remaining to him, claiming
that his being a "wretched fo ul old man" makes him "harmless," and the re–
fore not a significant consequence o f his mothe r's action . Yeats's Old Man
says he had "No good trade, but good e nou gh / Because I am my father's
son." T he line embodies the Old Man 's theme in elemental form ; he is the
consequence of hi s pa rents' acti on , and the future is onl y furthe r pa rental
consequence, not the Old Man's chosen course of action. In killing the boy, the
Old Man tries to stop the future, under the delusion that to do so will free his
mother from the past, that he would , in effect, be changing that past. Trapped
in endless repetition , the Old Man has ceased stri ving fo r the new - or
possibly he had neve r striven - which in Goethe's
Faust
means damna tion,
but which for Yeats means Purgatory.
In contrast, Schwartz's young narra tor has accepted the dream in two
ways:
as a dream
a nd as
his
dream. T h e first mea ns tha t the youth has
recogni zed tha t the dream 's rej ectio n o flife does not make fo r success in
waking reality; the second implies that the dreamer accepts the dream as his
own production. T hese acceptances suggest tha t he realizes, in Elisa New's
words, that the "dreame r is not me re spectator, but also producer ; no t pas–
sive, but culpable; not a child unborn who will avert catastrophe, but an adult
who airs and profits from that ca tastrophe." T his insight suggests tha t the
narrator will confront and ove rcome fear o f the fu ture when he qui etly
"woke up into the bleak winte r morning" o f his "twenty-first birthday," the
