Symbolism of Chaos

After interviewing my father, I became very interested in looking further into the customs of an Irish Wake. According to Roger Grainger author of the article "Let death be Death: Lessons, from the Irish Wake", Irish Wakes are a way of praising unruliness. By that statement, Grainger is trying to potray that instead of grieving death and being scared of it, people should learn to proclaim it.

In order to proclaim death the Irish sometimes even play out games in order to create chaos."The chaos through which the dead person must pass is reproduced in the chaotic reversals of social practice which occur during the mourning period, mirroring the contradictory emotions and impulses of bereaved individuals as they rebound between their need to suffer and be comforted, to remember and forget, in the urgency of their search for an escape from the anguish of the present" (Grainger 1998:132).

This way of dealing with death allows people to express their grief fears of death through irrational and energetic ways. This way Grainger states, allows people to "express discontinuity with the past and the affirmation of a new status and direction". From what information Grainger provides in his article, I have come to find that the Irish are very aware of an individual's presence in the universe also known being cosimcally inept. From the information provided in the article "Let Death be Death", it is very obvious that such celebrations, with"chaos" in the presence of the deceased at funerals is looked at as proclaiming one's ending of existence.

As put by Grainger, "The wake is society's way of saying that, to a greater or lesser extent, according to the size of the social group involved and the importance of the dead person's role within that group, the world has been radically and permanently changed" (Grainger 1998:132). By looking at death this way, It allows you to give closure to ones life and start onto the next step of your life with a clean and positive standpoint. It's not as if these people are simply forgetting about the past, but simply remembering their lives instead of their death.

Grainger, Roger
1998 Mortality:Let Death Be Death: Lessons From the Irish Wake. Morality 3(2):129-141.