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Death is also obvious in the syntax of the narrative, through the ellipsis which is nothing but disappearance. This is particularly noticeable when love (“Doorways”), sex (“Like All Other Men”) or death (“Eddie Mac”) are evoked. Apart from the Irish context, of course, the unsaid imitates everyday reality in which some situations can generate a sense of decency or embarrassment. Nevertheless, the reader may have access to truths which are partially disclosed.ĤThe blank space also seems to underline the necessity to keep the story going.

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Frustrated by repressive laws, McGahern subtly plays with the reader’s own frustration through the medium of the implicit: as the writer does not feel free to write whatever he wants, the reader is therefore not allowed to know everything. The unspeakable is mirrored by the unsaid. This is how McGahern’s texts lay stress on the parochial Irish state of mind of those days when any allusion to privacy, let alone sex, was impossible. For example, McGahern’s stories emphasize the narrow-minded Catholic attitude, a significant aspect of the period, when the implicit is used to allude to sex: in the narrative, the love scene is silenced and replaced by a blank space which significantly separates the sentences “night drew them” and “In the morning he asked” (“Like All Other Men”, 278). After several centuries of colonization and catholicism, Irish writers still had no freedom of speech, hence the prominent role of the implicit in their fiction. 3ģThis sense of “unwriteable things” has strong political connotations for most Irish writers, including John McGahern or Edna O’Brien, who were banned by the Irish Censorship Board in the 1950s. As long as a sense of limitation is prominent among people’s impressions of life, the short-story will be the best way of expressing this sense and, for a brief spell at least, allaying the worries that it brings with it. The short-story’s success often lies in conveying a sense of unwritten, or even unwriteable things: the story-teller accepts the limitations of his art, and makes his freedom an aspect of those same restrictions (.). The Short Story: a Critical Introduction. Both of these processes underline the implicit in their own way and both invite the short story reader to play an active part.ĢThe implicit is particularly in keeping with the genre of the short story.

The term “ellipsis” is here chosen when referring to a total omission of a word, a phrase or a name, whereas the term “eclipse” tends to be used when mentioning a partial concealment, a sense of semidarkness, chiaroscuro, in short a failing message, which keeps an important component in the dark. Frequent in McGahern’s fiction, these figures of speech entail an economy principle which is noticeable through various typographic, syntactic or stylistic devices. This statement implies that, unlike foolishness, clever story-telling resorts to the use of understatements, implications, allusions and other kinds of underlying remarks. London: Faber & Faber, 1986, 91.ġ“Only a fool tells everything” 2, says one of McGahern’s characters. Chacun de ces procédés souligne l'implicite à sa façon et incite le lecteur à jouer un rôle actif. Nous parlerons d'ellipse lorsqu'il s'agit d'une omission totale - d'un terme, d'un groupe de mots, d'un nom propre - et d'éclipse lorsque nous avons affaire à une occultation partielle, une semi-obscurité ou un clair-obscur, c'est-à-dire un message défaillant, conservant dans l'ombre du non-dit un élément permettant une limpide transparence.

stylistique, enfin, par le biais de la litote ou l'acronyme.

syntaxique, avec l'ellipse verbale, l'anonymat des personnages, la réticence, l'abruption, typographique, à travers l'espace blanc entre deux phrases, deux paragraphes, deux chapitres ou deux nouvelles, Fréquents dans l'oeuvre de John McGahern, ces modes d'expression sont porteurs d'un principe d'économie repérable de façon : 'Only a fool tells everything' déclare un personnage d'un roman de John McGahern (The Barracks), impliquant ainsi l'intelligence des figures de l'ellipse, de l'implicite, de la dissimulation.

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