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Popular Culture Review
II), this land of simplicity and community, where horses and bicycles are the
means of transport and life is close to the soil, seems Shangri-La” (279).
We soon find out that after Sean’s father died his mother took him to
America in search of a better life. Although it’s never confirmed (although it’s
suggested that Sean’s earlier boxing career took place in the 1920s), the film
appears to take place in the 1930s. This is probably accurate for two reasons: 1)
The original short story upon which it is loosely based was first published in
1932; and 2) setting it in the 1930s would mean that Sean’s mother’s departure
for America would have coincided with the great Irish emigration of the late 19th
and early 20th century. Although it’s not specifically said, we can infer that
Sean’s mother was frustrated with the seeming lack of opportunity provided by
traditional Irish farm life. For several generations of European immigrants (as it
is today for many Latin, Asian, and African immigrants), America was the crown
jewel in the eyes of the world’s opportunity seekers. The industrial age’s
amazing technological advancements made America seem as though wealth was
available for the taking, if people could just get there. Even after Sean’s return,
it’s assumed that he made his fortune in America; as Will Danaher (Victor
McLaglen) mistakenly says, “Sure he’s a millionaire, like all the Yanks.”
However, the truth is that although jobs were certainly available for European
immigrants, they didn’t afford the kind of financial opportunity they thought
would come with work in America’s burgeoning industries.
Machines changed working conditions dramatically, but great numbers
of human beings were still needed to work in unison with the machinery to ensure
adequate production. As such, immigrants did America’s dirty work, working
long hours for little pay, no benefits, and horrible living conditions. While some
immigrants did literally go from rags to riches, far more came to America only to
live under a kind of industrial slavery in which their labors were poorly rewarded
and they had little chance of getting ahead in the long run. We find that Sean’s
life in America was that of a classic early twentieth century European immigrant.
He spent much of his youth and adult life, prior to his career as a boxer, in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, “Steel City, USA,” a quintessential industrial Eastern
city, “living in a shack near the slag heaps,” working with “steel . . . in pig iron
furnaces so hot a man forgets his fear of hell, and when you’re hard enough,
tough enough, other things.” Although his experiences made him tough, they
didn’t make him wealthy; more importantly, they didn’t make him happy. Sean’s
lust for the pastoral is fueled by the dehumanizing alienation caused by living in
an utterly indifferent technologically advanced industrial society. We can view
The Quiet Man as essentially picking up where Stagecoach left off; like the Ringo
Kid (also played by Wayne), Sean Thornton’s only choice is to retreat into a
fantasy land beyond the harsh realities of life within America’s borders.
Despite Sean’s retreating to the romanticized Ireland of his youth, the
place isn’t at all a realistic depiction of Ireland, which, despite being an