I'm having a moment

I just finished the final copy of my senior thesis (written as a junior, because I'm just that much of an overachiever :)). My oh my. It's been a long semester, but I can't believe I'm done with it. Now I have to get my thesis director to sign it, as well as the Honors program director, then send it to the copy center for copies on good paper, then take it to the library to be bound. Merciful heavens. This is going to be seriously permanent. 

For my topic, I chose John Millington Synge's play, The Playboy of the Western World. Most people aren't familiar with this play, but when it was first produced in Dublin, it incited riots, it was so controversial. The play centers around a man named Christy Mahon from Kerry who arrives at a Mayo pub one night, claiming to have killed his father. Pegeen Mike Flaherty, the daughter of the pub's owner, falls for him because of his bravado, since she is about to marry her wimpy cousin whom she can't stand. Christy tells his story all over the village and is made into a hero; he and Pegeen fall in love along the way. Once he finally believes that he is a hero, his father (who wasn't killed by the blow with the loy--Irish spade) reappears and Pegeen's view of Christy as a daring young man falls apart because she finds out that he used to be no better than Shawn, her fiance. What she fails to see, though, is that he has changed because of her. At the end of the play, Christy takes charge of his father (to his father's delight) and leaves the pub, Mayo, and Pegeen-the curtain closes on her plaintive cry "Oh my grief, I've lost him surely. I've lost the only playboy of the western world." Happy, isn't it?

So, I looked at the initial reception as documented through articles and letters to the editor in The Irish Times. I then looked at tons of criticism, dividing it into critics I agreed with and critics I did not. My reading of the play said that Pegeen was the creator of the person that Christy becomes over the course of the play; many critics do not agree, so I responded to their criticism by pointing out the places in the text which point to my reading. I also augmented my own analysis with the critics that do agree with me. 25 pages, 50 sources, and manymanymany proofreadings later, it is finished. I'm waiting on one final approval of a small citation technicality from my thesis advisor and then it will be off to print.

And my title? "J.M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World: They Said; I Said." As my thesis director put it, it's a smarty-pantsy title. And I love it