James A. Mackin, Jr.
Tulane University

Burke never suggests that all actions are symbolic actions. His point is that all action, as opposed to motion, is symbolically motivated. It follows that all action contains a symbolic element, but the degree to which the action is symbolic varies. Pure symbolic action is the end of a continuum whose other end is pure motion. Human actions normally fall somewhere between the extremes. Burke never forgot that our world comprises more than symbols, even if symbols are our only way of understanding that other realm. His desire to live close to nature reflects his awareness. So does his careful use of quotation marks around the term "reality" when he is talking about human belief in the "reality" of their own symbolic constructions. He would not, as so many contemporary writers do, leave out the quotation marks when making a statement like "His 'reality' is different from mine."

I do not want to digress into epistemology. So much has been written about the epistemology or ontology of Burke that when reading Burke one wonders why he does not clearly state that he is proposing an ontology or an epistemology. It is not as though he were unfamiliar with the philosophical terms. Perhaps he is not intentionally being obscure but simply does not believe that writing epistemology or ontology is his purpose. As I read his work, I find his purpose fairly clear: he is trying to equip us to live better as symbol-using animals. Of course, he passes through epistemological and ontological stages in his pursuit of that purpose; but he remains primarily concerned with human action and its consequences. If you are of an existentialist bent, you may say that he is ontological in the sense that he focuses on our choices, or our failure to recognize that we have choices, about how we are to be in our world. In that sense, he has been consistently ontological since the thirties. Others of us might prefer to call that an ethical question.

In any case, the ultimate focus of a Burkean study for me is on action and its consequences so that we might then decide better about future courses of action. Burke's unique contribution is his explanation of the ways that symbolism is entangled in action. Symbolic action has consequences, most important of which are the way that it influences other kinds of action. So I am not interested in looking at the symbolism of sacrifice in the rhetoric of the Irish rebels in order to determine their ontology or epistemology; I am interested in how the symbolism of sacrifice led to the violence of the rebellion against the British and the continued carnage of the Irish Civil War after peace with the British was achieved. I suspect that there is a lesson here to be learned about the rhetoric of sacrifice and its consequences. To borrow another phrase from the same poem by Yeats, the rhetoric of sacrifice can create "a terrible beauty"--the beauty of the indomitable spirit in dialectic with the terrible nature of violence.

The Cycle of Terms for Order

In Burke's logology (the study of words about God as theology is the study of God), spirit is real because meanings are real--they transcend their material vehicles. When a violent death is a symbolic sacrifice, the meaning lives on after the body is dead. Sacrifice is a particular type of victimage in which the victim is made holy. In logology, sacrifice is part of the cycle of terms for order--dominion, guilt, sacrifice, redemption.⁽¹⁾ As symbol users, we naturally order our world symbolically as a hierarchy; as our symbols drive us toward perfection, our hierarchical order culminates as the dominion of the perfect term--God. On the other hand, because it is a symbol, the meaning of order depends upon the possibility of the contradictory symbol, disorder. Furthermore, since symbols are perfectible, disorder can be extended to the contrary of order, counter-order (for example, Satanism). Logologically, order implies disorder and counter-order. Our attraction (temptation) to the possibilities of disorder and counter-order are the source of guilt in its broadest sense. We feel divided, alienated from the perfect order. The inherent capability of symbols to substitute for (stand for) other things provides us with the possibility of rescue. A sacrifice is a substitute symbol that we use to purge our guilt, either through mortification of ourselves or victimage of others. Suicide, for example, is the ultimate act of mortification, but it remains a symbolic substitution. Suicide cannot right the perceived wrong (disorder) that was the cause of guilt. Neither can revenge. What the substitute symbols can do is create the impression that the price for disorder as been paid (a monetary metaphor for sacrifice) and so we are redeemed. Order is reestablished, but only temporarily. We are fated to return to the sacrificial cycle of terms because our real lives can never live up to the ordered perfection of our symbols.

Although most fully developed in The Rhetoric of Religion, Burke's use of the general concepts of guilt and justification precedes his explanation of logology in that 1961 publication. His work in the thirties includes discussion of the imagistic role of sacrifice and the scapegoat, especially in relation to tragedy.⁽²⁾ In his Rhetoric, Burke probes the dialectical relations between hierarchy, mystery, and sacrifice.⁽³⁾ Nevertheless, these earlier discussions are incipiently logological; Burke cannot escape the fact that theology, not literature, is the nearly perfect exemplar of the possibilities for transformation through sacrifice. His critique of Hitler, for example, uses religious discourse, not secular drama, as the model for understanding Hitler's magic: Burke writes that "Hitler appeals by relying upon a bastardization of fundamentally religious patterns of thought. . . . And it is the corruptors of religion who are a major menace to the world today, in giving the profound patterns of religious thought a crude and sinister distortion."⁽⁴⁾

In its classical literary form, sacrifice is redemptive through catharsis. That, for Burke, is the desirable model. We cannot escape the implications of the cycle of terms for order, but we can rid ourselves of our murderous impulses toward victimage by means of purely symbolic catharsis. Burke's analysis of Shakespeare's Coriolanus expresses this approach most thoroughly. The tensions of the social order are symbolized as personal conflict carried to excess. The excesses lead to the sacrifice of the tragic hero, and that sacrifice leads to peace.⁽⁵⁾ The audience achieves catharsis through the symbolic action of the play. This is a consummation devoutly to be wished for the author of a dramatism whose motto is ad bellum purificandum⁽⁶⁾--which I translate as "toward the catharsis of war."

In the drama of Christ, this model is carried out to a perfection which classical literature cannot achieve. If Christians truly believe (that is, fully identify with the drama) that God's kingdom is not of this world and that Christ, as the oxymoronic God-man, has served as the perfect sacrifice for all of the world's sins, then they should indeed be cleansed of any desire for war. They should have no need of other scapegoats. Perhaps if we were not oxymoronic creatures ourselves--symbol-using animals--we would not be so entrapped in the other realms of our existence, and we could achieve this ideal catharsis. But in fact, most of us are concerned with the kingdoms of this world. Apparently even the early Christians were. How else account for the bloody, militaristic drama of the Book of Revelation, which has been such a source of inspiration for militant Christians?

According to Burke, we possess general notions of the kingdoms of this world, which he calls "frames."⁽⁷⁾ If we resign ourselves to the way the world is, our attitudes will generally align with this "frame of acceptance." If we rebel against the world as we received it, our attitudes will reflect this "frame of rejection." Burke's frames are related to the terms for order: rejection is rejection of the current order, but it implies acceptance of a counter-order to which allegiance is owed. The meaning of disorder depends upon the frame used for interpretation. Obedience to the current order would be perceived as disorder from the frame of rejection. Since frames result from symbolic interpretations of the world, rhetoric exploits the possibilities of identification and division inherent in these frames. Some rhetoric draws upon literary or religious catharsis, substituting the feeling of catharsis for actual change. Rhetoric in the frame of acceptance can, in this way, support an unjust regime. On the other hand, in the frame of rejection, rhetoric can lead to violent, bloody sacrifice in hopes of achieving a redeemed social order (counter-order). Our tendency toward perfection probably pulls us toward one of these poles of acceptance or rejection. Yet, the discourse of sacrifice makes possible many different positions in between these extremes. In my opinion, practical wisdom requires us to accept less than perfect dramas in our rhetoric because the consequences are real. Ireland is full of wonderful stories of rebellion and sacrifice; and, indeed, some of those who were sacrificed live on in the symbolic action of these great dramas. But none of those sacrificed is capable of any other kind of action. They are no longer symbol-using animals, but merely symbols. And in Northern Ireland today, the process of making sacrificial symbols out of symbol-using animals threatens to continue.

Irish Rebellion and Sacrifice

The need for sacrifice grows out of the dialectical conflict between order and disorder or order and counter-order. From a rejection frame, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) saw the rebellion as a conflict between an unjust order and an idealistic counter-order. The British bureaucrats, operating from an acceptance frame that included a Whiggish notion of progress, saw it as an issue of order and disorder. In other words, the opposing perspectives did not mirror each other, and so the function and meaning of sacrifice for each side varied. Other perspectives also were reflected in the rhetoric just prior to the 1916 Easter Rising. The Irish Parliamentary Party, from a moderate acceptance frame emphasizing reform, saw the problem as disorder within British government that could be resolved through political sacrifice. Many young Irishmen were persuaded to fight for the British in World War I in the hope that their sacrifice would lead to Home Rule for Ireland. At the same time, Ulster Unionists, from a rigid frame of acceptance, saw Home Rule as a counter-order threatening their position in the current order and also volunteered to fight for the British. The Unionists view of order and counter-order more closely mirrored that of the Irish rebels. In fact, the Ulster Unionists were organizing and arming for a rebellion of their own if Home Rule were introduced. The contraries of order and counter-order imply more radical sacrifice than the contradictories of order and disorder.

In 1915 the moderate rhetoric of the parliamentary nationalists declined in effectiveness as the British waffled on their commitment to Home Rule. The political exigencies of the war led the British government to curry the favor of the Unionists and to indefinitely postpone Home Rule. The actions of the British government were used as evidence in the rhetoric of the IRB to show that autonomy was not to be won through parliamentary procedure. The stage was set for the rhetoric of counter-order and ultimate sacrifice.

The IRB had an orator who knew how to exploit the symbolism of sacrifice on behalf of his cause. He was Patrick Pearse, a headmaster with a classical understanding of the power of rhetoric. The IRB seized on a speaking opportunity that presented itself in the summer of 1915. An old member of the IRB, O'Donovan Rossa, who had participated in the Fenian uprisings of the 1850s and 60s, died in a Staten Island Hospital. His widow agreed to send his body back to Ireland for burial. More than ten thousand people attended the funeral, including armed units of the Irish Volunteers and the Citizens Army. After the funeral mass, the only speaker was Patrick Pearse, outfitted in the uniform of the Irish Volunteers. Pearse took the opportunity to develop a sense of identification with the Fenian cause, using Catholic religious metaphors. After pointing out the appropriateness of a eulogy, Pearse explains why he was chosen to speak:

[I]f there is anything that makes it fitting that I rather than another, I rather than one of the greyhaired men who were young with him and shared in his labour and in his suffering, should speak here, it is perhaps that I may be taken as speaking on behalf of a new generation that has been re-baptised in the Fenian faith and that has accepted the responsibility of carrying out the Fenian programme. I propose to you then that, here by the grave of this unrepentant Fenian, we renew our baptismal vows; that, here by the grave of this unconquered and unconquerable man, we ask of God, each one for himself, such unshakable purpose, such high and gallant courage, such unbreakable strength of soul as belonged to O'Donovan Rossa. . . . We of the Irish volunteers and you others who are associated with us in today's task and duty are bound together and must stand together henceforth in brotherly union for the achievement of the freedom of Ireland.⁽⁸⁾

Having used religious symbolism to mark the cause of the Irish counter-order as "splendid and holy," Pearse states the sacrificial principle that would motivate his own leadership of the Easter Rising: "Life springs from death; and from graves of patriot men and women spring living nations." Earlier he had stated the vision of redemption as the vision of Rossa, an Ireland "not free only, but Gaelic as well; not Gaelic merely, but free and noble as well." With that vision of redemption in mind, he completes the cycle of terms of order in his closing by subtly tweaking the guilt of those who have not yet embraced sacrifice by implying that they will:

The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in secret and in the open. They think that they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think that they have foreseen everything, think that they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools!--they have left us our Fenian dead, and, while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.⁽¹⁰⁾

Within this construction of the cycle of terms of order, Ireland cannot be at peace but must be in a permanent state of bloody sacrifice until the new, yet ancient, holy counter-order triumphs.

Pearse was the charismatic leader of the Easter Rising; he consciously identified his role with the sacrifice of Christ. He knew that the Rising was tactically doomed to failure. The attempt at country-wide coordination had failed; anticipated weapons had failed to arrive. To attempt the Rising under these circumstances was utmost foolishness. Yet he did, and the chronicler of the rebels, Peter de Rosa, explains why:

An unwise thing had to be done because the wisest things had not won Ireland an inch of freedom. The way of the cross was the paradigm of all unwise deeds that can make the dead dust dance at the sound of the voice of a Singer who loves enough. If only he, Patrick Pearse, could die alone as Christ did, and by dying save his peers.

That, he knew, was impossible. Many would have to die for the foolish yet necessary thing that he and his colleagues in the Brotherhood at home and abroad had set their hearts on.⁽¹¹⁾

Pearse subscribed to French revolutionary metaphor about the Tree of Liberty, which according to Pearse needed to be watered by the "red wine of the battlefield."⁽¹²⁾ In the United States, we are more familiar with Jefferson's version of the metaphor, that the tree of liberty needs refreshment from the blood of patriots and tyrants. In both versions, the metaphor represents the necessity of blood sacrifice.

On Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, at noon, Pearse led his troops into the General Post Office on O'Connell Street, the main thoroughfare of Dublin. At 12:45 he read the Proclamation of the Provisional Government of the Irish Republic to the People of Ireland from the base of the statue to Lord Nelson on O'Connell Street. The crowd was curious but unimpressed. At 3:45 in the afternoon, Saturday, 29 April 1916, Pearse officially surrendered unconditionally. In the five-day rising hundreds died and thousands were injured. By the 12th of May, Pearse and other leaders of the Rising had been executed by firing squad in Kilmainham Jail. Pearse's sacrifice was complete, but the new cycle of sacrifice in Ireland was just beginning.

By executing Pearse and the others, the British insured that the leaders of the Rising would be identified with the other sacrificial heroes of Irish lore. The British saw it simply as a matter of order and disorder. Order would be restored by removing the source of disorder. The cycle of terms is that of Machiavellian administrative rhetoric where the symbolic action and the physical action complement each other. Execution physically removes the troublemakers and symbolically instills fear in others. The actual effect, however, was to give greater credence to the sacrificial drama presented by Pearse. The general Irish public seems to have seen the Rising as a disorder until the British executed its leaders. After the executions, the Irish identified more strongly with the rebels.

The rebels who were captured but not executed were sent to British prisons, known as "Republican Universities" for their efficiency in making the rebels more dedicated and knowledgeable.⁽¹³⁾ In the prisons, shared misery became sacrificial communion. The rebels refused to be treated as criminals, demanding to be treated as prisoners of war. The difference reflects the difference in perspective between disorder and counter-order. Although most British bureaucrats refused to recognize the difference, some members of the House of Commons could. Observers from other countries, especially America with a large Irish-American constituency, were also more sympathetic to the rebels perspective. Hunger strikes by the prisoners brought more attention to the problem and led to the general amnesty declared in December 1917, which from the rebels' perspective proved once again the efficacy of sacrifice.

Once released, the rebels reorganized under the leadership of Michael Collins. Collins arranged jailbreaks for rebel leaders who had not been covered by the amnesty, such as Eamon de Valera, whose death sentence after the Rising had been commuted to life imprisonment. De Valera became the political leader of Sinn Fein. The Irish Republican Brotherhood formed the core of an expanded Irish Republican Army. In 1919, the IRA began a much more effective guerilla war against the British throughout the country.

The British responded to what they saw as increased disorder by escalating their Machiavellian administrative rhetoric. The infamous Black and Tans were recruited from the ranks of unemployed veterans and given a shoot-to-kill license. The leader of British forces in Munster explained the policy to his men in these terms: "You may make mistakes occasionally, and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped, and you are bound to get the right person sometime." The officer who made this statement met an untimely death in Cork when an IRA volunteer walked up to him and said, "Your orders were to shoot on sight. You are in sight now. So make ready." The volunteer then shot him dead.⁽¹⁴⁾ The officer's policy of scapegoating may not have been meant to include his own sacrifice. But that is the price one can pay for interpreting counter-order as disorder.

The war continued to escalate through 1920 and early 1921. Atrocities on one side were matched by atrocities on the other side. Lloyd George continued to treat the problem as one of disorder, but disorder did not seem to call for the kind of sacrifices that the British were now having to make. Against the advice of Conservative leaders like Winston Churchill, who urged him to escalate on a grander scale, George began sending out peace feelers to the Sinn Fein. Both sides agreed to a truce in July 1921. A negotiating team led by Michael Collins signed a treaty with England early in the morning of 7 December 1921 that recognized Ireland, minus six counties in Ulster, as a Free State within the British commonwealth. The bloody sacrificial drama seemed to finally be reaching its conclusion.

Moral Hierarchy and Civil War

The drama, however, took another turn. After signing the treaty, one of the major British negotiators, Lord Birkenhead remarked, "I may have signed my political death warrant tonight." Michael Collins responded, "I may have signed my actual death warrant."⁽¹⁵⁾ He was right. Seven months later he would be assassinated by his former comrades-in-arms in Cork County, near his home. The blood-letting had not ended with the signing of the treaty.

Yeats's line about the effects of too long a sacrifice was borne out in the events of the Irish Civil War. The majority of the Irish people were exhausted with war, but many of the rebels were not finished with demands for sacrifice. Eamon de Valera, supported by a large minority, rejected the treaty and walked out of the Dail, the Irish assembly. He refused to participate in the provisional government that would rule until the Free State government was set up. Collins became chairman of the provisional government and manager of many of its departments. The Irish Republican Army was divided in two--some supporting the provisional government and others supporting de Valera. De Valera made speeches around the country, condemning the treaty and claiming that the Volunteers would have to continue to fight to achieve freedom even if that meant they had "to march over the dead bodies of their own brothers."⁽¹⁶⁾ And so, the Irish Civil War ensued.

How is it that years of blood sacrifice could not bring about catharsis? Because no single author could control the script of this tragedy. The major players were writing and enacting their own dramas. De Valera refused to accept an Irish Free State as the denouement of his drama. He and his followers saw the sacrifice of Patrick Pearse as perfect and identified their own sacrifices with his. Perfect sacrifice deserves perfect redemption, and an Irish Free State that was still part of the British Commonwealth was not the ideal redemptive state. To them, Michael Collins had betrayed their earned redemption. Collins, on the other hand, took a more realistic view of what they had achieved. He had respected but not idealized the sacrifice of the Easter Rising. The Irish Free State was the best that could be expected at the time. Continued sacrifice at lower levels of intensity would eventually lead to a more ideal state. Perhaps because he had been directly involved in managing the war in all its bloody details, Collins was less susceptible to the demand for perfection. His approach was supported by a large majority of the Irish people, who had suffered enough to achieve their own catharsis.

De Valera, however, was interested in the opinion of the Irish public only insofar as it served his tactical purposes. The public had not sacrificed as he and his men had; therefore, they were morally inferior. In the real world cycle of terms of order, those redeemed by sacrifice often see themselves as a moral elite. From a Burkean perspective, this new hierarchical status will inevitably lead to a new requirement for sacrifice. And so it did in Ireland in 1922. In June elections, the Irish public expressed their approval of the treaty. De Valera's attitude was that the public did not have the right to do wrong. As Garvin points out, de Valera and the IRA were possessed of "a style of thought that is fundamentally anti-democratic and also profoundly arrogant in its tacit assumption that the ordinary people did not understand their own best interests, could not be trusted to vote the 'right way,' and were essentially fitted only to be slaves and underlings."⁽¹⁷⁾ Such moral elitism is also an effect of sacrifice within the cycle of terms for order.

The death of Michael Collins in August 1922 seemed to provide catharsis for some members of the IRA. The resistance began to splinter. At the same time, the Free State's army and police forces grew more organized and effective. In the spring of 1923, the IRA finally laid down its arms. An estimated 3,000 people had died in the Civil War before the sacrifice was complete. De Valera formed the Fianna Fail Party in 1926 and led his party into the Dail. He became leader of the government in 1932, following the crash of the international economy. De Valera retired from active government in 1957, accepting the honorary position of President of Ireland. During his tenure, he enforced rigid laws limiting the power of the IRA. The transformation of de Valera from rebel to suppressor of rebels is worth a separate study.

Conclusion

Irish rhetoric eloquently exploits the possibilities inherent in the cycle of terms for sacrifice. The Irish are great storytellers, and many of those stories recount the sacrifices of heroes of old. Traditional pub music reinforces those stories. Rebel leaders of the Rising identified themselves with those traditional heroes as well as with Catholic saints and, at least for Pearse, even with Christ. The British response to the Rising made that identification effective for a much larger number of people. Many Irish were moved from a reformist acceptance frame to total rejection of British authority. Given the Irish rhetoric and British response, the war of rebellion was virtually inevitable. More surprising to those outside the IRB was the vicious civil war that followed. Understanding Burke's cycle of terms for order, however, makes the formation of a moral elite, unsatisfied with the compromise solution of the Irish Free State, also understandable. Sacrifice does not resolve the problems of hierarchy; at times, it temporarily allays them and, other times, transforms and exacerbates them.

In closing, I hope I have been able to illustrate that in the real world where action is more than merely symbolic, redemption often demands enormous sacrifice. The cycle of terms does not easily attain catharsis. And in real time, the playing out of one cycle of terms always leads to the development of another cycle. One need only look at Northern Ireland to see how often the cycle spins with disastrous results. On the other hand, we can hope, as Burke hoped, that we learn to use the resources of symbolism to substitute metaphorical sacrifices for the cult of the kill. Until we learn a more ethical art of rhetoric, the words of Yeats about the "terrible beauty" of sacrifice will continue to resound as we survey the blood-stained battlefields: "O when may it suffice?"

Notes

1. Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 215-22.

2. Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941/1973), 35-60. See also, Kenneth Burke, Attitudes toward History, 3^rd ed.(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1937/1984), 124-34.

3. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950/1969), 253-67.

4. "Rhetoric of Hitler's `Battle,'" in Philosophy of Literary Form, 219.

5. "Coriolanus and the Delights of Faction," in Kenneth Burke, Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 81-97.

6. Kenneth Burke, A Grammar of Motives (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1945/1969), title page.

7. Burke, Attitudes toward History, chap. 1.

8. "O'Donovan Rossa's Funeral. Address at Graveside by P. H. Pearse." Teach an Phiarsaigh, Ros Muc, Co. na Gaillimhe (County Galway).

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Peter de Rosa, Rebels: The Irish Rising of 1916 (Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1996), 120.

12. Cited in Tom Garvin, 1922, The Birth of Irish Democracy (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1996), 20.

13. Tim Pat Coogan, Michael Collins: A Biography (London: Hutchinson, 1990), 47.

14. Coogan 150-51.

15. Coogan 276.

16. Coogan 320.

17. Garvin 44.