Murder in the cathedral- Analysis

Murder in the Cathedral by T.S.Eliot

Part-I Analysis (up to Becket's entrance)

In telling the Becket story, Eliot drew less upon biographical material than upon classical forms of drama to explore his themes. In this opening section, before the protagonist enters, the play already establishes the dramatic context in which Becket's ultimate question – how will I accept martyrdom? – is staged. Here, Eliot establishes his use of Greek tragedy, medieval theology, and poetic verse as the tools to understanding his version of Becket. Additionally, the play's most central themes are introduced even before Becket enters.
The most notable influence on Eliot's style in Murder in the Cathedral is Greek tragedy. As noted below, he is not relying on a pastiche, and so any attempts to deliberately relate his structure to that of a tragedy are imperfect. However, by consciously appropriating some signature elements of tragedy (particularly from the early tragedies written by Aeschylus), Eliot provides some insight into his perspective.
Arguably the most important element of the play is the Chorus. In Greek tragedy, a chorus played a central purpose. Certainly, the heroes of Greek tragedies were 'great' men or women, people of power, prestige, and great ambitions. Even when the heroes were not entirely moral or just, they had big personalities and confronted life with strength and gusto. The chorus was important because it provided a context into which the decisions of these 'great men' were made. Their poetic speeches allowed the playwright to comment on the action, in effect explaining to the audience how he interpreted the myth he was telling. The chorus was also important because it allowed the actual theatre audience to be part of the action. Because a chorus typically comprised common characters, the audience became engaged in the action of the myth. They were given a mouthpiece. As Nietzsche explains in his Birth of Tragedy, the chorus both separated the audience and immersed them in the action, since it allowed them characters with whom they could emotionally relate.
From the beginning of Murder in the Cathedral, the women of Canterbury function in much the same way. Their speeches are often touted as the most magnificent of the play, and many scholars believe it is through the chorus that Eliot creates the only lasting drama of the play. These claims rely on the basic question that the women raise – is it better to live a life of acceptable misery, or to challenge the order of life in hope of something better? The former is not pleasant, but it's predictable and easy to understand, even for a common person. The latter can promise some great reward, but requires a passionate refusal to accept the status quo. At the beginning of this play, the women are firmly committed to the former option. They would prefer an existence of "living and partly living" to one of fiery passion and spiritual responsibility. It is useful to understand this perspective at the top, since the play's dramatic momentum will involve not only a change in Thomas, but also a change in the Chorus by the end.
One other effect of using a Greek chorus in the play is to introduce the theme of fate. The Chorus suggests a supernatural sense to the impending events, since they have felt themselves drawn toward the cathedral. In other words, they have not chosen to come but instead feel as though they are being controlled by God's hand. Because the Greek plays were so reliant on an understanding of fate, the use of a chorus implies the same sense. This is extremely important to understand even before Thomas's entrance, since the story of Thomas and Henry is often told in terms of individual personality conflicts. By aligning the events to come with a fate controlled by God, Eliot announces that his intention will be less to explore the psychology of individuals than to explore the forces by which God runs the universe.
There is a certain social commentary in the use of the chorus as well. Their desire to go on living in comfortable misery rather than in passionate conflict comes partly from their belief that they do not control anything in the temporal world. The wars and personality conflicts of kings and archbishops bring torment to their lives, even though they have no hand in shaping these events. Eliot is not overly optimistic about the strength of the common mob, and the extremely violent imagery they use in their speeches proves this. Instead, Eliot reveals how terribly the common mob is affected by the 'great' men of tragedy. His play will not empower the Chorus in the temporal realm, but rather their growth in the play will involve a spiritual purpose, one they do not yet recognize in this opening.
Though they are higher in social stature, the priests are mostly powerless as well in this opening. They are equally reliant on events outside their control – namely, the return of Thomas Becket and what that will mean for the conflict between church and state. By not naming his priests (or any of his characters except for Thomas), Eliot suggests his intention to tell a mythic story rather than an individual one. Again, his story will explore the spiritual weight of Becket's martyrdom rather than its social or psychological factors. However, the priests do delineate the particulars of these social factors in a way that confronts Eliot's audience with the different interpretations of the murder.
The First Priest is defined by his mournfulness and worry. He is supremely concerned about what trouble might come from the Archbishop's return. This perspective conforms to those who think of Becket's story as one of immovable personalities. The world cannot handle these great men at odds. The Second Priest is more pragmatic and focused on the social and political impact of Thomas's return. He interprets the clash with Henry as being about land ownership and political power. This relates to a common reading of Becket's story: at its core, it is about politics, power, and wealth.
The Third Priest offers the philosophy most aligned with Eliot's: he is patient. He recognizes that they should "let the wheel turn." The "wheel" is a common image from medieval theology. Traced to medieval philosopher Boethieus, the wheel suggests that God sits at the center of a wheel so that He understands all action in the world, while we exist on varying spots of the wheel, unaware of what the force turning the wheel means. In other words, understanding is beyond our control as humans. We argue and attempt to understand the import of Becket's personality, politics, and religiosity, and yet we understand nothing. What Becket will soon do – die for a cause – is much greater than its physical and social factors. In fact, the only way to understand it is to approach it from a higher plane, from the center of the wheel. Naturally, such understanding is impossible for mortal humans, but we must acknowledge our own limitations before even attempting the task of transcendence. Eliot has often cited the medieval allegory Everyman as his primary influence in Murder in the Cathedral, and one can see this influence both in his use of verse and in the expression of this medieval theology.
Both the priests and the Chorus introduce the play's primary thematic conflict in this opening: action vs. suffering. When the Chorus says, "For us, the poor, there is no action,/But only to wait and to witness," they are expressing the main dilemma all humans face in life, according to Eliot (177). Do we attempt to act, to influence things usually beyond our control, or do we simply wait and watch what comes? Both choices have a downside, and Thomas will explore how this theme resonates both in our lives and in his martyrdom in the subsequent sections. Both the Priests and Chorus will learn over the course of the play that to witness something is to be involved in it.
The opening also does important work in establishing Thomas's character, as Eliot sees it. This is done primarily in the First Priest's description of Thomas as Chancellor. What he describes is a man too taken by pride over his own virtue. Thomas's sanctimony left him "always isolated… always insecure." This sanctimony and pride help the audience understand the flaw that Thomas will have to overcome in order to die a true, holy martyr. In effect, this sets up Thomas's dramatic conflict in the play.
Finally, it is worth establishing the various poetic devices Eliot uses in the play. There is a deliberately archaic quality to Murder in the Cathedral. In addition to the medieval theology already discussed, Eliot's use of verse marks the play as something non-modern, which is particularly relevant considering the fame he had reached for modernist works like The Wasteland earlier in his career. There are two ways to understand this. The first is that the verse links his story to the liturgy of a mass. Many scholars have spent time dissecting the ways that Eliot's structure parallels that of a Catholic or Anglican mass, which has a similar dichotomy to that of Greek tragedy. While the higher figures are on stage dictating a philosophy, the audience is not meant to be passive, but instead is included in the action. Without an audience/congregation to respond to the liturgy, the ritual has no impact. By using verse, Eliot stresses that he considers his play to be less story than ritual action, through which an audience will be transformed much as the Chorus will be transformed.
The verse's shifts can help us understand character. Sometimes, characters will rhyme (it does not happen in this opening section), which indicates a suaveness or confidence. Another example can be found in the "living and partly living" speech that the Chorus gives. Notice how during their litany of misery, the verse uses short lines and the repetition of "living and partly living." This call-and-response structure gives the speech a sense of order. It contrasts with the lines that begin with, "But now a great fear is upon us…" Thomas's return brings the fear of chaos, and the lines therefore grow longer and less structured. Eliot frequently uses verse to such effect.
Finally, Eliot constantly uses literary elements. In his essay "Hamlet and His Problems," Eliot introduced a literary concept called the "objective correlative," in which an objective element reflects the interior state of a character. The Chorus shows frequent use of the objective correlative in the way it describes the seasons. They are ironically plagued by summer and comforted by the ravages of winter, which symbolizes their preference of quiet misery over loud conflict. The heat of summer parallels the heat of a passion they would like to avoid, and so it makes sense that the summer is so brutal. Many of their subsequent descriptions of landscapes or weather reflect their fears. Similarly, they tend to personify Earth, to see it as moving beyond their control. It plagues or rewards them as it sees fit, as though the Earth itself were an individual.

Part I (after Becket's entrance) Analysis

Many critics believe Eliot achieves the sum of his purpose in Act I. Thomas enters the play a hero with a destiny before him, is tempted to hide from that destiny, and ultimately overcomes not only those temptations but even his own weaknesses in deciding to accept martyrdom for what he sees as the right reason. In a sense, the entire play is encapsulated in this second half of Act II.
It is useful to recognize the influence of Greek tragedy on Eliot's creation of Thomas. Part of the Aristotelian conception of tragedy was that a 'great' man would brave challenges that attempted to waylay him from accepting his fate. Even though Greek tragedies ended poorly for their heroes, audiences were meant to respond to the bravery with which these heroes accepted their deaths. While the concept of a 'tragic flaw' is often overstated, it is worth mentioning that these heroes often were defined by a characteristic quality that both aided and hampered their journey toward accepting their fate.
Thomas is easily analyzed according to these terms. Eliot was not interested in creating a realistic, psychological depiction of the saint. As some critics have noted, the play was intended to be performed in the expansive cathedral of Canterbury, which would have made any audience connection with an individual almost impossible, since the human form would be dwarfed in those surroundings. Instead, Eliot depicts Thomas more as a myth, in the same way that Orestes or Oedipus would have been seen by a Greek audience. The Easter audience for whom Eliot wrote would have known the end of this story from the moment the play started, much as Greek audiences would have know the basic plot of their myths. So the experience of Murder in the Cathedral is about relating to a hero who has to accept his fate as a martyr. The dramatic struggle is not whether Thomas will die, but rather how he will accept that death.
The primary challenge that confronts Thomas in accepting this fate is his version of a 'tragic flaw' – his pride and moral superiority. These are the very qualities that made Thomas an effective Chancellor and now empower him to so passionately defend his Church. However, this pride is also his biggest obstacle. As we learn from the Fourth Tempter, Thomas is more than willing to die for the Church. The issue – a moral issue, not a practical one – is whether he will die "for the wrong reason." To die for the sake of glory, to feed his pride and grant himself immortality, would be to compromise the death. Instead, Thomas has to die for the right reason: because God wills it. He must rid himself of a 'self,' ignore his own feelings and totally subsume himself to the will of God. It is this acceptance that constitutes the dramatic momentum of Part I.
Like a Greek tragedy or a medieval allegory like Everyman, the structure of Murder in the Cathedral is quite simple in its episodic shape. Thomas confronts Four Tempters, who offer various challenges to his ultimate goal of accepting martyrdom for the right reason. By tracing through their offers, one can understand the various challenges that Thomas must overcome. The first three tempters do not offer much in terms of dramatic tension. Not only has Thomas already rejected what they have to offer in his life, but the audience would also know he has already rejected them. Their effect is largely expositional: by revealing what Thomas has rejected, they can remind the audience of Becket's past. The First Tempter offers Thomas the carefree dalliance of youth, a past Thomas historically would have known as far back as his time studying in Paris. Thomas was known for his high taste in fine things, and this tempter reminds him that those things still exist. The Second Tempter offers earthly power. He promises to have Thomas reinstated as Chancellor and appeals to Thomas's pride and virtue by suggesting that a Chancellor can do more with laws than a priest can with pronouncements. He also reminds the audience of how effective Thomas was as Chancellor. The Third Tempter offers a vision of the future in which Thomas will not only rule, but rule via a new system of government. This tempter's evocation of a 'coalition,' a political concept that would have been impossible in the feudal era in which Becket and Henry lived, is a nod to Eliot's modern era.
Again, these tempters can be seen as superfluous to the drama, since there is never truly any chance that Thomas will accept their temptations. And yet they still do much to enrich the play. The first purpose they achieve is a stress on Becket's pride, the flaw he must overcome in order to peacefully accept martyrdom for the right reason. All three appeal to that quality, albeit in different ways. The first appeals to Becket's love of his body (physical pleasures), the second appeals to his love of control (Chancellorship), and the third appeals to his ambition to be greater, a quality that defines Becket's rise from a middle-class boy to one of the most powerful people in England. For all these reasons, it is possible to see the tempters as versions of Thomas himself. Considering that Thomas's ultimate dramatic goal is to rid himself of a 'self,' of his personality, it is important that the audience see him confront all of these variations of that personality, even if he has already repudiated those temptations.
The three tempters also have something else in common: they all speak to alterations in time. The first two tempters offer Thomas the possibility of going back, of changing what has already happened. They play to his potential regrets and his desire to live a simpler life, one in which he has already found success without the complications he faced ever since clashing with Henry. The third tempter offers a vision of the future, a promise of a world in which Becket's ambition could be realized. Certainly, any reader or audience member can relate to the desire to escape into the past or future from a tumultuous present. So when Becket refuses both possibilities, it is a sign of his fortitude; he will not turn away from the challenges before him.
The Fourth Tempter raises the stakes considerably by indicating that the greatest challenge Thomas faces is from himself. In terms of time, he offers neither a past nor a future, but immortality. He argues that not only will Thomas's name last throughout history if he allows himself to die, but he will also exist beyond the limits of time. He will be at the center of the proverbial wheel, more a myth than a man. Suddenly, the challenge of repudiating the temptations of the past and future seem simple. The Fourth Tempter does not offer Thomas a different existence – he offers him a greater existence, a more pronounced and incredible version of the holy existence and reputation he now has. Like the first three, the Fourth Tempter is a version of Thomas himself, but one less superficial, one far more hidden in the shadows. He indicates as much in his addresses to Thomas, noting that the Archbishop entertains the temptation for martyrdom only at private times, "between sleep and waking, early in the morning" (192). This is the voice Thomas least wants to hear from himself and as such, it is the most difficult to defeat. The Fourth Tempter is both mysterious – he never gives his identity and instead uses phrases like "I do not need a name" that evoke Mephistopheles or other versions of Satan – and subtle. He is not incorrect in arguing that Thomas will do great good for his church by dying, and so Thomas would not be rejecting his holy duty by giving in to the man's temptation.
However, Thomas would be rejecting his own moral integrity, and the play argues implicitly that this would have compromised his martyrdom. Even though Eliot gives Thomas a realistic flaw, he does so in the vein of the great Greek heroes, and therefore does not totally avoid hagiography in his depiction of Thomas. Consider that Thomas's first word is "Peace." Eliot knows the audience for whom he is creating his Thomas Becket, and he is certain that Thomas will not die for impure or selfish reasons.
In understanding the crux of Thomas's transformation, it is important to consider the play's central themes of acting and suffering, which were introduced by the Chorus before Thomas entered. Firstly, it helps to define "to suffer" as "to endure pain or distress patiently" rather than as "to undergo pain or distress." The suffering Thomas and the Chorus evoke certainly involves pain, but it is more akin to patience than to sensation. This makes it align cohesively within the play and frames it as a stark contrast to action. The question Thomas asks in his important acting/suffering speech (which is repeated to him by the Fourth Tempter) is whether there is a distinction between action (aggressively attempting to make change) and suffering (patiently and passively receiving what comes). He chides the Second Priest for insulting the Chorus, suggesting that they do not realize that acting and suffering are two sides of a coin, or, to use the medieval symbolism, on opposite sides of a wheel that turns. To act is to wait, and to wait is to act. We never fully do one or the other, though from our limited perspective on the proverbial wheel of the universe, we do attempt to choose one side or the other.
Thomas is guilty of the same misunderstanding that he claims the Chorus is. The Fourth Tempter, in repeating the speech, points out that Thomas is falling into the same despair that the Chorus was. He is uncertain whether he should act in pursuing martyrdom or suffer through his life, since his reasons for seeking martyrdom are impure. The tempter's words are interesting in that at first, they seem to be mocking in tone, but an attempt to read the full speech as mockery makes it quite ineffective. Instead, the Fourth Tempter plants the seed for Thomas's final decision: he must accept martyrdom, but he must accept it as his fate willed by God, not as an effect of his own will. His martyrdom exists outside of time, and so is not engendered by the cause/effect of his decision-making. He must be patient, but actively patient. He must choose to accept what comes independent of his own decision. He must rid himself of personality so he will be ready to accept what God intends. He must wait and understand that he does not live in the middle of the wheel, but this requires active and difficult vigilance.
The climax of Part I, therefore, is Thomas's realization that neither acting nor suffering exists independently of the other. The play is often criticized because this crucial climactic decision is decidedly undramatic. It is an entirely internal shift that happens for the protagonist during his long silence following the Fourth Tempter's reprise of the acting/suffering speech. On stage, the actor playing Thomas has no language following this speech until he decides to accept it. The fact that the audience does not hear his thought process is fitting, since Eliot is not interested in psychology, but it does rob the audience of the climax.
But Eliot works overtime to keep the play theatrical during this silent climax. The Tempters, Chorus, and Priests all have speeches that overlap until they all speak as one voice. The tempters address the audience, suggesting the pessimistic voice that Thomas must be hearing in his own mind. He must be considering that he is "obstinate, blind, intent/On self-destruction," and hence incapable of reaching the serenity required by holy and proper martyrdom (194). The Priests speak the more optimistic voice in reminding him that there is an "untractable tide," although even this voice suggests simple patience, not active patience. The Chorus is miserable as usual, until all three voices become different shades of the same perspective. In the speech where the voices overlap, they all accept that no man can know what is to happen. No man is at the center of the proverbial wheel. These voices are distinct for the audience, but they are all the same for Thomas. They are all shades of himself, the 'self' he needs to repudiate if he is going to accept martyrdom. His decision is not to make a decision, but to rid himself of decision-making and become joyfully ready to accept God's will.
Ultimately, he comes to the proper decision and is worthy of martyrdom. It is arguable that the final impulse comes not from his own strength but from the Chorus, who gives the last speech before Thomas accepts his fate. In many ways, the Chorus provides the only real dramatic tension in this section, for they, too, have changed. Whereas they earlier begged Thomas to leave them to a comfortable misery, they now beg him to die, to "save us, save us, save yourself that we may be saved." In both the Greek tragedy tradition and the Catholic liturgical tradition, the audience/congregation is crucial to the ritual. If only the characters go through a transformation, then the ritual or play is meaningless. The audience must change as well; indeed, the Chorus has realized that they are involved. They cannot personally take any path that will enact immediate change, but they are crucial toward convincing Thomas; likewise, their decision to accept their own fate is equally important. The saint/priest/tragic hero needs his Chorus to journey with him. Without this, the ritual and transformation is individual. What matters to Eliot is the community that is affected by Becket's martyrdom, the very community celebrating that martyrdom as they celebrate the death centuries later through Eliot's play. As the Chorus changes its mind, Thomas's martyrdom is complete. Dramatically, the protagonist has reached his serenity, and through his strength led his people to do the same. Now, all that is left is for him to die.

Interlude-Analysis

The Interlude, one of the only two prose sections in the play, is a fascinating interjection into the drama for several reasons. It sums up the play's basic philosophy/theology, reveals how fully Thomas has been altered in Act I, and connects the play to the rituals of both tragedy and the mass.
The sermon explicitly spells out the play's theology. In no uncertain terms, Thomas explains that a true martyr is one who dies without ambition. Coming so soon after the episode with the Fourth Tempter, this reminds the audience of his response that closed Part I. He restates with the clarity of prose that a true martyr is one who has vanquished his 'self' - his personality, ambition, and will - and has accepted that he is God's instrument. He basically preaches the philosophy of active patience as described in the Analysis to Part I, although he does not use the words "action" or "suffering" here.
Becket posits himself as parallel to Christ by suggesting that Christians ought to celebrate martyrdom in the same way (albeit on a lower scale) as they celebrate Christ's sacrifice by death. This enforces the holiness of martyrdom. What both deaths have in common is a sense of opposites, an important theme in the play that is manifest both in the story and in the language of the Chorus in Part II. Holy events contain opposites – in this case, the death of a martyr and the death of Christ are simultaneously worthy of mourning and joy. That a human cannot fully comprehend this mysterious contradiction matters little, as long as the human accepts the contradiction as a fact.
Dramatically, the sermon has little impact. It does reveal to the audience that Thomas has firmly accepted his place as God's instrument; he has vanquished his ambition and is ready to die for the right reason. However, nothing has happened since his final speech of Part I to make us think that he might have changed his mind. The character undergoes no transformation here and does not add much to the ideas presented in Part I. Perhaps Eliot wanted to make certain his audience understood his themes, and perhaps he wanted to announce that Thomas's crisis of faith would not extend into Part II. But this raises an interesting question when reading or viewing the play for the first time: if our protagonist has already reached the apex of his personal journey, where else is there for him to go? How can the play only be half over if there is nowhere left to journey? Compounded with the fact that the audience knows how it will end (Thomas will be murdered in the cathedral), Eliot poses an interesting dramatic challenge he will have to address in Part II.
It's worth considering the theatrical effect of this sermon for Eliot's intended audience. In the expansive Canterbury cathedral, the actor playing Thomas would have taken the pulpit and then preached, the only figure on stage, and with very little indication that this was part of a play rather than an actual sermon. Listening to a sermon drawn somewhat from the historical record of Thomas's final sermon on Christmas Day, 1170 must have been a rich, profound theatrical experience, complicating the lines of fiction, myth, and reality for audience members.
This effect is in line with Eliot's intent to structure the experience of his play alongside that of a mass. Again, he is interested more in ritual than storytelling, and both the theatricality and the substance of this sermon reinforce that intention. In terms of theatricality, his play has explicitly become a mass. In terms of substance, Thomas preaches about the mystery and contradiction of celebrating and mourning at the same time. This is an experience that transcends intellectualism. It is about visceral connection and faith, a community whose shared passions are made manifest through a ritual. By putting these ideas into the play, Eliot sets himself up to make Thomas's murder in Act II not a climax (again, the protagonist in many ways reaches his climax in Part I, and will not falter from his resolve), but rather a ritual.
Some of the ideas in the sermon also echo those of Greek tragedy. At its core, Greek tragedy embodies a similar contradiction as that of saint celebration. It looks mournfully and honestly on the unfortunate forces of the world that destroyed individuals, while simultaneously celebrating those individuals who stayed strong in the face in those forces. In many ways, this is the message of the sermon. We celebrate those individuals who were strong enough to die for God and vanquish their personalities for God, but we also mourn that the iniquity of the world required their death. What Eliot's play has that Greek tragedy lacks is the lynchpin of faith. Greeks did not celebrate in the promise of afterlife in their tragedies, while the Christians for whom Eliot writes celebrate someone like Becket not only for his strength, but because he reminds them that they will be rewarded for their own strength in heaven.

Part II----Analysis

Part II begins with a strange theatrical challenge. The play's protagonist has already gone through the entirety of his personal journey, as he stresses in the Interlude. He has faced his temptations and now is ready to accept martyrdom for the right reason. Since the audience knows what will happen – Thomas will be murdered by knights in the Cathedral – the second half of the play runs the risk of being overlong and undramatic. Indeed, from a purely dramatic standpoint, Part II is static. Thomas knows that his end has come immediately upon seeing the knights early in the act; there is no suspense. Even the altercations with the priests, in which they argue vehemently and then force Thomas to hide, lack much momentum. Certainly, these scenes in performance would be physically exciting, but nevertheless would lack any suspense.
However, the value of Part II is less about drama and more about confrontation and ritual. Because Eliot wishes to involve his community so fully in the experience, along the lines of Greek theater or a mass, the ritual must be enacted. In the same way that a mass without the communion (which represents the body of Christ, sacrificed for mankind) is not considered complete, so would the play not fulfill Eliot's purpose if the ritual of the murder were not dramatized. Eliot emphasizes this purpose through his masterful use of the Chorus in Part II. In many ways, Thomas is rather absent in Part II. Aside from the speeches that the knights give the audience, the Chorus is given the most stage presence as well as the most magnificent poetry in this second half of the play.
The Chorus undergoes its own journey throughout Murder in the Cathedral, and it is this journey that is most important to the play's intention. Eliot does not add much to the Becket story, but he does add a new perspective by integrating the idea of community into Becket's murder. The Chorus in Part I learns to accept that they are involved in Becket's sacrifice and must recognize their choice: they may stay passive in a life of suffering untroubled by spiritual turmoil, or they can act as Thomas does and engage the wickedness of the world directly. This second option is more spiritually fulfilling and honest, but requires more struggle.
Thomas enters Part II having reached serenity in terms of this struggle. He has accepted his fate and is active in his patience. He is ready to be God's instrument. The Chorus realizes that they, too, face this challenge, but are not yet at peace with it. Instead, their language grows significantly harsher throughout Part II. They have heard Becket's Christmas sermon, in which he explored the idea of opposites in Christianity – Christians celebrate martyrdom as they celebrate Christ's death, simultaneously mourning the world that forces such death while celebrating the sacrifice that validates existence - but they are not yet ready to accept the peace that comes with accepting the contradiction. This transformation happens through the act. They must learn to accept their "share of the eternal burden," which is to force their own spiritual growth by imitation and reflection of Becket's martyrdom (208).
Their opening speech in Part II reveals their persistent pessimism. They reflect on how "the peace of the world is always uncertain" because "man defiles this world" (201). Ironically, they find peace in the harshness of winter because that harshness cleanses the world of the violence that comes with the warmth of spring. The warmth correlates to human passion, which they professed to reject in Part I, since passion brings with it hope and greater dissatisfaction. The life they propose in Part I is one of "living and partly living," not one that challenges the social and spiritual order as Becket does. Here, we see that though they realize the necessity of Becket's sacrifice, they are mired in a pessimism which evokes Eliot's earlier poetry. In a sense, they are the Eliot of The Wasteland and "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," chained to a pessimistic perspective that sees mankind as doomed by their own failures, and reticent to hope for any better, since hope leads to disappointment. Eliot had since that time converted to Christianity, but he clearly can still relate to a pessimistic perspective. As Eliot found Christianity to brighten his perspective, so will this Chorus find their Becket through Part II and learn to accept their spiritual, Christian responsibilities for the world.
Their second speech, which begins with "I have smelt them, the death-bringers," is significantly harsher in its imagery and perspective. It's important to remember that these speeches are primarily defined by their poetry, not their philosophy. To read the speeches aloud is to recognize the linguistic mastery and emotional power at work. But the philosophy is implicit and worth exploring. In the "death-bringer" speech, the Chorus is particularly obsessed with the nature of opposites, which parallels the message of Thomas's sermon. For instance, they note how there is "corruption in the dish, incense in the latrine, the sewer in the incense," and a multitude of other such images (207). They have realized more fully how the degradation of man infects the world. Thomas knows this as well – he has only just moments before confronted the boorish knights on their first visit – but he has found peace in accepting the possibility of a greater existence in submission to God. The Chorus cannot yet bring themselves to accept these contradictions so easily; they still see what is to come in terms of physical death brought by the "death-bringers," and not in terms of its spiritual import. They realize that his sacrifice is meaningless unless they make it manifest in their own lives, noting that everything that is "woven on the loom of fate" and "woven in the councils of princes" is also "woven like a pattern of living worms/In the guts of the women of Canterbury" (208). They are part of the wheel, and the ritual of Thomas's sacrifice needs a congregation to give it meaning. However, they are too distracted by their violent pessimism, and they therefore end this speech by asking Thomas to forgive them. They are not yet strong enough to do service to what he is about to give.
As Thomas is dragged forcefully to the cathedral by the priests, the Chorus gives a speech that begins "Numb the hand and dry the eyelid," which reveals a burgeoning strength in the women while still reflecting their refusal to accept what is happening. They confess the depth of their fear, which is less of God than of the nothingness they will face if they cannot accept God's plan. They fear "the face of Death the Judgment/And behind the Judgment the Void.. Emptiness, absence, separation from God" (210). They are beginning to understand that there is a greater death than physical, earthly death. The "death-bringers" are no longer the greatest threat, which is instead the eternal existence of nothingness. However, they are still not quite ready – they end their speech asking the Lord for help.
As Thomas is being murdered, the Chorus gives a speech that begins "Clear the air! Clean the sky!" This speech allows the murder to theatrically take a long time without drawing full focus to its horror; the chorus acts as incidental music might in a film. However, they transcend their functional purpose through the poetic intensity of their language. The imagery is harsher here than in either of the previous two speeches – "the land is foul," "a rain of blood has blinded [their] eyes," they are "soiled by a filth that [they] cannot clean" – because they realize how terrible their burden will be in accepting their share of Thomas's sacrifice. They see more clearly than ever before how depraved and foul the world truly is.
It is telling that while Eliot wrote Murder in the Cathedral with a powerful, positive message – we all have the opportunity through our rituals to transcend the limits of our physical suffering – he does not sugar-coat it. This speech reveals that the sacrifice of someone like Becket, and the way that a congregation must endeavor to live up to that sacrifice in their own lives, is difficult. It requires that congregation to open their eyes and discover how terrible and cruel the world can be. The sufferings the Chorus listed in their opening speech of Part I, which were about physical difficulties of seasons and daily toil, are nothing compared to the imagery of blindness through blood or a "terror by day that ends in sleep" (214). In many ways, this is the moment before the climax of the Chorus's journey. The moment has come, and Becket dies. Their realization of how intense their own existence will become parallels his as the worst moment of the journey. What they want more than anything is for the air to be cleared and the world to be cleaned. It's a futile and impossible request, but they make it from desperation.
Their final speech, which closes the play, shows that they have overcome this obstacle. Gone are the intense, horrific images. Instead, they praise and thank the Lord. They have not forgotten how difficult the world is, but they have come to peace with it. They are prepared to attempt the active patience that Thomas modeled for them in his sacrifice. They want a greater life and recognize that even in a terrible world, "all things affirm [God]." They ask for forgiveness, admitting that their insistence on seeing the world in physical terms is a weakness that they must struggle to overcome. They "fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God," which is how they felt at the beginning of the play. The difference is that they now recognize the iniquity and failure of such a perspective. They might not have Thomas's strength and persistence, but that is what makes him a saint. They promise to endeavor to follow his lead and they beg proactive forgiveness and mercy as they prepare to do service to his martyrdom through their lives.
Without this transformation, the play would be incomplete. Eliot did not write this play to tell us historical facts about Becket's life – again, he adds little to the central story - but rather to draw attention to the congregation who would watch his play. The play reminds them that they, too, are responsible for the sacrifice Becket made, since it was made for the community they share. In the same way that all Christians endeavor to justify Christ's sacrifice, so must they endeavor to justify the deaths of their martyrs on a smaller scale.
However, Thomas is not entirely irrelevant in Part II. Thomas is busy at work when the knights finally arrive, and his first words are to the priests, to tell them how to continue that work. This conforms to the historical depiction of Thomas as an obsessed and vigilant worker. The one area in which Thomas cannot help but engage his attackers is politics. This drive towards political and legal wrangling certainly conforms to the real Becket, who was equally adept at Chancellorship as at priestly matters. Here, Eliot proposes another way to delineate the Becket story from the political framework in which it was and continues to be frequently considered. Thomas proposes a dichotomy of ways to think of the world in Part II. On way is through the lens of ritual and myth. He comforts the Chorus at one point, saying that their memories of this day will turn to myth in their minds, until the memories "will seem unreal" (209). He does not posit this as a negative thing, instead suggesting that "humankind cannot bear very much reality" (209). In the context of the play, this is almost a virtue. "Reality" is not painted in a positive light in Murder in the Cathedral. People are described as essentially warlike, the knights and even the priests are defined by their self-interest as much as anything else, and death is an easy answer to political problems. By reflecting on our world as myth, to recognize that it is "unreal" and not the highest realm of existence, people can find comfort. On the other hand, he suggests that most humans see the world from a polarized, political framework that serves self-interest and moral justifications:

You argue by results, as this world does,

To settle if an act be good or bad.
You defer to the fact. For every life and every act
Consequence of good and evil can be shown.
And as in time results of many deeds are blended
So good and evil in the end become confounded.
It is a philosophy obsessed with worldly gain and justifications, rather than spiritual transcendence. This philosophy is manifest in the political arguments of the knights. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church was its own political entity and often warred with secular regimes. While it did sometimes battle physically, it more often worked by excommunicating opponents. In a solely Catholic society, the threat of excommunication from the church was devastating, since it meant one no longer had the opportunity to go to heaven after death. It also carried great social stigma. On the other side of the struggle, many secular regimes resented the independence of the church, which compromised secular rule. Henry had long attempted to force the church courts under his control (as the knights describe), and in fact likely hoped his right-hand man and Chancellor Thomas Becket would help in that purpose when the latter was named Archbishop. When Becket immediately found a new, greater allegiance to the church, Henry, a notorious hot-head, was politically thwarted and personally offended. During their long struggle, which forced Becket to flee England in exile, Becket suggested that Pope Alexander not recognize the legitimacy of the young Prince Henry's coronation. Finally, excommunications could be easily lifted when a person acquiesced to or overpowered church demands, and so often only added political complication to situations.
The knights – whose names in the play are the same as the names of the murderous knights in history - are clearly boors by nature and are drunk, as well. Historically, they were not explicitly ordered to murder Becket, but were acting from the intensity of Henry's anger. What they want more than anything, though, is to defeat Becket in political argument. They insist he has betrayed the king on a personal and legal level, and that he is hiding behind a smokescreen in blaming the prince's excommunication on the Pope. In many ways, their arguments are justifiable. However, though Becket is momentarily drawn into the nuances of political argument, he mostly expresses his serenity, his active patience in awaiting death. This infuriates them – it is a philosophy "out of time," whereas all they want is the political argument of cause and effect. Eliot intended the Four Tempters to be double-cast with the Four Knights, which stresses their purpose. They are meant to tempt Becket into returning to a physical, earthly means of discourse.
Though they fail on that front, they do serve as tempters to the audience through their direct address speeches, again showing how important the congregation is to Eliot's intention. Thus far, he has meant for the Chorus to represent the audience. However, in a wonderful and hilarious theatrical shift, Eliot directly confronts and tempts the audience of his play. The question posed by the knights' speeches is whether we will be drawn into the cause-and-effect political discourse that defines our own world. Have we realized the spiritual nature of Becket's sacrifice, which exists out of time? Or will we be led again to consider his story as a political one, one which should be judged by cause and effect?

Eliot's purpose is to deliberately confront a physical realm and then to suggest the possibility of transcendence. He does not sugar-coat the transcendence offered by martyrdom – the violent murder happens on stage, and the Chorus reflects on how this martyrdom will add more responsibility to Christians in its aftermath. However, to think of Becket's death in terms of its effect is to remain tethered to the physical world, which sees things in terms of cause-and-effect. Our lives have the potential to reach a greater existence if we accept that we can never understand them. We are placed throughout the "wheel" and can never understand its movement because we are not at its center, as God is. Thus, what Becket teaches is neither acting nor suffering (waiting), but rather a mixture of the two: an active patience, a submission to God's will. It is not happiness or comfort that such submission brings, but greater spiritual fulfillment. It is for this wisdom that Becket died, and it is this wisdom which Eliot wishes to impart by dramatizing the ritual of this mythic martyrdom.

Thomas Becket and Henry II

One of those historical events that has gained the weight of myth through its extraordinary and complicated circumstances, the murder of Thomas Becket is notable for more than the martyrdom it produced. Instead, the profundity of the experience derives from the themes of Becket's friendship with the English King Henry II, a relationship that in its dissolution touches on themes of class, power, and personality. It is important to understand the general idea of this story to best appreciate Eliot's play, since he would have assumed his audience was familiar with the story.
Thomas Becket was born to parents of moderate means in Cheapside, a poor London neighborhood, circa 1118. The world remained largely feudal at this time, meaning that the king ruled under the pretense of divine right, with the entire society below him organized around financial responsibility to him. The medieval feudal system was strictly hierarchical and the concept of social mobility had barely been breached.
Therefore, Becket's rise to power is extraordinary. His parents insisted he pursue an education, even sending him to a fashionable school in Paris. While this decision might have been inspired by concern over the then-tumultuous political situation in England, it also served to introduce Becket to the study of Latin and the classical texts that he would later rely on to secure his reputation.
The political situation in England was complicated. The royal line of succession had been in question for several years at this point and Henry, the young upstart from the Angevin line, was contending for the crown. Ultimately, through both warfare and characteristic subterfuge, he would both ensure the crown for himself and construct a powerful central authority.
After returning to England, Becket secured a few advantageous apprenticeships that ultimately earned him a post under Theobald, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In this position, Thomas revealed his political instinct and began to meet members of the highest levels of society and government. While never ordained as a priest, Thomas was introduced to the conventions of the clerical life, and certainly never lost the connection to the Church that he engendered at this point.
After he was crowned King, some of Henry II's most pressing concerns involved England's relationship with France. At the time, England included several provinces in the north of modern-day France. This property increased after Henry wed Eleanor of Acquaintance, who had already been married to the French king Louis but had her marriage annulled when he could not produce children. The many conflicts between Henry and Louis were partially ameliorated by the political advocacy of Thomas Becket.
Thomas was ten years Henry's senior and of a decidedly lower parentage, but their friendship and partnership grew quickly from this point. Henry named Thomas Chancellor, an administrative post that was in many ways second in power only the king, since the chancellor was responsible for enacting the laws and deciding the particulars of the kingdom. Though the extent of their friendship has potentially been exaggerated by time and a historical record influenced by the propagandistic purposes of their later schism, Thomas certainly enjoyed a high post in Henry's rule and was trusted like few others.
One of Henry's primary goals was to reinstate certain ancestral customs that his grandfather had enjoyed as king before the line of succession became confused. Among these customs was a consolidation of power under the King. As it stood, rule and management of England was organized under three classes: the ruling class (Henry and his court), the barons (aristocratic land-owners), and the Church. The medieval Church was extremely powerful, a political institution in its own right, and while the Pope only occasionally used explicit military power, the threat of excommunication stood as the ultimate punishment in this Christian world. To be excommunicated meant one was prohibited from entering heaven, and so rulers and peasants alike feared upsetting the Church's designs.
And yet the bishops of the Church were too free from secular control in Henry's eyes, even having their own courts and system of justice that was completely divorced from the king's courts. Therefore, Henry and Thomas endeavored together to consolidate power, a responsibility Thomas seems to have relished. Meanwhile, Thomas grew to develop fine tastes thanks to the money he had access to. He was known for his efficiency but also for his pride and sanctimony.
When Theobald, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Thomas's first mentor, died, Henry decided to nominate Thomas for the post. This was the most powerful religious position in England, the closet to the Pope that an Englishman could get. Thomas would then serve as both Chancellor and Archbishop, which would naturally consolidate the power of those two elements in the kingdom.
It was an incredibly prestigious opportunity for anyone, much less a low-born man like Thomas. And yet within less than a year after being named Archbishop in 1162, Thomas revealed a spiritual prerogative that was in stark contrast with Henry's desire. Whether Thomas was truly inspired by his new spiritual duties or saw a political purpose in opposing the king is open to historical debate. However, the friendship quickly began to dissolve as Thomas resigned the Chancellorship and then began to refuse Henry the access to the church courts that he requested. Thomas continued to claim that he was loyal to Henry above all others except God, which incensed the hothead, impetuous, arrogant king to no end.
The struggle persisted until Henry successfully manipulated Becket into signing a document that reinstated the ancestral customs during a meeting in Clarendon. Mortified at having been beaten, Thomas quickly organized those bishops loyal to him and tried to rectify the mistake, even though this meant maligning Henry's intentions. When Henry made clear he would use force to enact his will, Thomas gathered a few loyal subjects and fled the country for France, with whose king he remained close.
Not only was the friendship now gone, but it had devolved into hatred. For seven years, a series of political intrigues subsisted, with Thomas always seeking the support of Pope Alexander and the French King Louis, and Henry refusing to budge on his requests. Both had much to gain from a reconciliation: Henry's country stood in an ambiguous relationship to the Catholic Church, and Thomas no longer had access to the lands and income to which he had grown accustomed. During this period, Thomas's lifestyle grew far more ascetic, an element that contributed to his hagiography: many see him as growing more spiritual in turning away from the temptations of the physical world.
Ultimately, Henry felt that Thomas was an ungrateful, disloyal brat, while Thomas considered Henry a vicious tyrant whose desires to control the Church were sacrilege. When the political situation found Thomas with the upper hand, he used his power of excommunication to attack many of those who had betrayed him in England. Though he never explicitly excommunicated Henry, he did engender a situation whereby Henry was not officially able to have his son and heir coronated. This threat to the Angevin line of succession was a personal affront, since Thomas had been close to the prince from the latter's birth, and it brought Henry to the negotiating table.
A compromise was reached through the mediation of King Louis, but by the time Thomas set sail for England, he knew Henry would not honor his end of the bargain. Henry was certain to withhold the church lands he had seized, and would surely continue to press for control over church courts. Therefore, Thomas had to sail and travel incognito, not revealing his identity until he reached Canterbury to a great and raucous welcome from commoners who gathered at the risk of their own safety.
Immediately, Thomas raised the stakes, excommunicating more of Henry's close advisors with the Pope's blessing. Henry, realizing that both his pride and the legitimacy of his son's coronation were being questioned, uttered some version of these famous words during a meeting: "Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?!" Though this was not an explicit order, and certainly in line with his documented temper, four of his lower-ranked knights heard this sentiment and set out to bolster their reputations by directly and forcefully confronting their liege's greatest professed enemy.
The four knights first confronted Thomas at the cathedral of Canterbury in a political argument, during which Thomas was openly contemptuous of them, despite their obvious drunkenness. They left and soon returned with more men, and when Thomas refused to leave with them, they brutally murdered him inside the cathedral, a great sacrilege considering the cathedral was holy ground.
In the aftermath of the murder, Thomas was quickly canonized as a saint and the spot of his murder became a near-instant pilgrimage site. Henry himself, though likely only concerned about his reputation and the potential of excommunication in the midst of his own unrelated political struggles, traveled there to be flogged in penance. He acknowledged both publicly and privately that his words inspired the murder, though he never admitted to officially giving the order. The number of eyewitness accounts to his spontaneous exclamation makes it likely that he did not intend Becket to be killed in this way. However, the fact that Henry would later imprison his own wife Eleanor for ten years shows that he was not disposed to show mercy.
The four knights all fled England within a few years, were excommunicated by the Pope, and eventually banished by Henry. The time it took him to banish them suggests that Henry had little personal remorse for the death of his old friend.
Since Becket's death, the cathedral at Canterbury has remained a pilgrimage site. In Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, the storytellers meet on their way to the site of Becket's murder, where they hope to secure mercy from God. Over time, Becket's body has been moved to a beautiful and impressive tomb in the cathedral.

The complicated personalities and exciting reversals of fortune that characterize this tale certainly leave some of its facts open to skepticism. Were Henry and Thomas really as close friends as dramatists would have us believe? Was Thomas really a holy, committed figure, or was he more of a rebellious iconoclast with a temper to match Henry's? Regardless of how one answers these questions, the story deserves attention as a symbol and a myth, which is very much what would have attracted a writer like Eliot to it.