Pastoral Dreams in Innisfree, Ireland, U.S.A
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interpretation of the conflicting urbanism and sentimental pastoralism at the heart
of American culture. However, in The Quiet Man, industrialism, the traditional
“evil” in Ford’s work, is barely present, instead remaining as a specter in the
background, haunting Sean Thornton’s (John Wayne’s) memory and driving his
search for rural peace in Ireland. The film’s setting is in many ways “Ireland” in
name only, as it’s a place so fantastically free of difficulty and complexity that it
could exist only in the dreamland of the silver screen. As a result, the train, rather
than interrupting Thornton’s pastoral idyll, instead functions as delivery device,
his last contact with the industrial world he is fleeing. As such, the train doesn’t
even go all the way to Innisfree; revealingly, it stops five miles from town and
return 2F