The Death of Synge, Summary and Analysis

Yeats felt that education in literature was inadequate and that many people did not appreciate genius until the artist was dead and unable to receive his acclaim. Yeats often ran into people who did not understand the depth of many of his and his friends' writings and found these people missed the purpose of the writing completely. Perhaps this was due to a lack of education in the writing rather than the details of the writer himself.

Yeats learned that his friend Synge had accepted his inevitable death shortly before he died. Some people found this acceptance to be a weakness in Synge's character, though Yeats did not feel that way. Yeats was saddened by Synge's death and felt that no one truly understood Synge as a man or a writer. Yeats felt...