D. H. Lawrence's The Man Who Died: The Phallic Christ

The bare mythological structure of The Man Who Died is obvious enough. Christ is identified with the gamecock by all the devices of style. After the dialectical polarities of freedom versus compulsion have been demonstrated in the cock (his “never to be daunted” spirit as opposed to the “gloomy, foreboding knowledge that he was tied by the leg”),1 after the situation and heroic nature of the cock have been established, the dawn comes, and the cock crows. We are then introduced to the man who died: “At the same time, at the same hour …, on the same morning, a man awoke from a long sleep in which he was tied up.” (165) The repetition of “same” enforces the identity between the gamecock and the man waking up. The figure of waking from a long sleep stands as a metaphor of the theme. Finally, the image of Christ “tied up” identifies him with the cock. When Christ revisits his tomb, he says to the rooster: “Surely thou art risen to the Father,” and he immediately perceives three women (Madeleine, his mother, and Joan) near the tomb. In the second paragraph, we learn that the rooster had three shabby hens, and that Madeleine's “little soul was hard, and … grasping, her body had its little greed …” (177), just as the hens are greedy. When the cock, with extraordinary cooing tenderness, saves a morsel for the hens, they peck him and carry the morsel away, beyond the reach of the string which ties him. He has given it to them—with extraordinary cooing tenderness—and they respond by dashing with it out of his reach. Is this not just like a hen, just like Madeleine, and just like women? Lawrence's original title for this parable was “The Escaped Cock,” and he draws on the sexual mythology of the street and barnyard with phallic connotations of slang usage. The slang pun on “cock” has a universal cultural referent among English speaking people. Furthermore, Lawrence uses the Elizabethan