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Critics have accepted the idea that Synge's transformation from a severely limited aesthete to the vigorous creator of a new Irish drama resulted from his visits to the Aran Islands. Basing her argument on autobiographical writings and other notes, Flood attributes this transformation to Synge's reaction to a lymph node biopsy performed under ether anesthesia in 1898. Prior to this experience Synge had fantasied that the womb was a dangerous organ and that his birth was
the result of the incorporation and destruction of his father (who had died during Synge's infancy) within the womb; accordingly, Synge defended against fears of his own engulfment and dissolution. The surgery had the unconscious significance of a death and rebirth and gave rise to an alternation in his womb fantasy: there was added an element of immortality in which the man who dies is reborn as his own son. Synge made his first of five annual trips to the Aran Islands the following summer, where he entered into filial relationships with old men who were the repositories and transmitters of ancient poems and narratives. Synge utilized this material for his new drama. As the contemporary repository and transmitter of the ancient literature, Synge united with generations of fathers stretching back into antiquity.