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ANDREA FERRÁS WOLWACZ
HISTORY AS FICTION IN
READING IN THE DARK, BY SEAMUS DEANE
PORTO ALEGRE
2009
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UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO GRANDE DO SUL
INSTITUTO DE LETRAS
PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS
MESTRADO EM LITERATURAS DE LÍNGUA INGLESA
LINHA DE PESQUISA: LITERATURA, IMAGINÁRIO E HISTÓRIA
History as Fiction in Reading in the Dark,
by Seamus Deane
Dissertação submetida à Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul para obtenção do
grau de Mestre em Letras na ênfase Literaturas de Língua Inglesa
Mestranda: Andrea Ferrás Wolwacz
Orientadora: Sandra Maggio
Porto Alegre
2009
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For my daughter Natasha.
AGRADECIMENTOS
A minha filha Natasha Wolwacz Heinz que sempre acreditou no meu sucesso.
Aos meus pais, Maria Rachel Ferrás Wolwacz. e Victor Wolwacz por proporcionar
minha educação e incentivar a aquisição de conhecimento intelectual.
A minha mãe Maria Rachel por ter me presenteado com Reading in the Dark.
A minha orientadora e amiga Sandra Sirangelo Maggio, que me orientou com tanto
carinho e dedicação.
A Ana Maria Lisboa de Mello por me emprestar livros e sugerir leituras.
A Mara Jardim por escutar todas as minhas dúvidas e ansiedades.
Aos colegas e funcionários da FAPA, pela amizade e estímulo.
A Robert Carrington, por ter me auxiliado na revisão do texto.
Hands Across the Divide
http://www.goireland.com/derry/derry-hands-accross-the-divide-attraction-monuments-
id14648.htm
Access on 02.02.2009
Toleration is a function of diversity. The more
heterogeneous the composition of a population, the
greater the necessity for interaction. The greater
the level of interaction, the better the environment
for toleration.
P. O’Malley, Uncivil Wars: Ireland Today
RESUMO
Esta dissertação de mestrado propõe-se a apresentar um estudo sobre a obra ficcional de
Seamus Deane Reading in the Dark à luz das recentes idéias sobre a redefinição do conceito
de identidade norte-irlandesa. No pano de fundo deste romance autobiográfico, identificamos
a presença de episódios históricos envolvendo o choque entre unionistas pró-britânicos e
Nacionalistas irlandeses, que levou ao conflito conhecido como “The Troubles”. Esses
episódios, e suas conseqüências, são apresentados através da perspectiva de um protagonista
autodiegético, que relata três décadas, de 1940 a 1960. Enquanto o personagem cresce, sua
percepção obviamente vai-se alterando. O efeito final da minha leitura do romance – que foi
escrito na década de 1990 – é a abertura de uma nova perspectiva, relacionada com a
necessidade de redefinir questões da nacionalidade irlandesa. Reading in the Dark é um
romance sobre contradições entre duas culturas que não conseguem – mas necessitam – co-
existir, vistas através da perspectiva de um adolescente inteligente e bem intencionado. Este
texto literário oferece uma formulação sobre os novos avanços sobre as questões de
identidade e tolerância, as quais podem ser abordadas de três formas: o conflito pode ser
analisado internamente, através da oposição entre as comunidades Católicas e Protestantes, ou
externamente, considerando os interesses da ilha da Irlanda, em oposição aos oitocentos anos
de dominação inglesa. A terceira solução propõe uma redefinição de todos os conceitos
implicados. Como conseqüência dessa crise, o romance denuncia e redefine os sistemas
políticos usados como instrumentos de dominação e de manutenção e validação do choque
entre as duas ideologias existentes que levaram ao sectarismo no território da Irlanda do
Norte. A discussão levada a cabo nesta dissertação está baseada nos presentes debates sobre
estudos culturais, especialmente como propostos por Terry Eagleton e por outros membros do
“Field Day Movement of Irish Writing”, que analisam as questões relativas à identidade.
Esses intelectuais escolheram reavaliar as narrativas dominantes sobre a Irlanda, incluindo a
formação dos mitos que motivou o acirramento dessa hostilidade contra a parte oposta. Esta
dissertação está estruturada em três capítulos principais. Dois deles contextualizam o plano de
fundo da narrativa e da agenda política crítica do “Field Day Movement”. O capítulo de
análise é centrado em treze cenas fortes selecionadas do romance, as quais são comentadas a
partir de considerações tecidas nos limites dos capítulos anteriores. No final do trabalho, eu
espero validar a importância do romance autobiográfico de Seamus Deane Reading in the
Dark no processo de reexame dos discursos que levaram à falta de comunicação entre duas
comunidades que vivem em um mesmo território.
ABSTRACT
This thesis consists of a study of Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark in the light of recent
ideas regarding the redefinition of the concept of Northern Irish identity. At the background of
this auto-biographical novel we identify the presence of historical episodes involving the
clash between British Unionists and Irish Nationalists, which led to the conflicts known as
“The Troubles.” These episodes, and their consequences, are presented through the filter of an
autodiegetic protagonist/narrator, through a time-span of three decades, from the 1940s to the
1960s. As the character grows, perception is obviously altered. The final effect of my reading
of this novel – which was written in the 1990’s – is the opening a new perspective, related to
the need of redefining issues of national identity. Reading in the Dark is a novel about the
contradictions between two cultures which cannot – but must – co-exist, as seen through the
eyes of one growing perceptive, well-meaning intelligent young man. This literary text offers
a statement about a new advance towards the issues of identity and toleration, which can be
approached in three ways: the conflict can be analyzed internally, through the opposition
between the Catholic and the Protestant parts of the community; or externally, considering the
interests of the island of Ireland, as opposed to eight-hundred years of English domination.
The third solution proposes a redefinition of all concepts implied. As a consequence of this
crisis, the novel simultaneously denounces and redefines the political systems used as
instruments of domination, and the maintenance and validation of the clash between the two
existing ideologies that led to sectarianism within the northern territory. The discussion held
in this thesis is based on the present state of the debate regarding Cultural Studies, especially
as proposed by Terry Eagleton and by other members of the Field Day movement, who
analyze the questions concerning identity. These intellectuals choose to revaluate the
dominant narratives about Ireland, including the formation and the use made of myths that
have heightened the sense of hostility against the opposite part. This thesis is structured in
three main chapters. Two of them contextualize the background of the narrative and present
the critical-political agenda of the Field Day movement. The chapter of analysis centers on
thirteen strong scenes selected from the novel, which are woven within the framing previous
chapters. At the end of the work, I hope to validate my belief in the social function of
literature, by stressing the importance of Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark in this process
of re-examination of old discourses that led to the failure of communication between the two
communities living in the same territory.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1 INTRODUCTION 08
2 HISTORICAL CONTEXT: HISTORY, MYTH AND LITERATURE 16
3 THE FIELD DAY COMPANY 30
3.1 THE REVISIONISM OF THE FIELD DAY 30
3.2 THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE FIELD DAY 32
3.2.1 A Very Special Contributor 38
3.2.2 Seamus Deane, the Author, and the Choice for an Autobiographical Novel 40
4 READING IN THE DARK 45
4.1 STAIRS 46
4.2 READING IN THE DARK
48
4.3 GRANDFATHER
50
4.4 THE PISTOL 51
4.5 IN IRISH 53
4.6 THE OLD FORT 54
4.7 RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE 56
4.8 POLITICAL EDUCATION 57
4.9 EDDIE 59
4.10 SERGEANT BURKE 61
4.11 AFTER 62
4.12 MY FATHER
64
4.13 MY MOTHER
65
5 CONCLUSION 68
REFERENCES
73
ANNEX A - EASTER 1916
79
ANNEX B - THE PETROL BOMBER 80
ANNEX C - THE GREAT FAMINE 81
ANNEX D - IRA MURAL 82
ANNEX E - UFV MURAL
83
ANNEX F - RELIGIOUS DISTRIBUTION IN LONDONDERRY
84
ANNEX G - THE BRITISH ARMY WATCHOVER 85
ANNEX H - FREE DERRY 86
ANNEX I - GRIANAN OF AILEACH 87
1 INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this thesis is to present my views on Reading in the Dark, a novel
written in 1984 by the Northern Irish writer, university professor and literary critic Seamus
Deane. Among the numberless other critical possibilities of appreciation of this work, I
concentrate on the connections involving Literature and History. The author of Reading in the
Dark belongs to one people whose rich tradition of storytelling has served as therapy and
solace for a nation trying to heal centuries of domination and defeat. Consequently, this grief
has been internalized by Irishmen and Irishwomen and has become the product of incredible
imagination for generations of Irish writers whose works are imbued with myths and
supernatural stories. Hence, Seamus Deane is one of these gifted storytellers. Living in a
conflicted society in the second half of the twentieth century, Deane has chosen a way to
exorcise these ghosts, by reshaping the history of his time and place into fiction. By
transforming history into fiction, Deane creates his own narrative of the facts. History as
fiction enables one’s individual truth. But this individual trajectory also represents the
trajectory of the Irish people, whose long lost identity made them embrace some so-called
ancient Celtic myths (national myths) to restore their sense of identity, learn the inviability of
alternative, and, finally reach multiple simultaneous truths. Seamus Deane’s reading of
history, and writing of fiction as history, makes him an authoritative writer who helps keep
history alive. As George Santayana wrote in his book Life of Reason or the Phases of Human
Progress, “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it” (SANTAYANA,
1955, p. 284).
Seamus Deane was educated at Queen's University, in Belfast, and later earned his
doctorate at Cambridge University. He is one of the academic world's leading Joyceans,
having recently edited the annotated Penguin edition of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man. Deane taught literature for many years at University College, in Dublin, but nowadays
he teaches at the University of Notre Dame, in Indiana, in the United States. He is the author
of many books of literature and criticism including A Short History of Irish Literature (1994),
Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1770 (1998), poetry, and
numerous essays. Deane is also a member of The Field Day Company and editor of Field Day
Anthology of Irish Writing (1991). He is the general editor of the Field Day Pamphlets, and
the Director of Field Day Company, currently released. He is also a member of The Royal
Irish Academy. His novel which is the corpus of this thesis, Reading in the Dark (1996), won
9
the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, The Irish Literature Prize in 1997, and the
Guardian Prize for Fiction in 1996. Reading in the Dark was also a Booker Prize finalist in
1996 and the New York Times Notable Book in 1997.
I have been interested in Irish literature and history since I was a teenager. I remember
paying special attention to Irish films, so I have been watching them for more than twenty
years now. I have also been reading about Irish history and literature for a long time, and I
always thought that one day I would be studying Irish literature more deeply and precisely. I
read Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark for the first time in the summer of 1998, when I
became deeply involved with his work. I talked to some people about Deane’s book, but
nobody seemed to know anything about it or about the author. It came to my mind that it
would be fascinating to write a master’s thesis about Seamus Deane’s work. I started
searching about History and Literature of Ireland more profoundly and then I discovered that
many attention-grabbing cultural movements were taking place there. Here in Brazil,
however, we were still clinging to the traditional studies concerning Jonathan Swift, William
Butler Yeats, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, and Samuel Beckett. There were very few
works about contemporary writers, like Seamus Deane. Based on these facts I decided to
search further about the circumstances that caused the person Seamus Deane to become the
author Seamus Deane. I learned that the person was born into a Roman Catholic nationalist
family in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1940.
Reading in the Dark is set in Derry – or Londonderry, as it is called by the British
Protestants – from the 1940’s to the 60’s. The narrator/protagonist tells about his childhood
and adolescence in the Bogside, the Catholic part of the city, and the novel has the English
domination of Northern Ireland as its background. The unnamed autodiegetic
narrator/protagonist, raised in a working-class family, tells about the everyday life of his
childhood, the political issues concerning the English violence, and fantastic stories about his
family and the members of his community, enveloped in Irish legends and mysticism.
Throughout the novel, the boy senses the presence of an untold mystery, and tries to put
together the fragments of what is told and what is hidden about his family’s story, in an
attempt to reveal the secret. Intriguingly, the secret is linked to events in Northern Ireland’s
history. This novel-in-stories is about both the boy's coming of age and the developing events
that lead to the period known as "the Troubles
1
" in Northern Ireland; from the Easter Ring in
1
“The Troubles”- the period of communal violence involving paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland
from the late 1960s to the late 1990s, ending with the signature of an agreement between the British and the Irish
Governments and endorsed by most Northern Ireland political parties which aimed at developing a peace
process, called the Good Friday Agreement.
10
the early 1916
2
(annex A) to the "Battle of the Bogside
3
” (annex B), major confrontations of
this conflict. Although the setting surrounds the narrator with violence, chaos, and sectarian
division, Derry serves as a place for the protagonist to grow, both physically and mentally.
Throughout the novel the author, through the narrator’s voice, implies that Unionists and
Nationalists are so deeply involved in hating one another that it would be necessary to
abandon their identities in order to stop this dispute. The history of the protagonist’s family
can be also read as the history of the Northern Ireland with its oppressive policy which
stimulates sectarianism, forbids the human subjects to act on their own accords, keep secrets,
creates biased myths, and stimulates phantasms. This traumatic experience becomes a deep
wound for generations of people who will eventually free themselves from these
contradictions and from mechanisms of domination by finding their individual identity.
The thread to be pursued in the analysis of the novel relates to the issue of identity.
Perhaps the major reason why this kind of literature interests me so much is the fact that I
come from a family of post second war immigrants who arrived in a completely strange
country and had to rethink their own identity, to understand a strange country, and, at the
same time, heal from their own experience in order to be able to build up a new and
successful life. In order to be able to succeed, however, it has been necessary to tell about
their experiences. So, since I was a child, my family has had the habit of sitting at the dinning
table after Sunday’s lunch to talk about the Russian Revolution, their escape from the country
during the Second World War, their peregrination all over Europe, and their arrival in Brazil.
More interestingly, my father, who was a child when he left Russia, tells their story through
the point of view of a child and an adolescent growing up surrounded by uncertainties and
feeling the strangeness of the new culture. So, I realized that Reading in the Dark touches me
because, even though it shows a different experience in terms of historical context, it is very
similar to my father’s experience in terms of feeling, and most of all, in terms of redefining
and finding a new identity, but without ever forgetting what has happen, since forgetting
one’s history would lead to committing the same mistakes again.
2
The Easter Rising was a rebellion set in Ireland in Easter Week, 1916. The Rising was an attempt of Irish
republicans to win independence from Britain. It was one of the most significant uprisings in Ireland. The Rising
lasted from Easter Monday April 24 to April 30, 1916. The Republicans seized key locations in Dublin and
proclaimed an Irish Republic independent of Britain. The Rising was suppressed after six days of fighting, and
its leaders were court-martialled and executed, but it succeeded in bringing republicanism back to the Irish
politics.
3
The Battle of the Bogside was a riot in which residents of the Bogside and Derry Citizens Defense Association
fought against the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). After a three-day riot, the British army was called to
restore the order. This riot was the consequence of a number of Nationalist protest acts dating from 1968, among
them, an organized march by Derry Housing Action Committee and Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association
pleading changes in their housing policies. The marchers were batoned by the RUC.
11
To perform this analysis of Reading in the Dark, I have divided this thesis into three
chapters. The first chapter is dedicated to the historical contextualization. I begin by making
an outline of the Irish historical context from the beginning of the conflict to the 1960s, giving
special emphasis to the period after partition, when the British Empire consolidated its power
in Northern Ireland, as well as the 1940s and 50s, the historical period in which the narrative
is set. This historical context is related to the literary movements and the treatment of national
myths. The birth of the Irish Revisionism is also included in Chapter II. The emphasis on the
historical outline is crucial to understand why Ireland has developed the ideology of hate
present the twentieth century, and it is also important to establish a relationship between the
Irish political and cultural History of Northern Ireland from the 1940s to the 1960s, as
portrayed in Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark. The novel questions both the policy of
hatred and the appropriation of myths that has been used to feed the internal and external
conflicts. In Ireland, the myth is a very important form of expression. So, I dedicate some
space in chapter one to give an account of some important prose and poetry in which folklore
is told and how this Irish mythology was retrieved and transformed, influencing Irish culture
along Irish history.
Chapter two introduces The Field Day Company as the main source of critical support
to the thesis. The Field Day is a literary and artistic movement engaged in performing a
revisionist reading of Irish literary works. It has been developing an extensive production
about Irish Literature and History. This movement was founded in 1980 by the Irish
playwright Brian Friel
4
and the theatre and movie actor Stephen Rea
5
. Later, The Field Day
4
Brian Friel (1929- ) is one of Ireland's most noticeable playwrights. Friel has written plays, short stories;
screenplays; film, TV and Radio adaptations of his plays.. Brian Friel's plays have been produced at prestigious
places like the Abbey Theatre, London's West End and Broadway. Friel’s Translations (1981), is one of his
master pieces. The play was awarded the Ewart-Biggs Peace Prize. Besides co-founding Field Day, Friel is a
member of Aosdána, the national treasure of Irish artists. He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Literature
by the National University of Ireland in 1983, and in 1987 was nominated to the Irish Senate. Friel's plays deal
with identity, the notion of truth, and communication. Identity is formed through public and private memory. It is
the collective memories of a determined community which distinguish it from others. Nevertheless, the memory
of a community often conflicts with individual experience. For Friel, language is closely related with identity.
The names of places are associated with both, communal and private history and memories.
5
Stephen Rea was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in a Presbyterian but nationalist family, he attended Belfast
High School and the Queen's University of Belfast, taking a degree in English. Stephen Rea studied acting at the
Abbey Theatre School in Dublin. In the late 1970s, he acted in the Focus Company in Dublin with Gabriel
Byrne. During Margaret Thatcher's government, a broadcasting ban on Sinn Féin was imposed Sinn Féin
members could not be heard making statements expressing the views of Sinn Féin, so Rea was one of many
actors to talk about problem. After appearing on the stage and in television and film for many years in Ireland
and Britain, Rea came to international attention when he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor
for the film The Crying Game. He is a frequent collaborator with Irish film maker Neil Jordan. Rea also helped
establish the Field Day Theatre Company in 1980 with Tom Paulin, Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, and Seamus
Deane. In recognition for his contribution to theatre and performing arts, Rea was given honorary degrees from
both the Queen's University of Belfast and the University of Ulster in 2004. Rea was married to former
Provisional Irish Republican Army member and hunger striker, Dolours Price.
12
Company started a publishing project by editing articles about Irish history, cinema, literature,
geography, and politics, in association with Cork University Press and Notre Dame University
Press. Their aim is to help current studies on history, postcolonial theory, political and social
studies, critique of ideology, literature, and aesthetics. Seamus Deane is much committed to
the project, which has the purposes of redefining the idea of Irish identity and analyzing Irish
social and political life. The movement has greatly influenced contemporary Irish social and
cultural behavior and, consequently, Irish Literature.
These authors are concerned with the Irish political crises in the twentieth century and
have as their main objective to redefine the Irish sense of national culture, history and
tradition. This movement aims at pointing out that the heritage of sectarianism and cultural
stereotyping has done more harm than good to the communities of Northern Ireland. One of
the greatest damages has been the loss of their sense of identity as one island, missing the
sharing of a very rich culture and language. By being ignorant or alien to their own common
past, these communities are trapped in the philosophies about two opposing governments, the
British Unionists and the Irish Nationalists, which have become something of a dated issue if
the new state of world economy and affairs is to be taken into consideration. Also, there is the
sense of a great loss in the humane aspects of life on the island.
Other important contributors of the Field Day who work specifically with such issues
are Luke Gibbons and Terence Brown. Luke Gibbons is a professor of Irish studies at the
University of Notre Dame. He also teaches in the Irish Studies International Programme at the
Newman House, Dublin, and is co-director of the Irish Seminar in Dublin. Gibbons is
interested in film and literature, aesthetics, politics, cultural history, and post-colonialism. I
will rely on Gibbons’ impressions when discussing the role of Irish mythology, for he
analyses the myths that were redefined during the process of colonization and decolonization
and late colonization of Northern Ireland.
Terence Brown is a member of the Academia European, F.TC.D, professor of Anglo-
Irish literature, and the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Trinity College‚
Dublin. He is the author of Ireland: A Social and Cultural History, 1922 to the Present
(1987). In this book, Terrence Brown examines the continuities and changes in the Irish life
throughout the twentieth century. He juxtaposes nationalism, religion and language revival.
Brown also analyses the ideas, images, and symbols that provided the Irish people with part of
their sense of national identity. His account will enhance my work.
13
In aspects related to historical research, I will borrow from the historian Timothy
Patrick Coogan, a specialist in the social and political history of Ireland, its colonization by
The British Empire, the process that led to the republic in Southern Ireland, the partition, and
the late colonization of Northern Ireland. Coogan is also, broadcaster and newspaper
columnist. He served as editor of the Irish Press newspaper from 1968 to 1987.
The discussion about Ideology is based on the contribution of Terry Eagleton. This
choice is due to Eagleton’s great interest in Irish literature and culture. In his personal
website, he declares, “My other chief specialty is the English-language literature and culture
of Ireland, on which I have recently completed a trilogy of works.”
6
In 1968, when “The
Troubles” triggered a revival of Marxist criticism in Britain, Marxism was in decline in the
rest of the world. A group of theorists to which Eagleton belonged became engaged in
reviewing the social and political conditions in different countries. Eagleton occupied himself
in describing the relationship between Literature and Ideology
7
. In Nationalism, Colonialism,
and Literature, he asserts that texts are influenced by ideology, for individuals respond to
what they experience in life and these responses are embedded in ideology. Statements,
assumptions, attitudes within a text are intrinsically ideological.
In the third chapter of the thesis I present my reading of Deane’s novel through the
examination of a number of selected scenes. After presenting the paraphraseable content of
each scene, I connect it with the historical fact or the myth it makes reference to, and expose
the exchanges between History and Fiction there contained. In this way, I think that the
discussion contemplates the two ranges of action Seamus Deane is involved in: his role as an
author, related to Fiction, and his role as a social thinker, related to History. In the case of
Reading in the Dark, it is important to analyze the author’s ideological situation and the
contradictions which developed his thinking and the attempted solution for the contradictions
denounced in his writings.
6
Terry Eagleton’s homepage:
http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/subjectareas/englishamericanstudies/academicstaff/terryeagleton/. Access on
18.08.2007. The three books he mentions are Scholars and Rebels in Nineteenth Century Ireland, 1999;
Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture, 1996; and The Truth about the Irish, 2000.
7
Terry Eagleton’s concept of ideology is built upon the anti-Hegelian Marxism of Althusser. Althusser, in his
essay Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation, establishes the concept of
ideology. Ideology is a representation of the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of
existence. Ideology is an inevitable agent of repression because it disguises our real relationship to the world. It
is impossible not to be subjected by Ideology.
14
When a child has undergone a traumatic experience he may not externalize that
straight away. This traumatic experience is kept hidden somewhere. When adult, this
individual may feel that it is necessary to release the ghosts from the past in order to heal. As
an adult, one is able to gain control to confront the past. One may feel it is necessary to come
back to the past and reconstruct traumatic life events, interrogate an imagined community or a
lager culture, and externalize this confrontation in writing. Writing is a form of liberating all
the pain that was caused by those events which have struck this child. And this task is
important because the person is able to exorcize the ghosts of the past, and go beyond
frontiers of understanding to, finally, building oneself as an individual. This is what I believe
is being done by Seamus Deane in Reading in the Dark, and by a number of other
contemporary Irish writers too.
Deane was born into a Roman Catholic nationalist family in Derry, Northern Ireland,
in 1940. He experienced the Second World War and the difficult years that followed it, when
the countries all over Europe were trying to reestablish their poor economies and redefine
their ideologies. More than that, Northern Ireland, as part of the British Empire, was internally
divided by two opposing ideologies, Anglo-Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics, each of them
absorbed within their own past and tradition, which generated a great deal of wrath. As an
adult, Seamus Deane joined the Field Day Company and wrote Reading in the Dark, a novel
that subverts the current ideology about Irish issues in its treatment of the story of a typical
Catholic Northern Irish Family living in the Catholic Sect of Derry, surrounded by prejudice
and a series of secrets that led to a crisis. The prejudice, secrets, and anger presented in this
family reflect the microcosm of the Northern Irish. I believe that Seamus Deane’s fiction
dismantles this ideology of prejudice and discrimination of its time. This line of action goes
along with the Revisionist line of Historical Studies.
Seamus Deane’s novel Reading in the Dark is a significant example of the
contemporary literature of Northern Ireland. In this novel with autobiographical traces we
have a synthesis of the exorcising of ghosts by an individual who experienced a determined
social and political context. More than that, the novel also examines the factors that turned
Ireland into a sectarian society, alienating entire social classes within two antagonist
ideologies. Deane’s Reading in the Dark illustrates this process in a clear way. As the novel is
shaped as a memoir, the personal, social and political aspects are presented simultaneously. In
this sense, Seamus Deane is one among a number of contemporary Irish writers who feel the
necessity of telling their experience as a historical human subject who went through a politics
15
of difference and the whole process of nationalism which led to alienation and sectarianism
8
.
It seems that these authors feel it is necessary to show the world how their own experience
helped to invalidate the collective anonymity which makes individuals accept an ideology
imposed by the ghost of universal political identities, so as to undo alienation and endorse
individuality. Thus, these authors feel the necessity to lay bare their own story which is, at the
same time, the story of their time and place. The author who is part of a new generation of
writers feels the necessity of a new discourse for a new idea of what the human subject is and
what human communities are.
The thesis of my work is that Reading in the Dark is an excellent source for the
analysis of the relation between the social and political history of its determined society,
revealing the necessity the author has to redefine this history in order to propose an adaptation
of the Irish society to a new international order where the globalized world no longer accepts
the ideal of a pure race and a pure culture. My suggestion is that this novel carries a system of
representation of the historical, political and social reality of Northern Ireland. The aim is to
make an extrinsic criticism of the literary text in its relation to the historical period, by
analyzing the political and social context and finding out to what extent the novel shows the
contradictions in two cultures which cannot co-exist. I intend to comment on the significance
of the literary text as a document in which the author’s goals are to show the political and
social reality of the forties, fifties and sixties, through an approach that only becomes possible
in the nineties, so as to denounce both political systems as instruments of domination,
maintenance and validation of the clash between the two existing ideologies that led to
sectarianism within the northern territory. By discussing the relationship between the literary
text and the cultural and political history of this period, I believe much will be revealed about
the contemporary stage of the discussion about the redefinition of national identity in
Northern Ireland.
8
George Bernard Shaw’s (1856-1950) Immaturity, published in 1930 is an example of autobiography. In his
preface, Shaw writes Immaturity is an autobiographical essay in which he chooses humorous elements to write
about the pain of his growing in Dublin. Seán O’Casey (1880-1964) wrote six volumes of autobiography
published between 1939 and 1954. A couple of years later, they were published collectively in New York under
the title Mirror in My House: The Autobiographies of Seán O’Casey. They were also published in London as
Autobiographies (1963). In The Drums Under the Window O’Casey uses irony and anger to describe the Easter
Week. Reviewing O’ Casey’s work, George Orwell mistakably found it extremely anti-English. Robert
Harbinson (1928 - ) wrote No Surrender: An Ulster Childhood (1960). The author describes the protestant
obsession, dread and hate with the Pope and Catholicism. What is announced in Harbinson’s work becomes a
reality thirty ears later.
16
2 HISTORICAL CONTEXT: HISTORY, MYTH AND LITERATURE
My original intention was to divide this chapter of contextualization into three
sections, each referring to one of the items presented in the title above. However, in the case
of Ireland, History, Mythology and Literature are connected in such an intertwined way that
the attempt to treat one subject separately from the others would dangerously flatten the
complexity of the issues. Therefore, this argumentative thesis will start by referring to some
historical facts and to some myths that have generated narratives which shaped the concept of
national identity that is presently being questioned by the leading Irish intellectuals, all
grouped in the Field Day Movement, to which Seamus Deane belongs.
In order to understand what specific aspects are being questioned or addressed in the
novel, it is necessary to go back to some historical antecedents which originate the myths that
were gradually transformed into the constituent ingredients of Irish identity. This is the reason
why I will briefly present, in this session, the conjoined display of History and Mythology
landmarks that will lead us through the close reading of the episodes of the novel that are
examined in Chapter Three.
Although Ireland joined Christianity in the 5
th
Century
9
, we can set the beginning of
the political problem with England in the twelfth century, when the King of Leinster asked the
Norman King Henry II to help him fight against the Vikings. Before that, Ireland was a land
of monasteries with a strong Celtic culture. The Irish lived in tribes according to their family
names. The kings were chosen by election where the strongest warrior was usually chosen to
lead the tribe. Ireland was divided into five kingdoms: Ulster in the north, Munster in the
southwest, Leinster in the southeast, Connaught in the west, and Tara as The High Kingdom
of Ireland. These tribes were often at war in order to gain territorial advantage over one
another. At the beginning of the ninth century, the Vikings arrived in Ireland and founded
Dublin. The Irish united under a High King, Brian Boru, in order to fight against the Vikings.
As they had not been successful in expelling the Vikings from their island, the King of
Leinster asked the Normans to help them fight against the invaders at the beginning of the
twelfth century. As a consequence, the Norman King Henry II, helped by the Roman Catholic
Church, conquered Ireland. Henry II allowed some independence to the Irish lords. This
partial independence lasted until 1205 when Henry’s son, King John Plantagenet, took control
of Ireland and created the Earldom of Ulster. This condition of unwanted subjugation
9
Unless otherwise specified, factual references presented in this chapter are informed through COOGAN (2002).
17
remained through centuries, and got worse when, in the sixteenth century, the English King
Henry VIII broke with Rome, created the Church of England, and tried to bring Ireland to
accept his religious Reformation. The Anglo-Irish nobility and gentry rebelled against the
English King. As a result, the first signs of Irish nationalism and commitment to Catholicism
began, under the English rule.
The ancient Gaelic civilization had a great number of myths and rituals that long
preceded Christianity. The Irish lyric poetry was first transcribed in the ninth century, by the
monastic scribes. At this time the lyrical impulse of the hermit monks, who were familiar with
the natural world, produced poetry of longing for the missed native places. One of the most
famous poem is the one attributed to St Colmicille, who Christianized Scotland and northern
England and lamented the homelands of Gartan and ‘angel-haunted’ Derry, which he would
never see again. DEANE (1986, p. 15).
10
writes that these poetries were dominated by
historical and mythological themes, passages of praise for warriors and chieftains, genealogies
and the lore of sacred places
The Irish poems and sagas, annals and genealogical accounts date from the twelfth
century in written form. The art of writing came to the island in the fifth century, with
Christianity. In the fifth and the sixth centuries Christianity incorporated the Gaelic pagan
elements in writing. During these centuries the clerical scribes, with the help of the Gaelic
bards (filidh) – whose function was “to preserve the traditional lore in relation to places
families customs and laws” (idem, p. 11) – wrote down the origin stories of Irish history,
orally told by the filidh
11
. These scribes recorded the great sagas of the Ulster Cycle, centered
on Cu Chulainn, the Fenian Cycle centered on Finn Mac Cumhail, and the Cycle of Kings,
among others. According to Seamus Deane, these recordings of the Irish folktales “are the
oldest European vernacular literature which uniquely blends the old pagan and the new
Christian worlds” (ibdem, p. 11).
The Christian monk scribes re-constructed and reorganized the pre-Christian history of
Ireland by adapting the earlier records into the politics of Christian narrative. This Christian
adaptation retraced the Gaelic civilization in Ireland back to Adam. There are two important
Irish legends which were recorded, and later, copied and transformed over and over again.
One is the national epic of the great Ulster warrior, Cu Chulainn, who held up the army of
Queen Maeve’s Connacht’s men with only one hand while the rest of the Ulstermen lay under
10
Seamus Deane is frequently quoted, in this chapter, for his contribution as a social and history thinker, rather
than as the author of Reading in the Dark.
11
Filidh were members of an elite class of poets in Ireland also known as druids and bards. This class system
lasted until the Renaissance, when the Irish class system was dismantled.
18
a spell which made them inert. Cu Chulainn, the leading hero in the stories of the Ulster
Cycle, is the son of a god (Lugh) and of a princess (Deichtire). His name means “the hound of
Cullan”, after a ferocious dog he killed as a child. The myth of Cu Chulainn was rekindled in
the early 20
th
Century by young artists of the Irish Literary Revival, such as Lady Gregory,
William Butler Yeats
12
and Patrick Henry Pearse.
13
Ian Anderson, a historian from the Ulster
Defence Association, also used Cu Chulainn, but as a Scottish-Unionist hero.
The other great hero in Irish epic literature are is Finn Mac Cumhaill . Finn Mac
Cumhaill has been the central character in epic tales and poems throughout the times.
According to Seamus Deane, Finn Mac Cumhaill appears in paper in the thirteenth century
anonymous work Agallamh na Seanórach (Colloquy of the Ancient Men). Finn (or Fionn)
Mac Cumhaill is the leader of the Fianna, the wandering band of warriors and hunters. The
poems were expanded and developed in prose sequence containing the metrical insets. These
insets in the Agallamh developed into the Ossianic
14
lays, poems or ballads, in which Oisin,
one of Finn’s men, is the interlocutory figure who brings the pagan Fionn and the Christian St
Patrick together in a series of exchanges, which embody the different world views of the two
cultures. According to Deane, these tales and poems “preserved both pagan and Christian
elements as integral parts of itself” (ibdem,, p.13). These tales were re-written and re-told in
the later centuries. They also have been transformed and readapted according to the historical
context.
These mythological heroes were transformed to fulfill specific and different purposes,
though time. Fionn fitted the need for national heroes that spread during the Romantic
12
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) is one of the most important names in the movement known as the Irish
Literary Revival. A great part of his production evokes Irish legends and folklore, such as the books
Representative Irish Tales (1891) and Irish Fairy Tales (1892). The stories about the legendary hero Finn
MacCumhail, that form the Fenian Cycle of Irish Mythology, are addressed in The Wanderings of Oisin (1889),
and the stories about Cu Chulainn, the hero of the Cycle of Ulster, can be retraced in On Baile’s Strand (1904).
13
The epic that presents the story of Cu Chulainn is the Tain Bo Cuailnge. Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852-1932)
wrote Cuchulainn of Muirthemne (1902); Yeats (as mentioned above, in note 5) wrote On Baile’s Strand, as well
as The Green Helmet (1910). But it was through the poetry of Patrick Pearse (1879-1916), leader and martyr of
the Easter Rising of 1916, that the image of Cu Chulainn became inseparable from the notion of an armed
resistance against England (cf. the poem Mise Éire, and others).
14
In the 18
th
Century, the Scottish poet James Macpherson published the book Fragments of Ancient Poetry
Collected in the Highlands of Scotland. The narrative voice in the introduction to the work claims to have found
– and translated from Scots Gaelic into English – the Ossian Cycle of Poems, containing stories about the Irish
hero Oisin, son of Finn Mac Cumhaill, as if the poems had actually been originally written by an ancient poet
called Ossian. In fact, the word Ossian does not refer to a person, Ossian, but to the stories about Oisin. To this
day there are still people who believe that the poems are very old, and in the existence of the poet Ossian, who is,
in fact, a fictional creation of James Macpherson’s.
19
Movement, and Cu Chulainn became the hero of the Irish Revival in the early twentieth
century.
15
From 1594 to 1607, through the reigns of the English monarchs Elizabeth I and James
I, the Irish fought four wars until they were definitely defeated by the British; the re-conquest
was completed. In 1607, the English authorities established an overt control over Ireland,
which was officially defined as England’s colony. The English authorities, from Dublin,
extended a centralized form of justice to the entire island, and successfully disarmed the
various lordships, both Irish and Old English. The best lands in Ulster were given to English
and Scottish merchants, while the Irish were forced either to leave or to work for the new
protestant settlers. Ulster was divided among twelve London guilds. Derry was renamed
Londonderry by these guilds. Besides ruining the Irish society, this sort of colonialism marked
the beginning of the fight between Protestants and Catholics.
The classical Irish literary production disappeared after the Elizabethan wars, and
constant disputes were held between Protestants and Catholics through the periods of the
Reformation, and Counter-reformation. In Ireland, the Catholic Church set a Catholic
reaction, with the help of the Irish colloquial dialect. The new practices followed the bardic
school of communicating in verse, so that they would be easier to be accepted and
internalized by the large illiterate population. The Catholic Church adapted the continental
devotional literature to the Irish context, and used that as religious propaganda. The Catholic
ideology had its final victory in the seventeenth century due to consecutive crises which made
the Gaelic bards join the Catholic cause. Nonetheless, the Elizabethan wars, the accession of
James I, The Catholic rebellion of 1641, Cromwell’s campaign and the Glorious Revolution
of 1689 eventually suppressed to the Gaelic culture. Deane reports that “the repeated
invasions […] led to the repeated attempt in literature to fashion myths of recovery or cede
the tragic recognition of culture’s failure” (ibdem, p. 23).
In the eighteenth century, the national language had been already destroyed by
political, military, economic, and educational factors. The British Empire imposed English as
the national language to be taught at schools; the Irish Gaelic language was forbidden in the
main towns, not only for political, but also for practical reasons, since the mass of people who
moved from the countryside to the city would only find jobs if they spoke English. Although
the Irish language was still spoken among the countryside dwellers, it was not kept from one
generation to another due to the exodus to the urban areas or to other countries, which
15
One of the strongest symbols of the 1916 Easter Rising is the monument Statue of the Dying Cuchulain, by
Oliver Sheppard, displayed at the Dublin General Post Office.
20
culminated in the Great Famine of the eighteenth century
16
(annex C). By the end of the
eighteenth century, the Gaelic culture was dead. This destruction of the Gaelic order,
paradoxically, enhanced the revival of oral tradition, since many poets were forced to live
among the illiterate people, after the loss of their aristocratic privilege. So literature became
again part of the oral tradition in Ireland.
In different moments of the history of Ireland, the role of resistance against the
English has been led by different kinds of people. In the early stages of Norman domination
resistance was held by the High Kings. In later times, by the most powerful landowners. From
the 19
th
century onwards, the mission was carried out by young intellectuals. To them,
language was a very important issue. Ancient Celtic myths were brought back, such as the
Legend of the Fianna
17
. The new approach to the legend was tuned with the political agenda
of the Romantic European Movement. Inspired by the French Revolution
18
and by Ireland’s
colonial condition, Irish intellectuals and militants became engaged in responding to the
crisis. As a consequence, two Celtic Revivals took place. The first began in the eighteenth
century. The second began in the late nineteenth century. Both revivals produced literature
which was filled with political significance and focused on three main issues: language,
landscape and tradition. For those intellectuals, “the people, their land, and the language they
spoke became repositories of tradition” (ibdem, p. 20).
It was in the nineteenth century that the Irish fight for political freedom became known
as the fight between Catholics and Protestants, since there was an increasing number of
Protestants who were protected by England against the Catholic Irish. In 1801, the Act of
Union closed the Dublin parliament and created the legislative union of Great Britain and
Ireland, under the name of United Kingdom, in order to increase the British control in the
country. In 1829, the Catholics, who had been prohibited from taking part in politics, were
16
There are two Famine episodes in the history of Ireland. The reference made here is to the first, the eighteenth
century Irish Famine, which took place in 1740 and 1741, caused by a sequence of bad years for agriculture. One
century later the world known Great Famine occurred. The impoverished population were feeding basically on
potatoes, when a fungus destroyed the potato plantations. The second Great Famine lasted eight years, from 1845
to 1852. One fourth of the population of Ireland was lost, dead people and emigrants included. It is to the second
Famine that the famous painting by Van Gogh alludes. The first episode is usually referred to as The Irish
Famine, and the second as The Great Famine.
17
As mentioned before, the Fianna were Irish warrior-hunters who served the High King of Ireland in the 3rd
century AD. Their last great leader was Fionn Mac Cumhaill, who has featured in Irish literature since the eigth
century. His image has often been used for nationalist purposes. One example is the popular notion that he is not
dead, but sleeping in Fort Grianan, and is yet to awake and defend Ireland against the English. This is a recurrent
notion in the mythic imaginary, and makes us think of King Arthur, Don Sebastian, and even of Christian
religious representations, in which Christ’s Second Coming is announced.
18
The French Revolution, also strongly influenced by the Romantic ideals, set the principle that the history of
peoples was more important than the history of dynasties, political parties, or masters. The study of cultural
homogeneity was replaced by the study of the tradition that was preserved by regional cultures in spite of foreign
domination.
21
allowed to become members of Parliament
19
. This increased the Irish national feeling. Yet, a
number of crises in the nineteenth century, including the Great Famine of 1845, brought about
a movement called “The Young Irelanders”, born in the rebellion of 1847. Their aim was to
provide the revolutionary continuity to the 1798 raise. This movement provided the leaders
who formed the Irish Republican Brotherhood, popularly called the Fenian movement,
founded in 1858, from which the IRA later stemmed.
In 1850, Pope Pius IX named Cardinal Paul Cullen as Archbishop of Dublin and
assigned him the task of reforming and transforming the Irish Church according to Rome’s
designs. Cullen introduced a “devotional revolution”, showering the Irish men and women
with novenas, pilgrimages, churches, hospitals, schools and social services. This influence not
only enhanced the clash between the two kinds of colonial cultures, the British Empire and
the Roman Empire, but also shaped the internal cleavage in Ireland, which lasted during the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Catholicism met the needs of a nascent nationalism at a
time when Irish language and the Gaelic culture were declining due to British imperialism,
which furthered the Great Famine. The Catholic faith was suited to play the role of the
nationalist awakening. It not only joined the nationalist cause, but became a symbol of
national identity, since it was difficult to define Irishness in a more comprehensive term than
the religious one. So, Catholicism and its practices were the mark of national distinctiveness.
According to Terence Brown, from the Famine until the late twentieth century, the Catholic
Church met the needs of nascent nationalism, became intimately linked with the national
feeling, and a badge of national identity. (BROWN: 1987, p. 25)
In 1877, Michael Davitt, a former Fenian, began to organize tenants to campaign
against the landlords by refusing to pay excessive rents and offering what they considered a
reasonable rent. In 1879, Davitt formed the Land League
20
to negotiate the rights of the
tenantry against the landlords. In 1880 Charles Parnell, a Protestant Irish Member of
Parliament, became the leader of the Irish nationalist movement. Charles Stewart Parnell was
against the English and demanded full rights for the Irish people. In London, Parnell guided a
political battle in the House of Commons. This political battle led Davitt’s Land League, the
Fenians and the Irish Parliamentary Party to pursue the Home Rule, a limited kind of self-
government. Although most liberals supported Parnell’s Irish party, the Tories voted against
19
The religious-philosophical issue respecting the presence of a Catholic member in the Houses of Parliament
revealed the doubt about whose interests that peer would represent, the King’s or the Pope’s.
20
Irish peasant-rights organization, formed in 1879 by Michael Davitt and Charles Stewart Parnell to fight
against tenant evictions. Through its skilful use of the boycott against anyone who took a farm from which
another had been evicted, it forced Gladstone's government to introduce a law in 1881 restricting rents and
granting tenants security of tenure.
22
self-government and the first Irish Home Rule did not succeed. In 1881 the British declared
the Land League illegal and arrested Davitt, Parnell and other 1000 militants involved in the
Land League and Home Rule process
21
.
As a consequence of the political situation, literature in the nineteenth century adopted
the idea of regional landscape from early European Romanticism and transformed it into
passion and loyalty to the Irish landscape and traditions by rewriting the old myths. According
to Deane,
The very naming of the land in both literature and politics – Cathleen ni Houlihan,
Eireann, Eire, Saorstat, Eireann, the republic, the Six counties, Ulster, Northern
Ireland – is a symptom of that combination of political instability and regional loyalty
which has defined modern Irish history. […] This is particularly true when the fact of
violence is taken into account. For all those names are associated with various forms
of violence. It is a question of the impossibility of finding a name which is consonant
of various notions of peace and stability. Further the regional loyalty is a subject to
intensification in time of violence (DEANE, 1985, p.13).
Being influenced by the Land League and the political process, Irish literature of the
nineteenth century adopted the idea of regional landscape from early the European
Romanticism and transformed into passion and loyalty to the Irish landscape and traditions by
rewriting the old myths. This second Celtic Revival was not only interested in talking about
the uniqueness of the landscape and using Irish legends and myths in their literary
productions, but also in denouncing the destruction caused by the Act of Union and the
Protestant Ascendancy which led to the great famine and, consequently, to poverty,
emigration, starvation, and death. In this way, the literature of the nineteenth century became
deeply connected to politics and brought heavy consequences to Ireland, since it triggered the
idea of racial difference and sectarianism. One instance can be found in the work of the
English writer Matthew Arnold
22
, who used some of Edmund Burke’s ideas in his texts.
According to Arnold, the Protestant ascendancy was doing harm to the Irish Catholic
majority. Deane comments, “Racial and religious distinctions are used by Arnold to explain
21
The strategy used by the British government to diminish the political influence of Parnell consisted of
spreading the news that Parnell had an adulterous connection with a married woman. This forced the Catholic
Church to turn against Parnell. There is a clear reference to this episode in James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man. In the first pages of the novel, the character Dante – a devout Catholic and a brave Irish woman
– reveals to a very young Stephen Dedalus her admiration both for Davitt and Parnell. Later, in the same chapter,
having to choose between God and Politics, she repudiates the memory of Parnell. The revolt against the fact
that the Irish people betrayed their political leader is a recurrent theme in Joyce’s work. Soon after the failure of
this attempt at the Home Rule Parnell fell ill and died.
22
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) was an English poet and cultural critic who was influenced by continental Celtic
studies and the urgency of events in Ireland. He argued that the Celts are part of the Indo-European race, in
contradistinction from the Semitic peoples, and not therefore possible to be assimilated like other colonies.
Arnold’s definition of the Celtic spirit was latterly said to be significant for a British hegemonic relation to Irish
culture.
23
the kind of racial and religious discrimination practiced by the British in Ireland” (idem,
p.26). In this way, Arnold helped to develop the political sectarianism that was already felt in
Ireland by writing about the differences between Catholics and Protestants, and by adding the
cultural myth element to that.
The revival of the Gaelic language in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would
have been an important ambition if it had not become one of the means to the political
implications. Although the Gaelic League in 1893 was founded by Protestant intellectuals
who aimed at reviving the Gaelic culture and at fighting for de-anglicization, this movement
ended up by reinforcing the alliance between the Gaelic civilization and Catholicism, and
made Protestantism return to its alliance with the English civilization.
The second Irish Home Rule was introduced in 1893, and the last one in 1912-14. But,
because of World War I, its implementation was postponed to the end of the war. In 1916, a
republican movement called “the Easter Ring” burst out, through rebels in Dublin who did not
want a Home Rule, but complete independence. The British put down the movement and
executed the leaders. In 1918 republicans won elections in all areas (except in Ulster), created
their own Parliament, The Dail in Dublin, and formed The Republic of Ireland. In 1919, led
by Eamonn De Valera, the nationalist movement Sinn Fein (Ourselves Alone) set up a Dublin
assembly, the Dail Eireann, which again proclaimed Irish independence. A guerrilla
campaign by the Irish Republican Army, or IRA, against British forces began, with heavy
casualties on both sides.
In 1920 the Government of Ireland Act provided for the establishment of two self-
governing units, one (Northern Ireland now) composed of 6 of Ulster's 9 counties, the other
composed of the 23 counties of Southern Ireland plus the other 3 counties of Ulster (which
together form the Republic of Ireland now). In 1921, England agreed with the independence
of Southern Ireland, but Ulster should remain part of the British Government. This was called
The Anglo-Irish Treaty. In 1922 the Dublin parliament ratified the treaty, despite the
opposition of De Valera and others. In 1937 a new constitution abolished the Irish Free State
and proclaimed Eire (Gaelic for Ireland) as a sovereign, independent, democratic state. In
1949 Eire became the Republic of Ireland, and left the British Commonwealth.
The Free State set out a program to restore the Irish Language and the Celtic culture
destroyed by British colonial power, in order to restitute a sense of national identity to the
Irish people. The Republic of Ireland was not formed by a homogeneous society, but diverse
segments which had to be accommodated. It was in the rural area that a homogeneous Irish
society could be found. However, this rural society was marked by a profound continuity of
24
the nineteenth century social and cultural conservatism, added to the devotional revolution of
the Catholic Church in the period following the Great Famine. The Irish Nationalists realized
that it was necessary to stress Catholicism as a mark of national distinctiveness, due to the
immediate lack of identity other than Catholic loyalty and devotion.
The Free State government was a conservative government, established among the
Irish middle class who chose the language revival as a way to establish its legitimacy. This
government was partially formed by members of the Gaelic League, founded in 1893.
Consequently, these members had been affected by the revivalist ideology. The government
set a program to teach the Irish language and culture to men and women of all ages. In fact,
the first minister of Education was Eoin McNeill a professor of early Irish history at
University College, in Dublin, and a Gaelic scholar who became known as a devoted worker
for the Gaelic League. Eoin McNeill, made Irish compulsory at National Schools, and
subjects like geography and history had also to be taught in Irish. Moreover, he established
that the teachers had to prove that they mastered Irish Gaelic to be able to get their teaching
certificates.
The literature that began to be produced in the late nineteenth century and in the first
part of the twentieth century reaffirmed the heroic tradition of the Irish people and told
mythological tales about their ancient heroes. Added to that, there was also the Catholic
element of sacrificial chivalry. This literature managed to suggest a continuity of experience
between the past and the present, and became a powerful weapon of the nationalist state. The
tales of the mythological heroes like Cu Chulainn, the Fianna, and Cathleen ni Houlinhan
23
,
among others, suggested that these heroes would again fight for their land against England.
Furthermore, the new Irish State was basically rural, so artists of the first half of the twentieth
century, especially after the partition, popularized the notion of the virtuous countryman and
rural virtue in their plays, poems, speeches and paintings. Writers produced literature that
described the simplicity of the farmers and peasants as being essentially Irish.
They celebrated a version of Irish pastoral, where rural life was a condition of virtue
inasmuch as it reminded an expression of an ancient civilization, uncontaminated by
commercialism and progress. In so doing the helped confirm Irish society in a belief
that rural life constituted an essential element of an unchanging Irish Identity.
(BROWN, 1987, p. 66)
23
Cathleen ni Houlinhan is a female allegory representing Ireland, in the same way that Britannia represents
Britain. This image is the symbol of Irish Nationalism, and is often referred to as the “Poor Old Woman,” whose
brave sons died fighting for their land. The image is strongly associated with the I.R.A. and with the Troubles. In
Modern literature, the reference can be found in Joyce’s Dubliners (“A Mother”) and Ulysses (Telemachia), in
Pearse’s Mise Éire, in Yeats and Lady Gregory’s Cathleen ni Houlinhan, or in Sean O’Casey’s The Shadow of
the Gunman, for instance.
25
Literature of he first decades of the twentieth century romanticized the poor conditions
of Irish rural life as an inheritance of the Gaelic past. In fact the rural life, especially in the
west of the country, continued to hold characteristics of the traditional Irish civilization from
before the Great Famine, which was one of the causes of the loss of the Irish language.
Especially in the west of the country, storytellers (senachais) still told tales about old
historical legends, ballads and songs were still sung, pre-Christian superstitions as fairies were
still believed, as well as rites of the agricultural year, the calendar customs and magical cures
were still practiced, festivals were still appreciated, folk drama, mummers, and local saint’s
days were still cherished. So, when writers portrayed aspects of the rural life, they proposed
the continuity of the traditions, ignoring that these countrymen had kept these traditions alive,
but, at the same time, had already been adapting themselves to modern social and economic
aspects of the society, becoming involved with national organizations and political
movements.
After the partition, the Unionists, supported by the British Government, consolidated
the political and economical power in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland was part of the
United Kingdom with all privileges and responsibilities involved. Thus, the Unionist party
was a majority in the Northern Ireland Parliament. The Unionists main objective was to
prevent Catholics from acquiring positions of respect within the Six Counties, so Catholics
were not able to carry out any political position, and voting depended on their economic and
social situation. As a consequence, they did not have any political representation.
Discrimination was carried through religion. Although suffering discrimination, these people
left the countryside to Belfast, Londonderry and other industrial centers where work was
available in the textile and shipbuilding industries. The Unionist government divided the
working class along religious lines in order to prevent the working class from organizing
themselves in trading unions and divulging socialist ideas. The Unionist government made it
clear that Catholics were living in a Protestant State and, therefore, had to accept their laws
and policy. This fostered not only resentment and reaction, but also the I.R.A. violent
activities, since the Irish Republican Army was against the partition. The Bandon incident of
April 25, 1921
24
raised fear of response from the I.R.A. in the Protestant community of
Northern Ireland. The Ulster Protestant Association (U.P.A.) and other murder gangs, set up
by the British military, started a series of guerrillas not only against the I.R.A., but against
Catholics in general. In response to the guerrillas, the Unionist Government set the Northern
24
On April 25, in the Bandon District of County Cork, an IRA commander was shot to death as he called on a
Protestant-owned house.
26
Special Act, which allowed death penalty, internment
25
, flogging, and curfew in the Catholic
areas. This policy ended by the end of 1924, but some measures, as the curfew, reappeared in
Catholic areas in different moments of crisis, as for example, the years of 1968-9. Because of
the treatment of the Protestant government, Catholic nationalists went to street to protest
against the British rule. Conflicts between groups started to happen; the I.R.A. started a
guerrilla against the government. Unionists formed paramilitary groups to fight the I.R.A.
(annex D) and the Catholics, and British soldiers went to Northern Ireland to interfere.
Violence took place and the civil war broke out in Northern Ireland. This conflict led to what
became to be known as “the Troubles”. In 1966–1969, rioting and street fighting between
Protestants and Catholics occurred in Londonderry, fomented by extremist nationalist
Protestants, who feared the Catholics might attain a local majority, and by Catholics
demonstrating for civil rights. The religious communities, Catholic and Protestant, became
hostile armed camps. The goal of the I.R.A. was to eject the British and unify Northern
Ireland with the Irish Republic to the south. Various Protestant terrorist organizations pursued
the Unionist cause through violence (annex E).
In the years that preceded the partition, Londonderry was formed by a majority of
Catholics, but the uneven electoral system privileged the Protestants (annex F). This fact led
the Catholic population to a total disbelief of elections as a possibility of changing the system.
The Catholic working class situation in Londonderry was characterized by poverty,
unemployment and high birth index, as the Church was against birth control. There was
plenty of cheap labor amongst children, who worked half time in the shirt factories and spent
the other half time at school. The education of Catholics in Northern Ireland remained under
the control of the Catholic clergy, therefore it was free either to adopt, or to adapt, the
program and timetable of the Free State schools. The Catholic schools chose to teach both
Irish language and Irish history, whereas Protestant schools taught English history. The
structure of the educational system reinforced sectarianism. The Catholic education structure
was molded by the Church in the nineteenth century and remained unchanged during the
greater part of the twentieth century. Teachers were appointed and dismissed with sanction of
the local bishop. Most secondary schools were controlled by religious orders. Higher
education was controlled by Protestants. Both religions also interfered in the political parties.
The Protestant Church had a direct interference in the political organizations and parties by
having some members become MP (members of Parliament). The Catholic priest interference
was indirect; they usually remained in the background, nominating and recommending
25
Internment means the confiscation of education, jobs, financial resources, security and personal freedom.
27
candidates. The consequence of the religious interference in the educational, social and
political life of the Northern States corroborated the sectarianism of the Six County politics
throughout the twentieth century.
During most of the 20
th
century the division between the Catholic and Protestant
communities was irresolvable. Protestants wanted to keep Northern Ireland linked to Britain.
Catholics longed for unification. The IRA became e a symbol of resistance to British rule, and
the Protestant paramilitaries became symbols of resistance to the unification of the island.
Meanwhile, consecutive governments were carrying out doubtful policies for the unification
in over a long period, but did not have coherent action for unification in the short term.
Padraig O’Malley comments,
Life in Northern Ireland became cheaper. Random deaths, mutilating injuries, the
constancy of uncertainty, the destruction of property and the debilitation of public
interest, the deterioration of economic and social fabric, the exacerbation of
difference, the suppression of human rights, individual liberties, and due to the
process in the name of he order and security, and in the legacy of a generation of
children who from infancy – in Belfast child psychiatrist Morris Frazer’s memorable
phrase –“have lived with fear, have been though to hate and who now aspire to kill”
(O’MALLEY, 1983, p. 02).
For centuries, there have been three interrelated problems in Northern Ireland. The
first is the relation between Ireland and Britain, the second is the relation between Catholics
and Protestants, and the third is the relation between Northern Ireland and the Republic of
Ireland. The first issue was enhanced 1921 with the Anglo-Irish Treaty which partitioned
Ireland in two separate political entities and reinforced cultural and political separatism,
which resulted in the development of parallel confessional states. Ireland was formed by three
different cultures: one Gaelic Catholic, one Anglo-Protestant and one Scots-Presbyterian.
They might have mingled and create a national identity, but, on the contrary, conflict was
generated in Northern Ireland simply because they held different interests. Protestants feared
the Catholic precept and its result in the Republic of Ireland, whereas Catholics wanted more
political freedom in Northern Ireland, as well as some association with the Free State.
In the two Irelands, religion became the emblem of identity, and identity became the
motive to support either the Unionists or the Nationalists. Besides, Protestants considered
themselves as ethnically British, while nationalists considered themselves ethnically Irish.
Basically, this conflict held in Northern Ireland for almost two thirds of the last century was a
religious one in the eyes of the Protestants who want to secure their future by maintaining the
union with Britain, and a political one in the eyes of the Catholics who believed they could
28
only secure their future if Ireland was united. Sadly, violence in Northern Ireland was within
the Catholic and Protestant working-class areas of Belfast, Derry and some other Northern
Irish towns.
Some historians, sociologists and political scientists have tried “to isolate a single
factor as a primarily causative” (DEANE, 1985, p. 12). Some theorists emphasize the
anthropological factor, others cultural, economic, religious, or political. In fact, elements of
each have influenced and contributed to the clash in Northern Ireland in different times.
Another way to present the same issue might be to say that one’s sense of nationality is
related to the nation one is related to. The population of Northern Ireland is composed of
people who have different notions as to what nation they relate. Nation may be defined as a
cultural and social community whose members have the same ethnicity and have a common
identity based on a culture, spoken language, usually share a specific territory, have a written
literature, and are autonomous. This definition is sort of idealistic when we analyze different
nations. There are nations disputing the same territory, nations whose people live in a
historical diaspora
26
, nations where different cultures coexist either pacifically or in dispute
for the territory. The usage of the term Nation is not only ambiguous; it is also the subject of
political disputes, which may be extremely violent. Such is the case with Ireland. The
definition of the term Nation, in Nortern Ireland, addresses a territory where variety ethnic
groups, from different settlements, have formed one national culture. But, in a determined
historical moment, it has suffered a major change due to political, religious and economic
reasons that generated a strong dispute. That nation was slowly divided into two political
entities within the same territory.
27
As far as things go concerning the historic development of
Northern Ireland in the turn of the 20
th
to 21
st
centuries, we can think of one country whose
population is divided so as to their national commitment: the Catholics see the island of
Ireland as their nation, and the Protestants see the United Kingdom as such. Throughout the
last century each half has fought as they could to make their beliefs prevail. The Protestants
have used the power of the law (annex G); the Catholics have maintained an armed resistance
26
The term diaspora was first defined as "the scattered". It was used by the Ancient Greeks to refer to citizens of
a city-state who emigrated to colonize a conquered land. Later the word diaspora was used to refer to the
population of Jews exiled from Judea in 586 BC by the Babylonians and from Jerusalem in AD 136, by the
Roman Empire. Nowadays, the term diaspora means displacement; that is, the separation of a determined
population from their national territory for various reasons. However, this population keeps some emotional
attachment to their country of origin and, sometimes, still hopes of returning to their homeland someday.
27
When I use the term country, I refer to Ireland as an island divided by two different governments, one which is
autonomous and one which is part of the United Kingdom. The concept of race used in this thesis means race as
a social and cultural construct. I have decided to adopt this concept because it is what best describes the dispute
within the Northern Irish territory.
29
(annex H). And each has used their intellectual and literary power, and their national
mythologies, to ratify their points
There are two reasons I present that justify my starting this thesis with a chapter of
contextualization that may seem somewhat detached from the textual analysis I propose to
undertake in Chapter Three. The first refers to the fact that this work is a Brazilian construct;
it refers to the ways in which a Brazilian student addresses a number of issues. And,
regardless of the worldwide range of availability granted to a thesis displayed on line
nowadays, the majority of the readers to my work will probably consist of Brazilians as well.
For one thing, most of the Universities in our country that deal with British history and culture
address the subject with a predominant focus on England. The history of Wales and Scotland
is presented in a satellite way, and the Ireland studied sporadically contemplates the period
that preceded the Partition. So, the complexities involving life in Northern Ireland nowadays
become very dim, especially when the first thing we Brazilians think of is the violence of the
terrorist actions provoked by the I.R.A.
The second difficulty for the average Brazilian student of Ireland refers to the notion
of what being a Catholic is. Being a Catholic in Ireland means one thing. Being a Catholic in
Northern Ireland means a different thing. Being a Catholic in England is still another thing.
And each of these perceptions is completely different from the idea of being a Catholic in
Brazil. I believe that the more we know about one place and one culture, the more apt we are
to enjoy their art. And the ultimate aim of this thesis is to propitiate to the Brazilian readers
the means to grasp and enjoy some of the layers of meaning and aesthetic referents presented
in Reading in the Dark that might possibly be overlooked by readers who were not informed
about the history of Northern Ireland.
30
3 THE FIELD DAY COMPANY
3.1 THE REVISIONISM OF THE FIELD DAY
Irish Literature has always been marked by strong political views, and Seamus
Deane’s Reading in the Dark is no exception. In spite of the lyrical tone, which contrasts
somewhat with the acid satire that we associate with Irish writers as Swift, Shaw or Beckett,
Deane’s novel represents the point of view of the Field Day, one of the most active
intellectual groups that have been discussing the contemporary state of affairs in Ireland. The
politics of the Field Day is not so much concerned with fighting the English back, but rather
with healing the Irish from the negative effects that so many centuries of anger and hatred
have caused to themselves. Thinkers of the Field Day carry a revisionist
28
investigation of the
effects of the revival of Celtic myths, held especially in the last one and a half centuries. The
Field Day is concerned with the possibility of demythologizing stereotypes which have been
built up by historical narratives about English Dominance. The movement relies on
Revisionism as a theory which is engaged in revaluating the existent narratives about Ireland.
These narratives have not only been told by the Irish, but also by the English. They refer
basically to three different points of view: the Catholic-Irish, the Protestant-Irish and the
English. The Field Day analyzes, discusses and makes critiques and observations about the
Ulster Question and the political nationalism applied, not only in Northern Ireland, the site of
the conflict, but also in the Republic of Ireland, as well as the cultural, social, and economic
consequences it generated in the whole island.
Referring more specifically to Northern Ireland, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, signed on
15 November 1987, signalized the beginning of a new era in Northern Ireland. It aimed to
end with an impasse that had been going on since 1916 and that was intensified during the
troubles. This agreement gave the Irish Government an advisory role in Northern Ireland's
government, but did not change the constitutional position of Northern Ireland as part of the
United Kingdom, since the only legal form for Northern Ireland to join the Republic is
through elections. The treaty also set out conditions for the establishment of a devolved
28
The term “Revisionism” is used here as signifying “any departure from Marxist doctrine, theory or practice,
especially the tendency to favor reform above revolutionary change.” (http://dictionary.reference
.com/browse/Revisionism?qsrc=2888). Access on 09.03.2008.
31
consensus government in the region. The second step was the signature of the Good Friday
Agreement
29
, signed in Northern Ireland on 10 April 1998. In March 2007, parliamentary
elections have been held in Northern Ireland so as to resolve its differences and resume
power-sharing between the Democratic Unionist Party led by Reverend Ian Paisley and the
Nationalist Sinn Fein led by Gerry Adams. Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness, another Sinn
Fein deputy, were sworn in as leader and deputy leader, respectively, of the Northern Ireland
executive government. Power sharing put an end to direct rule from London. Thus, Northern
Ireland has been facing a new reality from that point onwards.
Besides that, according to the Field Day, “the two Irelands” cannot be though within
the frontiers of an Island anymore, since both nations are part of the group of European
countries which signed the Single European Act (SEA) at Luxembourg on 17 February
1986
30
. The Single European Act has also played an important influence to the end of the
clash between Unionists and Nationalists in Northern Ireland for it is not only Northern
Ireland but the whole Island, even though with two different governments, that is part of a
new political and economic European system. So, both Irelands have had to work hard in
order to surpass their internal crisis and think of themselves as part of the globalized world,
interacting, influencing, and being influenced by a variety of cultures. This new reality has
taken Northern Ireland to solve its differences and resume power-sharing. But, in fact, the
“two Irelands” will have to carry a social, economic and political integration if they want to
intervolve with other nations.
Revisionism is fundamental to my research because my analysis of Reading in the
Dark will make use of this theory, since it also studies family history, and this novel – which
has autobiographical elements – presents the story of its main character’s family. Besides that,
Revisionism is intrinsically related to Cultural Studies, as both disciplines study societies’
cultural practices and their relation to power. Moreover, revisionism analyzes the social and
political context in which the culture of a determined society is manifested, with the purpose
of performing a critical evaluation, specially, when this evaluation is concerned with the
existing ideological discourse.
29
Also known as the Belfast Agreement, Held in 1998, aiming at developing a gradual process of peace between
the British and Irish Governments, and supported by referendum by the political parties of Northern Ireland.
30
The Single European Act (SEA) set the European Community an objective of establishing a Single Market by
31 December 1992, and codified European Political Cooperation, the predecessor of the European Union
32
3.2 THE HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE FIELD DAY
The Field Day is an important artistic and literary movement. Its intellectuals have a
great influence in contemporary Ireland, Europe and the United States concerning cultural and
political matters, and have been developing great literary studies in a number of universities,
such as Trinity College, in Dublin, the University of Notre Dame, in the United States, and
the University of Manchester, in England. In order to understand the kind of Revisionism of
the Field Day Company, it is necessary to know the context in which this movement came to
life as well as about the different movements held against the English colonial rule, which
helped to form the ideology predominating in Ireland in the twentieth century, and which
started to be revaluated by the Field Day Company in the 1980s. Revisionist Studies
concentrate on determined historical facts. Revisionists aim at reexamining, revising,
reinterpreting, correcting, improving, and rewriting them, based on new and existent
materials. Historical revisionism has become an important subject among colonial and post-
colonial societies, as well as minority groups who have suffered the process of colonization
and racial discrimination. In addition, revisionist history is often practiced by those who
belong to minority groups, such as feminist historians, or ethnic historians. In this sense, Irish
intellectuals could not be away from this subject, since Ireland has suffered under both,
colonialism and racial discrimination for centuries.
Seamus Deane, the author of Reading in the Dark, is formally engaged in the Irish
Revisionism of the Field Day Company, and one of the major contributors to this movement,
along with English literary critic Terry Eagleton, who has performed an extensive work on
ideology and the production of discourses. In recent years, Eagleton has dedicated himself to
the study of the Irish experience. Some of his recent work comprises a trilogy on the relation
between Irish literature and the political, cultural, and ideological manifestations there
contained. Among other works and essays on Irish literature and criticism, I have previously
mentioned the texts The Truth about the Irish and the essay Nationalism: Irony and
Commitment, which integrates the collection of three Field Day Pamphlets written by Terry
Eagleton, Fredric Jameson and Edward Said entitled Nationalism, Colonialism and
Literature, 1990. The introduction of that volume is written by Seamus Deane.
When analyzing Northern Irish literary production of the twentieth century, we are
able to identify recurrent themes among these literary texts, such as language, landscape and
identity. These themes also seem to be the main concern of intellectuals of the Field Day
33
Company, this Theatrical and Literary movement engaged in the study of the Irish political
crisis. Its members aim to redefine and articulate these issues to a critique of Irish social and
political life. In general, these Irish writers provide an intellectual response to “the Troubles”
in Northern Ireland. They are the new generation of the revisionist movement in Ireland
because, even though The Field Day was officially found in 1980s, the origins of the
revisionist movement can be traced back to the 1930s and 1940s with the publication of the
journal Irish Historical Studies (1938) and the foundation of The Bell periodical by O’Faoláin
and other intellectuals in Dublin, in October, 1940.
The Bell periodical, criticized the orthodoxies of the national revival as opponent to
modernization, by appealing to the ideal rural Ireland and the Gaelic tradition. In his first
editorial, Sean O'Faoláin wrote: "Whoever you are, Gentile or Jew, Protestant or Catholic,
priest or layman, big house or small house - the Bell is yours."
(http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2008/1122/1227276708521.html)
According to these intellectuals, this radical nationalism had cut off Ireland from the
rest of the modern world. O’FAOLÁIN (1991, p 569, vol. III) argues that the Gaelic cult
could be linked with the doctrines of racial purity widespread in Nazi Germany. It was
necessary for Ireland to leave the obsession with its own past behind and adapt to the new
world by accepting diversity. For O’Faoláin, Ireland was a hybrid society instead a cultural
unity. In addition to that, he also believed that people should be bilingual – they should speak
both Gaelic and English.
Although revisionism in the republic of Ireland had its roots in the 1930’s, this new
form of criticism became popular in the 1970s when historians and critics started to review
and demythologize works of intellectuals whose writings were considered nationalist.
Revisionist critics also demonstrated that myth, violence and Catholicism were the
coordinates of militant nationalism. The rebellions against the British rule of 1798, 1803,
1848, and even the protestant-affiliated Young Ireland movement in 1840 were construed as
Catholic – and thus sectarian – nationalism. The task of the revisionist critics was to
discontinue the dominant ideology of cultural nationalism and “introduce the discontinuity
and diversity into the cultural order equivalent of an enclosed religious order, opening it up to
the ways of the world in the late twentieth century” (GIBBONS, 1991, p. 566, vol. III). What
propitiated the acceptance of these ideas was the policy of Seán Lemmass who had become
Taoiseach
31
in 1959. He opened up the Irish economy to international investment and applied
31
I.e., the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic.
34
for membership with the European community. Added to this, the second Vatican Council
32
and other social changes helped the Irish society to question the internalized nationalism
which reached its apogee in “the Age of de Valera”.
33
In spite of that, Revisionism had a downfall with the world economic crisis of the
1970s, that negatively influenced the modernization project in Ireland, and caused a series of
internal crises in the 1980s, as for example the conflict in Northern Ireland, following the H-
Block
34
struggle in 1981. These external and internal crises set nationalism back. Revisionists
believed that there was an enduring Catholic nationalist tradition “immune to cross-cultural
influences and social changes” (idem, p. 568).
It is at this point that, in the 1980’s, The Field Day Theatre Company was established
in Londonderry, Northern Ireland by the playwright Brian Friel and the actor and director
Stephen Rea. The Field Day Company proposes a discourse of unity aiming to deconstruct the
national myth of sectarianism. Its purpose is to redefine the Irish national culture, history and
tradition through plays, poetry, novels, since the Second Revival brought disastrous
consequences by giving emphasis to the sectarian features and providing cultural myths about
the uniqueness of Irish identity, which resulted in the social and political crisis of the
twentieth century, named as “The Troubles”.
The initial aim of the Field Day Theatre Company was to create a cultural space
available to a popular audience, which would perform a discourse of unity. But that soon
turned into a project concerned with Irish literary and political culture. The writers Seamus
Heaney, Seamus Deane, and Tom Paulin were invited to join the Company. They established,
as their main purpose, to help solve the present crisis, or “The Troubles”. Thus, the Field Day
became an artistic response to “The Troubles” by analyzing the established opinions, myths
32
The second Vatican Council lead to greater openness within the Catholic Church.. The Catholic Church was
very strong in Ireland and prejudiced against the Protestant. The second Vatican Council sough common ground
in dealings with Orthodox and Protestant Christians and with those who were not Christians as well as turned to
areas such as marriage and family, cultural, social, and economic life, the political community, war and peace,
and international relations.
33
The age of de Valra is the period in which Éamonde Valera was the taoiseach in South Ireland followed by the
period in which he was elected President of The Republic of Ireland. De Valera was the prime minister of South
Ireland from1932. In 1937, he declared Ireland a fully sovereign state. In 1948, he lost reelection because of
negative public reaction to his party's long monopoly of power. In the 1951, de Valera was reelected prime
minister but the relative Irish economic prosperity of the 1940s declined in the 1950s. He lost the elections in
1954, but was replaced again in 1957. In 1959, de Valera resigned as prime minister and was elected Irish
president. In 1973, de Valera resigned and retired from the Irish politics He was the oldest Head of State in the
world.
34
Her Majesty's Prison Maze, known as The H Blocks, Long Kesh, or The Maze, was a prison used to house
paramilitary prisoners during the Northern Ireland Troubles from mid-1971 to mid-2000. Its prisoners played
important role in the 1981 hunger strike. The prison was closed in 2000 and razing began on 30 October 2006.
35
and stereotypes which contributed to the political instability and sectarianism. In this way, the
company blended arts with politics.
Brian Friel’s play, Translations (1980), opened the Company project. The Company
produced and toured a large number of plays. In 1983, the Field Day members decided to
reach the academic community by publishing a series of pamphlets exploring the nature of the
Irish crisis. The aim of this series was to publish collections of articles by people who
contribute to debates on the writing of history, the critique of ideology, postcolonial theory,
political and social issues, and literature in relation to Ireland. The first issue brings three
pamphlets written by Tom Paulin, Seamus Heaney and Seamus Deane (1983): Civilians and
Barbarians by Seamus Deane, A New Look at the Language Question by Tom Paulin; An
Open Letter by Seamus Heaney. Since 1983 there have been several Field Day pamphlet
publications, as well as works as The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, in three volumes
(distributed in the UK by Faber & Faber, London; and in the USA and Canada by W. W.
Norton, New York). Seamus Deane is the general editor.
In the 1990s, the Field Day Company published Nationalism, Colonialism, and
Literature, a collection of three Field Day Pamphlets: Nationalism, Irony and Commitment by
Terry Eagleton, Modernism and Imperialism, by Fredric Jameson, and Yeats and
Decolonization, by Edward Said. In the introduction, Seamus Deane states that the Field Day
enterprise believes the Irish colonial crisis has made a new discourse for a new relationship
between the idea of human subject and the idea of human communities necessary. Irish
writing should question how the individual subject must be thought “in relation to its
community, its past history and its possible future” (DEANE, 1990, p.4). Deane avows that
although the Field Day sees art as specific activity, the whole of culture is deeply inscribed in
it and the interpretation of culture is a political idea that has played a crucial role in Irish
experience. This way, according to Deane, “One of Field Day’s particular aims has been to
expose the history and function of that idea and characterize its disfiguring effects” (idem,
p.7). Ireland has had British nationalism for two hundred years. That is why it has been
necessary to engage again within the concept of nationalism, since it is the derivative of its
British counterpart which, like in almost all nationalist movements, is provincial and actually
or potentially racist. This nationalism produced stereotypes which are the cultural basis for the
religious sectarianism between Protestants and Catholics, and which developed an ideology of
dominance and subservience within the idiom of religious division. As a consequence, “much
of Irish past has been destroyed, silenced and erased” (ibdem, p.9). Deane states that Ireland,
as most colonized peoples, is left without a specific history and a specific language. Writers of
36
the early Irish revival movement tried to recover the lost Irish language in the English
language. Their work helped legitimate the Irish English language until then, seen as an
adjunct to English. But these works have been read as British literature. So, these Irish writers
need to be reinterpreted and restored to the culture of their time and place. It is necessary “to
repossess their revolutionary and authoritative force for the here and now of the present
Ireland” (ibdem, p. 11).
To restore the Irish identity it is necessary to redefine the notions of national character,
stereotyping of groups, classes and races in relation to the kind of artistic works that were
produced. In order to do that, the Field Day aims at restoring Irish writers in the Irish context,
because the Field Day believes that a society needs a legitimating system and, in seeking for
it, always look to the point of origin from each it can derive itself and its practices, even if this
origin is a powerful cultural invention that depends on an anterior legitimating nature. In this
way, the Field Day Company has blended art with politics, through plays, poetry, novels, and
critical essays.
According to Seamus Deane (1985, p.11), Ireland has experienced a series of social
and political failures for almost three centuries. Among them are the Whig Revolution
settlement of 1688-90; the Irish Parliament of 1782-1800; the Act of Union, 1800-1922; the
Home Rule; and the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922. Adding to those political movements, there
are the insurrectionary movements: the United Irishmen, the Irish Republican Brotherhood,
the Citizens Army, and the Irish Republican Army, among others, which culminate with “The
Troubles”. Moreover, the influence of Catholicism, the revival of the Irish language, and
shaping of culture through education and Literature establish a national identity, but it also
corroborates the sectarian division in the name of religion. Therefore, the idea of a stable
society has not been established in the Irish experience. As a consequence, literature has not
only become a blend of two diverse cultures or traditions (national and colonial), but has also
been influenced by this crisis.
The formation of the Republic of Ireland, which culminated in the late colonial
experience in Northern Ireland and its political social clash, also produced contrasting
stereotypes which became the cultural basis for religious sectarianism – Protestantism versus
Catholicism. The contemporary colonialism led to the creation of an ideal version of Irish
history which lacked multiculturalism in Ireland up to the 1980s. Besides, the fusion of the
Catholic Church elements with Gaelic ideology and Conservatism into an essentialist notion
of Irishness, delayed the process of modernization and liberal pluralism, and led to a sectarian
discourse which damaged and postponed the processes of modernization of the Republic of
37
Ireland and of decolonization in Northern Ireland. Sectarianism prevented the fostering of
multiculturalism in Northern Ireland, since both communities within the territory ruled by the
British Empire did not only manage to self-perpetuate throughout a number of social
practices, but also created a legacy of inequality and conflict. Although both communities
share a great deal of common culture, the religious aspect influences the differences,
especially when it is related to social-economic and political interests and privileges.
According to Seamus Deane (1997, p. 181) there is a link between knowledge and
power in all institutions. To legitimate power, knowledge has to be distorted. Nationalism has
allied with myth in order to exert power. And, although myths are ontological, they need to be
interpreted. Since myths are explained by groups like the clergy, clerisy, aristocrats and
groups of adepts, these groups control the relation between institutions and interpretations.
Deane affirms that nationalism owes to myth. In Ireland, there is the claim that the difference
between the Irish and the British is founded in myths, as for example “the heroic alliances
between the distant saga figures of the old Irish cycles and the socio-religious group,
Protestants or Catholics, of the contemporary era” (DEANE, 1997, p. 183). In fact, these
assertions are not historical, “they are products of grand narrative that proceed by a series of
uniform strategies to describe the Irish experience as one of almost endless oppression,
designedly pursued, justifiably resisted, now entering to its final stages” (idem, p.183). Deane
also states that this mythological interpretation for a particular political or racial grouping is
common in other colonial and imperial contexts. The revisionist study of Irish history is the
new version of nationalist history – post colonial writing – which denies theory or grand-
narratives, merges literary studies, and uses literature, because it is “untheorizable”. The study
of literature “leads to micro-narratives, monographic studies, in which Ireland as object of
study gives way to an analysis of regions, phases, issues” (ibdem, p. 191). Revisionism will
allow the rewriting of a history of Ireland free from ideology. Terence Brown comments that
“ideologies, ideas, symbols, literary, even lyric poems are social facts just as potato crops,
tractors and new industries are, and they can be fully understood only within the material
world in which they come to life” (BROWN, 1987, p. 9). During four decades after the
republic there was a continuum of the social facts in Ireland which gave the Irish their sense
of national identity. On the other hand, this continuity set the basis for the changes in the
cultural and social history of Ireland in the last decades. By analyzing literary texts among
other written works, it is possible to identify the ideological discourse as well as its
contradictions and factual changes.
38
3.2.1 A Very Special Contributor
In a complex context like the context of Ireland nowadays, an agenda such as the Field
Day’s agenda seems a very delicate one, because of the long lasting amount of anger
involving both the relations between Ireland and the United Kingdom, and the internal clash
between the Catholic and Protestant portions of the population. In this sense, the fact that
greatly respected intellectuals and public persons (such as Brian Friel, Stephen Rea, Terry
Eagleton, Fredric Jameson, and Edward Said) are the ones who verbalize their plea makes all
the difference. The contribution of Terry Eagleton is particularly relevant, in this case.
Although some people might think it strange that an Englishman should represent the voice of
the Irish plea, besides being a former Marxist and probably the greatest name in the area of
Cultural Studies, Eagleton has always been a left wing Catholic. It was only natural that, in
the 1990s, he contributed to the writing of the documents that introduced the aim of the Field
Day Project. Eagleton identifies the radical contradictions which have developed in nationalist
thinking, and observes that literary texts are a result of ideological discourse. As a former
Marxist, to him all texts express attitudes towards and beliefs about certain sets of social and
political realities, relations, values and powers. He studies the ways in which text works upon
ideology to produce the effect of the real. In Criticism and Ideology (1976), Eagleton writes
that literary and other cultural texts are ideological, since they reflect ideologies. And
ideology shapes the individual’s mental picture of lived experience. This way, texts reproduce
the ideological point of view of the reality.
In Nationalism, Irony and Commitment (1990), Eagleton asserts that solo action and
written and oral expressions do not have meaning outside the systems which generate them.
These systems are historical and full of contradiction. All discourses are ideological, (in
Marxist slang connected to the State apparatus), and exercise influence upon the human
subject. Ideology persuades us to an imaginary conscience, and to Eagleton and to the
thinkers of the Field Day, this imaginary conscience has been making life very difficult in
Northern Ireland in the last century.
Terry Eagleton, quoting a character in Raymond Williams’ novel Second Generation
(1964) says that “nationalism is like class”. You need to experience it in order to give an end
to it. If you deny it, you will be deceived by other classes or other nations. Being influenced
39
by Marxist theories
35
, Terry Eagleton asserts that nationalism is a mode of alienation because
it deprives one from their individuality and endorses the collective anonymity. So, to undo
this alienation, you need to go through the whole process of nationality, in order to recover
from it and even to end it, eventually. To recover from this feeling of nationalism you need to
“play straight into the hands of the oppressor” (EAGLETON, 1990, p. 23). This is, in fact, a
binary opposition that is possible to be deconstructed. So, it is necessary to search for the facts
that led to a separation into two opposite ideas, in a more abstract form of identity, which
means in this case the struggle between Catholics and Protestants. Since the word “Catholic”,
in Roman Catholic Church, means universal, how can one define this in terms of national
identity? Contrary to the universal idea of the Catholic Church, there comes the Protestant
affirmation of a national difference; even though its doctrine aims at resuming the universal
essence of Christianity, thus universal. But both contain elements from their antagonist
doctrine. On the one hand the Catholic Church preaches about “ecclesia simper reformada”
since it takes in consideration the different practices; on the other, Protestantism cannot exist
without Catholicism, since it emerged from its counterpart. To be aware of the future, it is
necessary to understand the present with its contradictions, its alienations and its inability to
agree with itself. But political radicals do not see the desirable future either. The Socialist
theory identified the contradictions within societies, which prevented them from developing,
but did not go beyond by suggesting a desirable future without radicalisms.
In fact, the nationalist culture is too multiple and ambiguous in meaning to be either
rejected or glorified. The metaphysics of nationalism expresses needs and desires of subjects,
but these needs and desires are repressed; and, by being repressed, the subjects do not know
what they really are and want. This happens because the repression that makes it necessary for
subjects to state their thoughts freely also turns these needs and desires obscured by the
metaphysics of nationalism, which elevates subject-object relation over a subject-subject
relation, forgetting that this relation is a dialogical one. This dialogical relation only takes
place when repression is withdrawn. A radical politics can set the course of action for this to
happen, but cannot impose the future. So, in this sense, radical politics is formalistic.
British imperialism was not interested in the Irish ethnic peculiarity, but in their
territory and labor power. The Irish were merely inhabitants of a neighboring territory. The
35
Terry Eagleton belongs to the ‘New Left Marxism, which was fueled by the 1968 Troubles in Northern
Ireland. This group of critics, whose important contributors are Raymond Williams and Fredric Jameson among
others, were influenced the anti-Hegelian of Louis Althusser and Pierre Macherey. These intellectuals considered
individual actions as well as oral and written expressions do not have any signification outside the systems of
meaning which generate them. But by being historical, variable and full of contradictions, these systems exercise
influence in the human subject. Ideology persuades the individual to an imaginary conscience.
40
Irish were simply the other than British, and this is sufficient basis for them to be ruled over.
The Irish were not oppressed for being Irish, but for being a colonial country. To use identity
in the name of freedom is abstract. For the freedom in question is not the freedom to be Irish
(or to belong to any other group), but the freedom to determine their identity as the may wish.
A politics of difference or specificity is in the cause of universal identity. But this
universal identity must be left behind as soon as it is conquered, and consider the subject’s
particular difference, in other words, individualism. Maintaining nationalism as a universal
truth is sterile. So, all colonized nations have to pass through this abstract idea of nationalism
and somehow come out somewhere quite different from where it happens, in other words, by
entering into that alienating logic to turn it against itself. The bourgeois ideology has never
been able to adjust difference and identity, the particular and the universal. In the same way
that it tries to make them even. How can this contradiction between the universal and the
particular be resolved? Each individual must be autonomous. Mathew Arnold’s
unsophisticated concept of the Irish race was created to find a synthesis to its political
conflict. This concept was built systematically to carry out the political antagonism, and
aggravated sectarianism. By keeping this ideology, the Irish forget their role as a social class.
So, in Ireland the left only dialectically mediates the oppositions and ends up surrounded by
the aesthetics of the right. The individual is alienated when they do not know they are in fact
alienated. This alienation develops inside oppressive conditions. Eagleton says,
The ideal revolutionary subject has broken with an imposed political identity into a
kind of nameless, subversive negativity, yet has a sense of his or her own
autonomous powers and capacities” that far outstrips the hazy indeterminate
awareness of ourselves as agents that we derive from routine social life. (idem, p.
37).
As political subjects, we begin with determined needs and wishes which open us up to
a broader social dimension. This social dimension is in fact the question about what general
conditions would be necessary to fulfill our particular needs and desires.
3.2.2 Seamus Deane, the Author, and the Choice for an Autobiographical Novel
Literary texts do not reproduce the historical reality, but operate through ideology to
create the effect of the real. They interest the literary critic who investigates the literary
41
discourse and their ideological role in order to reveal the effects in their readers. In this way,
very frequently things that are too confused, confusing, or complex to be identified in the
world of real life become much clearer and meaningful when reproduced in the aesthetics of a
work of art. Not to speak of the healing power of writing as a tool used in the area of
Psychology. When you write chaos, you must impose an order into that. All things
considered, it is natural that Seamus Deane’s role as an engaged person and as an engaged
author should end up writing a novel with strong autobiographical traces.
Deane is another example of Catholic left-wing thinker – this time an Irish one – who
has come to terms with his condition and has been able to cope successfully with racial and
cultural discrimination. After reaching a certain psychological moral, ideological, and
temporal distance as concerns the history of his country, Deane writes a novel that has a
protagonist narrator who tells about his experiences as a child growing in a Catholic
neighborhood in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in the forties and fifties. The narrator draws
his own conclusions about the facts he experiences and comes up with a new significance to
the political and social conflict. His experience and conclusions will lead to his enlightenment
and the reaching of an expanded, more humane, intellectual condition.
Besides being a literary monument
36
, Reading in the Dark can be also approached as a
history document of the strong change in the perception of Ireland’s circumstances, as
presented by a group of intellectuals who are re-examining a number of national issues and
proposing a new kind of trans-national approach that implies redefining their past and finding
a new direction, by reviewing their own life experience. Autobiographies are very suitable to
operate such a connection between the world of life and the world of fiction, between the
territories of Social Studies and Literature. The author of a biography is able to reevaluate his
life and the life of those who influenced the formation of his sense of identity. This is when he
realizes it is necessary to go back to the past and analyze, through a more mature point of
view, what the person has experienced and what has made him become the adult he became.
Autobiographical novels belong in a literary genre which is firmly established
nowadays. It relates to the status of individuality in the contemporary world. Due to changes
in the social, political and economic order, individualism has become a major value in modern
societies, contrary the holistic idea of former bourgeois democratic society. Here
individualism means “an autonomous person who is essentially non-social, and who comes
36
The terms document and monument are used in this sentence in the sense borrowed from the discussion on the
function of a work of art started by Walter Benjamin in the Arcades Project, and then pursued by Susan Sontag
in On the Pain of Others and Michel Foucault in Archaeology of Knowledge.
42
first in the modern ideology of man and society” (PARAENSE, 2000, p.126). As a
consequence, individualism becomes a major feature of literature too, and authors more and
more often adopt this individualistic point of view to work on their own experience, since
their lives are inserted in a society, which is totally “fragmented, aimless, and divorced from
conventional values” (PARAENSE, 2000, p.126.). Under these circumstances, the narrator is
free to make decisions about his own will. But, by being autonomous, he is aware that his
freedom is limited by his voluntary commitment to society.
In addition, the autobiographical novel is directly related to the culture of the inner,
which manifests a particular need to relate the personal story with the story of his time and
place. The author/narrator of an autobiographical novel goes back to the past and analyses his
life in an attempt to tell his story, and organize his chaos, for many reasons. One of them is
not to repeat the same mistakes in the future. He believes that his life-story may be an
important legacy, that by telling his testimony, he enriches the culture of his civilization.
The author of an autobiography “gathers disperse elements of his personal life and
organizes them.” (GUSDORF, 1991 p.14) He is able to do that because, after some time has
passed, he manages to position himself before his story and reconstructs it in an unity of
identity that is clearly coherent. He is able to do that, because he has a profound knowledge of
events. By reconstructing his own life, the author of an autobiography is also able to resolve
misunderstandings and complete the half-truths, in an attempt to justify his own perception.
Therefore, the autobiographical novel is a literary genre that aims at self-knowledge, by
reconstructing and decoding the author’s past life through a second reading of his experience,
which is better understood because of the temporal distance. The mature person intends to
establish a better relationship with the world he lives in, as a result of rationalization and
aestheticization.
The literary function of an autobiographical novel is ultimately more important than
the historical one, because it lasts longer. Consequently, “every autobiography is a piece of
art, and at the same time, a means of learning; it shows us a character and his visible
commitment from the outside, and from the inside, all his/her intimacy and individuality”
(idem 1991 p.16). According to Nietzsche
(http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/beyondgoodandevil_tofc.htm), an autobiography is
a “personal mythology” based on complete experience. In short, the author’s task is to retell
his life in an effort to make sense of his own legend.
Autobiographies are not necessarily synonymous with autobiographical novels. An
autobiographical novel is based on the author’s life, but has fictionality as its condition. For
43
an autobiography to become fictional, names and places are usually changed, other people’s
experiences are often incorporated, and the limits between the spheres of the author,
protagonist and narrator become blurred. In the autobiographical novel, the autodiegetic
narrator is often the protagonist who narrates a life that is parallel with the author’s former life
experience. It is possible to recognize the presence of the author in the autobiographical
novel. But this presence does not affect the condition of fictionality, because it is the
narrator/protagonist, instead of the author, who tells the story. Hence, the protagonist mirrors
the events of the author’s life in the plot. So, autobiographical novels may be considered the
sister genre of autobiographies but the novelist is free to color his past history by embellishing
the work.
If we link the idea of “individual versus collective” to autobiographies and memoirs
we realize that they are “concerned with the ‘the other’, the persons, events and or places, that
have helped to give the self definition” (DEANE, 1991c, p.380,). Authors of autobiographies
and memoirs examine their personal experience and reconsider historical events and
circumstances in order to identify and explain their self enlightenment. In Ireland, there is a
variety of ‘otherness’ easily stereotyped, as that is a nation split in two by partition, and which
carries a diversity of political and religious oppressive institutions fighting against one
another and, consequently, influencing individuals who end up incorporating their ideologies.
Irish authors of memoirs and autobiographies are always going to present their individual
analysis of the situation, or situations that led them to question their personal and national
identity; therefore, they will eventually free themselves from rooted ideologies by finding
other solutions.
It is frequent to find narratives about English domination, revolutionary movements,
religious institutions, oppressive forces and paramilitary groups, among others. Deane
comments in the following quotation, that “police and priests, soldiers ad assassins, invaders
and natives, Gaels and Galls, revolutionaries and reactionaries, dominate in these worlds,
where the only freedom from social and political pressures is in the writing about its
elusiveness” (idem, p. 380). Writers choose different alternatives in their texts to confront the
political and social situation. In Reading in the Dark, Deane chooses to analyze facts that
relate to his relationship with his family and members of the community, in order to question
the existing ideology. Inasmuch as autobiographies and memoirs are in fact stories of group
experiences written by individuals telling about their own experience within a group, Deane
also refers to betrayal, myths, legends and haunted stories, so that he is able to portray the
sectarian identity of the community. Telling someone’s individual experience is, in a broader
44
sense, telling the experience of a determine group, and, as a consequence, the reading of
history is made necessary. Betrayals, myths, legends, are important elements of Irish history
and necessary to be reviewed under this new light.
Another characteristic of Irish autobiographies and memoirs is the restoration of
childhood and youth. Characters feel they do not belong in their community, so they often
choose exile. The personal conflict with the other conveys the community’s conflict, and
evokes the way this community deals with the idea of the colonizer.
Writers who create autobiographical novels create, in this sense, aesthetic monuments
that are also historical documents. They go back to past experience and revaluate it, while
depicting the lives of their protagonists, in an effort to organize what is not organizable,
aiming at identifying contradictions, understanding the present situation and, perhaps, helping
with future individual decisions as members of nations and classes. The result of such
memoirs is, at one time, the creation of a work of art, an exercise on personal healing, the
exorcism of emotional ghosts, and a re-telling and re-shaping of the History of one’s country.
The Field Day Movement believes that the whole island of Ireland is much in need of this sort
of re-valuation. Seamus Deane is one outstanding name among the above mentioned thinkers
and writers, and Reading in the Dark is a good example of a successful work which makes us
think about how the contradictions of the universal and particular can be solved in favor of
individual enlightenment – the enlightenment of an individual who is also part of a broader
society.
45
4 READING IN THE DARK
Part of the Field Day Company as he is, Seamus Deane makes it clear in Reading in
the Dark that he is engaged in proving that the human subject and the communities of
Northern Ireland have been driven to accept the political situation, the heritage of
sectarianism, and cultural stereotyping by force and by annihilation of their past. By being
ignorant of or alien to their own culture and language, these communities are trapped in the
philosophies of two opposing governments – the British and the Irish – which have been
created by the conflicting ideals of Protestantism and individual freedom versus Catholicism
and the uniqueness of its principles as a defender of chaste race against the degenerating
modern world. In Reading in the Dark, the autodiegetic narrator scrutinizes the past history
and the present situation to find some sense and meaning. It could be said that the narrator’s
personal history, added to the ambiguities and contradictions he observes, leads him to an
internal search for a more meaningful life as an individual, and makes him understand the
controversial life of his family and community, trapped in between two ideologies, and
involved with a number of biased mythologies raised by the dispute of two opposing
governments. Unlike his parents, who harbor secrets they cannot tell each other, the narrator
is determined to unearth the story behind his family’s unspoken anguish. These family secrets
are inseparable from Northern Ireland’s violent political history and from the national culture
of storytelling in which ghosts and haunting tales are part of everyday life.
Throughout the novel, the narrator listens to people from his community telling these
stories, and gradually learns to distinguish between fiction and fact. The boy tries to put
together the fragments of what he has been told, in an attempt to reveal a secret related to the
“silence” that permeates his relationship with his family. He realizes that finding the truth is
no simple business, since these intimate, domestic events are totally related to the wider
drama of politics, which led to the cleavage between mythic and historical events.
After a certain period of time, the narrator becomes an adult and realizes it is time to
tell his life. He is ready to reveal his past story. He invites the reader to become familiar with
the history of his family and country. So, he begins his journey back to Londonderry, in the
50s and 60s, and narrates his story through the eyes of a boy who is learning the harsh reality
of his family and community by unveiling and revealing what he has learned. He tells it as a
form of public confession since he feels it is time to break his silence. He establishes an
intimacy with the reader, who learns about the moments of his past life which shaped his
46
political, social and psychological identity. This identity was built up through his relationship
with the members of his family, his concept of home, and his interactions with other members
of the society in which he lives.
4.1 STAIRS
“Stairs” is the first chapter of this novel. There the narrator shows us that his mother is
suffering from a great psychological pain which he cannot understand, and she does not
express what it is related to. Instead, she says “There’s something between us. A shadow.
Don't move.” (DEANE, 1998, p.3). And when the boy offers to help her, she says she usually
feels that way, but she neither wants him to feel what she feels nor to help her. “It’s bad
enough me felling it. I don’t want you to as well.” (idem 1998, p.3). This feeling always goes
away; it is her nerves. This shadow is the secret that haunts the family. It implies his mother’s
omission to tell what she knows. She is the one who could release her husband from his
burden if she were brave enough to reveal the secret. But she also knows that by doing that
she would have to face her husband’s disapproval and repugnance towards her since she has
kept his freedom away from him during all those years. It is when the boy starts to reveal the
cold reality of the family history. It is also when his relationship with his mother deteriorates
due to the emotional burden she carries with her because of unresolved past. At the time the
boy’s insistence in knowing the truth irritates his mother “Child, she’d tell me, I think
sometimes you’re possessed. Cant’ you just let the past be the past? But it wasn’t the past and
she knew” (ibdem, 1998, p.43).
Moreover, the shadow is like a ghost which not only haunts his family, but the
Catholic Irish families of the Bogside, and demonstrates how a historical narrative can be
influenced by different forms of authority, since telling the truth is not an easy thing. The
truth would question the paramilitary movements like the RUC
37
and the IRA, the Anglo-Irish
37
The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the police force in Northern Ireland, was founded on 1 June 1922 out
of the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), the Belfast Borough Police Force, and the Londonderry Borough Police
in Northern Ireland. The RUC was not only very active but considered one of the most professional policing
operations in the world from 1922 to 2001, when it became the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) by the
Police Act 2000. At its peak, The RUC had about 8,500 officers and a reserve of 4,500 members. During the
Troubles, over 300 members of the RUC were killed in paramilitary assassinations or attacks, mostly by the
Provisional IRA. The RUC was continually accused by sections of the Nationalist community and human rights'
groups of discrimination, and collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries.
47
policy, and both Protestant and Catholic Churches’ influence and power. All of them take part
in the secret and all of them have harmed different people to a certain extent. The shadow
may also represent their failure to deal with their past history, resulting not only in an
estrangement among its members, but also in the submissiveness of the family and, in a
broader sense, of the Irish Catholic society of the Bogside in face of the clash between the two
ideologies of the North. Furthermore, the silence is slowly killing members of his family. The
boy expresses: “Silence everywhere. […] I felt we lived in an empty space with a long cry
from [my father] ramifying through it. At other times it appeared to be cunning and articulate
as a labyrinth, closely designed, with someone sobbing at the heart of it. (ibdem,, 1998,
p.43)”. And then, when everybody has gone, there will no longer be the troublesome true
history, because the truth is forbidden and those who tell the truth are either considered mad
or traitors: “Crazy Joe Johnson…rarely made sense to us, but we had been told not to make
fun of him; something had happened when he was a young man and he had never been right
since” (ibdem,, 1998, p.81). Crazy Joe regularly spends some time in the local asylum, and
when he leaves he wonders why everybody flees him. Not many people talk to him. The
boy’s mother is an exception. She seems to show some compassion towards him. Crazy Joe
tells her he has kept her secrets and will not reveal them. “On my oath missis. The crown
Jewel is safe with me. No point in telling a secret, is there? What is a good secret if too many
people know it?” (ibdem,, 1998, p 224) This is when the boy realizes that Joe knows
something, the bit that is missing in the puzzle. But, why is it that the fact that Joe knows that
makes his mother express sympathy for him?
One day Crazy Joe is expelled from the library for disturbing the place. Joe tells
“God’s only excuse is that he does not exist.” He also tells the boy
The valuable Library of Alexandria was pillaged or destroyed; and near twenty
years afterwards, the appearance of the empty shelves excited the regret and
indignation of every spectator whose mind was not totally darkened by religious
prejudice. […] That’s a good one, religious prejudice. He should have lived here,
then he would have seen…” (ibdem, pp. 195-196).
Crazy Joe is the first one to question God’s existence. At least, Joe understands
religious prejudice. He knows how much trouble this has caused to him and to the others. This
may be one of the reasons why Joe is considered “insane”. Living in a society led by the
Church, the ones who deny the existence of this divine power are disbelieved, silenced and
turned into outcasts. Another reason is that he knows too much.
48
Joe tells the boy “Don’t spend your life as a pupil. […] You are always running around
like a dog, sniffing at the arse of every secret, a dirty habit. […] Get it over and done with.
Then grow up” (ibdem,: 1998 p.197). Crazy Joe knows about something that has happened,
but nobody will listen to him. Joe knows that the boy is searching for the truth. “You hear lots
from me that is worth saying” (ibdem,: 1998 p.197). Joe also knows that the boy is eager to
listen to what he has to say. What Joe has to say would reveal the whole secret about the
boy’s family. So, he goes on telling bits of strange stories about events and people who died
or disappeared.
Sundays’ said Joe, ‘are terrible days. Everything terrible that I know happened on
Sunday. Isn’t it strange? You’d know that yourself, with your family history. Fire on
Saturday, execution on Sunday. Or was the fire on Friday? You’d not think I’d
forget something like that now. Well, I remember that day. Never heard so many
shots in my life. (ibdem, p 199)
Because he has broken up the order in the library, Joe knows he is going to be put
away again, and once more he will be prevented from telling what he needs to tell. Telling it
would be his self redemption. So, Joe reveals another bit of the story, and then says “I’m off
and when I see you again you will be a lot older but I’ll be the same age as ever I was. […]
Eternal youth. The secret of the insane”. (ibdem: 1998 p.201).
4.2 READING IN THE DARK
In the chapter titled Reading in the Dark, the boy recalls the first novel he has read.
His mother kept a novel called The Shan Van Vocht
38
, which is set during the Great Rebellion
of 1798
39
. The Shan Van Vocht is the Irish name for “The Poor Old Woman”, a traditional
nickname for Ireland. The novel is about the Great Rebellion of 1798. The first pages are
about the characters’ points of view about the rebellion, as well as their fears. For the boy,
38
Although there is a well known Irish magazine by that name, and the famous folkloric ballad, I could trace no
novel called The Shan Van Vocht, so I believe that this book is either a fictional creation of Deane’s, or the
reference is to a serialized novel published in chapters in the mentioned magazine.
39
The Irish Great Rebellion of 1798 was an Irish uprising against the British domination led by The United
Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group formed by Protestants, Catholics, Presbyterians and Methodists.
Their initial aim was to force the British Government to put forward democratic reforms. Influenced by the ideas
of the American and French Revolutions, they went to war against Britain, but were defeated. After the defeat,
the British encourage the formation of the Orange Order, a secret Protestant organization, by inciting fear against
the Catholic Defenders, a militant agrarian secret society originated in County Armagh in Ulster.
49
Ann, the heroine of the novel, is an interesting character, saying interesting things to her
beloved one, Robert. Robert is going to war and just talks about fighting and dying in the
rebellion. The boy imagines telling her that if he were the hero in the story, he would say how
beautiful she was and he would not go to war. He would stay with her and “whisper in her ear
and let her know that now was forever and not some time in the future when shooting and
hacking would be over” (ibdem, 1998 p.20). The emphasis of this passage lies in the opposing
forces between the community and the individual. Duty and individual freedom meet within
the boy and shape his own identity. He is not interested in the rebellion, or all guerillas the
nationalists have been fighting. Why going to war if he has a beloved one talking about love,
life and personal happiness? Then his brother, Liam represses him by turning the lights on and
not letting him sleep. The boy turns the light off, goes to bed, and remains there, imagining
how the plot would eventually end. In the dark, he creates different endings for the plot. He
realizes there are infinite possibilities. As the story of The Shan Van Vocht, how would the
story of his family reveal in the end? Were there many possibilities? Would the boy be able to
achieve his personal fulfillment?
The novel the boy reads represents the typical sort of literature produced in the
nineteenth century. It described the heroic traditions of the Irish people and their brave deeds.
Besides, Catholicism brought into literature the idea of sacrificial chivalry, which resulted in
what Brown calls “the fervent patriotic religiosity” (BROWN, 1987, p. 63). The male hero in
the novel has as his Irish duty to go to war, to die for his country. The boy, however, can not
understand why someone has to die for a cause.
At school, the English teacher reads an essay written by a classmate, which tells the
story of his mother setting the table for the evening meal. She lays the dairy products from the
farm and a dish of potatoes, and they wait for the father, who is going to arrive home tired but
happy, and they will say Grace at the table. The narrative is simple and describes the “Irish
experience”. The teacher comments, “That’s writing. That’s just telling the truth.” Then the
boy thinks, “I’d never thought such stuff was worth writing about. It is ordinary life – no
rebellions or love affairs or dangerous fights across the hills at night.” (DEANE, 1998, p. 21)
However, he concedes,
I kept remembering that mother and son waiting in the Dutch interior of the essay,
with the jug of milk and the butter on the table, while behind them were those wispy,
shawly figures from the rebellion, sibilant above the great fire and below the aching
high wind. (idem, p. 21)
50
Here we can find some contradictions. The boy is longing for individual freedom. At
the same time, there is still this idea of a simple society, proposed by the Free State and the
Catholic Church in the first years of the Republic. The idea of rebellion and integration of
Northern Ireland to the Republic was still carried out by some nationalist groups and members
of the IRA. Most members of the government were not making an effort to actually integrate
the two Irelands, for they needed to modernize the Republic, in order to make Eire recognized
internationally by the power blocs.
The sacrificial chivalry style was popular during the Literary Revival of the nineteenth
century but after the Republic, artistic productions popularized the idea of the modest
countrymen and his family living in a simple rustic life which is full of dignity. Besides, in
1932, when Eamon De Valera was elected president of the Republic of Ireland, De Valera,
gave special emphasis to the life of the family farms as an important economic and cultural
aspect of the Irish nation. So, not only writers but also politicians shared a common view
about rural tradition.
4.3 GRANDFATHER
The boy recalls stories of the dispute between Catholics and Protestants and their
involvement in paramilitary armies like the IRA and RUC. Brother Regan, a member of the
Christian Brothers from the primary school, refers to the story of a man who fought in what
he called “The Troubles in Derry” in the decade of the 1910s. The man was suspected of
having killed a policeman. He was tortured, but was eventually set free. Later on he told
Brother Regan that he had actually killed the policeman, but that he would not go into
confession, because he did not repent for what he had done. He saw it as a kind of justice. He
said, “I killed Mahoon and I would kill him again if he came to the door. […] He was a
drunken policeman with a gun looking for a Catholic to kill” (ibdem, 1998, p. 23). The boy
realizes that the man Brother Regan is talking about is the boy’s maternal grandfather, who
had also sentenced his uncle Eddie to death. His grandfather was one of the reasons for his
parents’ suffering. On the other hand, Uncle Eddie was considered an informer
40
, so his
40
An informer, in this case, refers to an Irishman who informs the British authorities about the actions and plans
of the IRA. An informer to the British means a traitor to the IRA.
51
grandfather’s act was justified, since gangsters and informers were not welcome in the
movement.
The support of the IRA was another controversial issue. Although the environment
seemed to be hostile to the IRA members, the resentment and bitterness due to the British
policy of house search and internment, and the movement’s aims to drive the British out of
Northern Ireland and unify the country justified their rights to keep acting, despite their
violent actions. However, according to O’Malley the Irish were used to these hideous acts of
violence long before the establishment of the two separate governing units, as he writes:
The tradition of violence dating back to the savage sectarian confrontations
between secrete agrarian societies during the late eighteenth century hardened into
the ideology of violence that continues to have, even to this day, widespread
support in the tightly neat, beleaguered communities on both sides of the divide. Its
imperatives legitimize the use of violence in certain situations – for Catholics,
situations where the forces of law and order are seen as the forces of an alien
oppressor. (O’Malley, 1983, p. 261)
In spite of that, the IRA was not well seen either by the Irish Government of the
Republic of Ireland or by the British Government. The IRA was fighting to join the North to
the South while the Irish Government of the south was involved in setting a program to
provide the Irish people a sense of national identity. For the Irish government the IRA was a
subversive organization to be classified along with any international terrorist organization,
falling to recall that this movement had its origins long before the partition and that it had
fought together with the Free State members to set their independence. On the other hand, the
British Government considered the IRA members ordinary criminals who deserved either to
spend the rest of their lives in prison or to die.
4.4 THE PISTOL
The boy remembers the day his house was searched by the police because he had
showed some friends a gun that had been given as a present to his father by a young “German
sailor whose submarine had been brought in to the port after the end of the war” (DEANE,
1998, p.28). A young man of twenty known as a police informer saw the boy showing the gun
to his friends. The boy, after showing the gun to his friends, and learning that the man was an
informer, decided to bury the gun in a stone trench to avoid any problems. That night the
52
police broke into his family’s house, slashed the wall papers, ripped the linoleum floor,
removed the wooden boards and moved the furniture away, in an attempt to find the gun.
Because they did not find the gun, they took his father, his brother and him to the police
station where they were beaten so as to reveal where the gun had been hidden. The narrator
remarks that he was too young and too stupid in showing the gun to his friends because his
family was marked by having members in the IRA.
After the partition the British Government instituted internment. Internment meant
imprisonment without a trial. It was commonly practiced in the Catholic Bogside. Catholics
had their houses invaded in the early hours of the morning. Military and police armed men
broke into people’s home. People were dragged from bed and taken to jail or internment
camp. There was no charge or trial. Thousands of men and women were subjected to the
brutality of internment for more than 50 years. The violence of the British army is narrated by
the boy who reports what he heard and experienced. The feeling of resentment and anger
resultant from the house search, violent attacks, detentions and internment had built a
collective consciousness in the Catholic working class of the Bogside whose sons were either
joining the IRA or helping the volunteers, even though the movement was condemned as a
subversive organization by the Free State government and the Catholic Church. The IRA,
nevertheless, asserted that they would fight until the last British left Northern Ireland, and
their acts were justified by the enemy’s presence. The ideology of violence had long been part
of the nation which had perpetuated violence for two centuries. The subversive actions were
considered legitimate, since the government in Northern Ireland was seen as foreign oppressor
by the IRA. On the other hand, Protestants also saw Catholicism as a threat, since the
experience they had with the religion break between England and Rome, and all the religious
crusades set in Ireland led into the current crisis. Besides, after the partition, most Protestants
had to leave the Republic of Ireland. Unification meant emigration to Protestant Unionists.
The idea of Ireland as one Nation was certainly a blur for, in the Republic, the term “nation”
was almost only used by Catholics, leaving the Protestant minority aside. In other words,
Catholicism and nationalism were imbricate. The fight would not have an end unless both
religions accepted religious freedom in Ireland.
53
4.5 IN IRISH
In this chapter, the boy feels the need to address his parents about the silence and the
secret (the shadow) that haunts their family. He does not have the courage to talk openly to
them, so he writes them a letter in Irish Gaelic, telling what he knows about his family’s
betrayals and lies. He writes this letter carefully, including what is necessary to say and
leaving the unnecessary details out. In the letter the boy says he needs to tell everything he
knows, but he believes he should tell his mother what he knows first. He comments that his
mother knows a little Irish, by translating parts of old poems and songs. Once she asked him if
he knew a poem about a woman who regretted having forsaken the man she loved. The boy
knows that his father does not speak any Irish.
He waits for the right moment and then reads the essay aloud to both his parents,
pretending it is an essay on history for school. He says, “The truth was swollen inside me. […]
I read it aloud right in Irish to him. […] My mother had listened carefully. I knew she knew
what I was doing. My father tapped me on the shoulder and said he liked to hear the language
spoken in the house” (idem, 1998, pp. 202-203). The boy says he has learned at school that
writing means simply telling the truth. The truth has been haunting him, he needs to speak it
out, but he cannot hurt his father. This is something he has to keep within him. Conversely, he
has to speak. So he chooses the “national” language to release his feelings, even though he
knows what he says will not be understood by his father. At least, he has spoken it out. And
he knows his mother understood what was said. Saying it does not make him feel better, it is
too painful. But he has to say it, for his own sake. Later, the boy mentions that he wishes he
could go to the Irish speaking districts “to learn the language he mutilated before his mother
and father.” (ibdem, 1998, p. 221.)
In the two decades that followed De Valera’s election writers and politicians preached
the importance of a native language. A number of measures were put into practice for the
revival of Irish at National Schools by the Gaelic League in 1913. Gaelic Irish was made
compulsory and should be intensely exposed. Scholar Osborn Bergin callS attention to what
was happening in the Free State,
Today the people leave the problem to the Government, the Government leaves it to
the Department of Education, the Department of Education to the teachers and the
teachers to the school-children. Only the very young are unable to shift the burden to
someone else’s shoulders, so perhaps they will learn to carry it, and save our faces.
54
After all, infants, before the age of reason can do marvel things with language, so they
may not notice the weight (BROWN, 1987, p. 43).
After two centuries of British domination, in spite of idealizing their cultural heritage,
the Irish seem to have lost their native language. The Gaelic Irish had been swept out the
country, except for some small places in the countryside could speak the language. People in
larger towns did not know the language. Hence, the pathos of this scene is remarkable. The
kid’s parents cannot help him since they do not master either their native language, or their
history, or their lives anymore. Here we have to bear in mind, also, that in Northern Ireland
Catholic children would go to Catholic schools. Catholic schools followed the Free State
national curriculum, and this explains why the boy is studying that “dead language” which his
parents cannot master.
4.6 THE OLD FORT
In the chapter titled “The Old Fort” the boy describes his need for a national identity
through his excursions to Fort Grianan, in the countryside of County Donegal, across Lough
Foyle (the Estuary of the River Foyle), which begins in Derry, and marks the border between
“The Free Territory” and Northern Ireland. Donegal is one of the three counties that became
part of the Republic of Ireland through The Anglo-Irish Treaty, in 1922. Grianan of Aileach is
a historical stone ring fort (annex I). The legend says it was built by the ancient gods. The fort
is known as the Sun Palace, and is considered sacred. There are many stories, myths and
legends about Grianan. One of these says that “the sleeping warriors lay waiting for the
person who would make that one wish that would rouse them from their thousand year sleep
to make a final war on the English […]” (DEANE, 1998, p.56).
The boy is locked inside the walls of Fort Grianan by his friends. While sitting there,
after reviewing the collection of myths he has been told in his community, it occurs to him
that those myths are fictional creations. His individual experience brings him to a different
perception. Rather than fantasizing about those myths, he scrutinizes the sounds and scents of
the place and comes to recognition of nature. See the passage below, in which he enters the
myth,
55
I could hear the breathing of the sleeping Fianna waiting for the trumpet that would
bring him and his warriors to life again to fight the last battle which, as the prophecies
of St. Columcille told us, would take place between Derry and Strabane, after which
the one remaining English ship would sail out of Lough Foyle and away from Ireland
Forever. If you concentrated even further, you would scent the herbal perfumes of the
Druid spells and you would hear the women sighing in sexual pleasure-yes-esss-yes-
esss (idem, p.57).
Suddenly, it occurs to him that the sound he is listening to is not the breath of the
Fianna, but the sound of the wind from the sea. The scent of the Druid spell is the perfume of
the wild plants. The sound of the women sighing in sexual pleasure is caused by the
underground waters of the fort.
41
The myths the boy refers to derive from the effort of the
Irish Literary Revival movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which
aimed at restoring a sense of identity to Ireland.
42
The heroes in the ancient cycle of Irish
myths have been feeding, for political reasons, the romantic Irish nationalism inherited by the
boy in our story for almost two centuries.
Writers of the Literary Revival believed that writing about legends and myths of the
past would help Irishmen and Irishwomen learn about their race, that it would fight back the
gradual process of cultural amnesia that was pestering the country. Interestingly, these
mythological characters – as the Fianna – were seen as “figures embodying the truly Irish
spirit” (BROWN 1991, p. 519, v. II). Thus, in concordance with the nationalist government,
these writings were used as political propaganda in favor of the nationalist state. The heritage
of this movement has its positive and negative aspects. One of the negative outcomes was an
enhancement of the conservative, sectarian, and reactionary aspects of that society which
searched the essence of the Irish nationality in the past. Terence Brown refers to this as
“literary nostalgias about race and religion” (idem, p. 520; v. II). Suddenly, the boy arrives to
his sole conclusion about what is said and what actually happens when sitting inside the fort.
In other words, he liberates himself from the imposed nationalistic cultural and social control.
The boy in our story seems to learn from his own experience, and through his senses.
He is exposed to circumstances, is perceptive to them, and understands the complexity of the
problems, but he will not come to one decision about his positions until he feels that the
moment has arrived. He is also interested in the different kinds of reality that we are exposed
to in life: the duty of the life as a citizen and the right to experience pleasure. These spheres
41
The sighs of women in sexual pleasure belongs in several Irish myths, and has been referred to in literature by
the major Irish authors. The most famous reference is probably presented in the last section of Ulysses, by James
Joyce, where we read the thoughts and feelings of Molly Bloom as she falls asleep. “Yes” is the last word in
Ulysses, followed by no punctuation, plunging directly into a dream.
42
The Irish Literary Revival, or Celtic Revival has already been mentioned in Chapter One of this thesis (note
13). Among the great names in the movement we have William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory and Lord Dunsany.
56
clash in The Shan Van Vocht, the book he reads in the dark about the couple that separates
because the man must go to war. The boy also understands that the words “reality” and
“truth” can change as applied to two dimensions, the personal and the public. He becomes
aware that he is exposed to two worlds, the world of daily life and the world of imagination.
And he seems to be interested in the confrontations of the world of Life and the world of
Literature: with the composition written by his colleague, about the mother who sets the table
at home, the boy realizes that daily life can be taken into the world of literature. And now,
sitting at the fort, as he smells, and touches, and listens to, and sees things – as he uses his
senses in the fort – he realizes that myths can also leave the world of Literature and influence
the world of daily life.
4.7 RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE
The boy also considers the weight of the Catholic political and ideological influence in
Northern Ireland. Sir Roy, the teacher of Religious Knowledge, after having asked some
theological questions during a lecture, and concluded religion is different since it is beyond
rationality, says, “I shall do the State some service and the Church even more.” Later, the
narrator comments, “Only Sir Roy and the police had cars. Knights in shining armor. Papal
and anti-Papal.” (DEANE, 1998, p.187). The more controlled the community is, the more
their history is forgotten, and the greater the power of the Church is. Therefore, the spiritual
power of the Church serves as an instrument of domination. The Catholic Church represents
the belief in a better life after death, and the acceptance of the present Catholic Irish situation.
The Church preaches, ultimately, political and economic submission.
The constitution of the 1937 recognized the importance of the Catholic Church’s
incorporating Catholic social teaching, prohibiting divorce and contraception, and censoring
publications. The Catholic Church acquired a high position in that social context. They could
interfere in public affairs, where questions of faith and morals were involved. The Church not
only believed but made it clear that even though the Church should deal with religiosity and
moral, and the state should deal with temporal matters, the interests of the two spheres ranged
in the same direction. By controlling the educational system, they would be controlling the
electorate, the political parties and the government. The Church was involved in every aspect
of the Irish life. As Padraig O’Malley comments: “the Church in the south stood aloof from
57
and above the state” (O'MALLEY, 1983, p. 64). Since the Catholic Church was allowed to
control the teaching of the Catholic communities in the north, it also, not only influenced but
intervened in the political and social decisions of those communities. Moreover, the Church
was the guardian of the Catholic values in the face of all kinds of imaginary dangers. In
addition to that, after the war, when the communist ideas were spread all over Europe, the
Church in Ireland became extremely conservative condemning egalitarianism whenever they
had the opportunity to.
4.8 POLITICAL EDUCATION
In the chapter “Political Education”, in one of the classes of political education a priest
in British army uniform makes a speech about the importance of preventing the communist
ideas from influencing people in Northern Ireland.
Were you to view the Foyle Basin from Binevenagh, almost twelve hundred feet
above the sea, with the bird-haunted mud flats of the River Roe at its foot, you would
begin to appreciate both the beauty and the dramatic landscape and the seascape in
which your city rests. This is a city that, even today, still commands the eastern
approaches of the North Atlantic, that is still a vital port for the great NATO fleets
that regularly put in here during those exercises that are part of the Western world’s
preparations for the defeat of the international Communist threat. […] And once more
you are called to take part in a battle that is just dramatic, although less visible: a
struggle against a foe that is no less real for being visible. This is a battle for the
hearts and minds of men; a battle of faithless against faith; a battle of subtle wiles
against manly freedom; a battle of cold atheism against the genial warmth of
Christian faith that has lit so many Irish hearts down the centuries. (DEANE, 1998,
pp.205-6)
Northern Ireland was more industrialized and formed by working classes of both,
Catholic and Protestant populations. These working class groups were more willing to be
influenced by socialist ideas. The Church in Eire did not have to make accommodations with
communist and socialist parties in the south because they did not have to face any opposing
ideologies. The Free State was a fundamentally agrarian Catholic Gaelic nation and was
marked by an unbroken continuity with the social patterns and attitudes of the latter half of
the nineteenth century. In spite of the thousands of families living in overcrowded conditions,
in slums, communist ideas did not have a great influence there, as they were not given the
chance to develop a sense of class. The North was more open and exposed to Communist and
Socialist ideas for having an industrial center. Communist and Socialist ideas were more
58
likely to be widespread in the industrial working environment. Both Churches of North and
South feared its influence on the Irish communities of the North. They conjoined efforts to
prevent these ideologies from being received favorably, by advocating the Christian faith
against the atheist content of Communism. In order to explain this “threat” the Anglo-Irish
priest in the novel says that “the internal disputes are no more than family quarrels” and now
these families, in other words Anglicans and Catholics should make an alliance against
Communism. Adding to that, the Anglican priest in Reading in the Dark stresses the
importance of being a society rooted in “tradition and continuity.” This profile was at the soul
of the Irish, and God was “the goal” of their history. The following day, in the History class,
the Catholic priest, answering students’ questions, makes a distinction about both Churches,
saying that Reformation had no right in its side and was as bad as communism. But
reformation was history, and at that moment they had to forget these differences because “that
was a family quarrel within the Christian family and it would work itself out”, but
Communism would still be a threat for the ones who believe in God (idem, p. 209). It was
necessary to pay attention to international history at that moment instead of to their internal
differences. In fact, this is a brilliant example of contradiction. Even though the two churches
do not recognize each other, they make an alliance in order to fight against what is called the
“external enemy”. Their discourse is based on the idea of a chivalric nation who fights for the
Christian faith, freedom, tradition and continuity of the social patterns. The denial of
modernity was so deeply rooted in both states controlled by the Church and the bourgeois
politicians, both fearing the working class organization. Both Churches had important
political and social participation in the partitioned bourgeois States. If the working class
seized the new communist ideas that were being emanated by the Bolshevik revolution and
actually made a revolution in the country, both Churches would suffer great loss.
However, the division between Catholics and Protestants was a fact. Protestants grew
to fear Catholics after the historical dispute of the land in Ulster
43
, and faith that had been
going on since the late seventeenth century. The protestant faith was being jeopardized by the
Catholic Church for Catholicism considered their faith heresy. Besides, Protestants were
afraid of “being submerged and absorbed into a church whose political power controls and
manipulate events, peoples and nations. The Catholic Church preached that there was only
43
The Land dispute in Ulster is the whole period English involvement in Ireland which in the seventeenth
century, was intensified with the “Plantation of Ulster” - systematic colonization of Donegal, Tyrone, Derry,
Armagh, Cavan and Fermanagh by settlers from England and Scotland. Two major events contributed to the
opening of the island to systematic colonization: the conquest of the whole Ireland by Oliver Cromwell and the
defeat of King James at the Battle of the Boyne. The English domination was consolidated in Northern Ireland
after the 1916 uprising and the opening of the first Northern Ireland Parliament in 1921.
59
One, True, Holy and apostolic Church, and claimed a special authority to interpret and preach
the word of God. The others were fallout heresy, as we can see in the Catholic Priest’s
discourse above. Protestants were afraid of being controlled by the Catholic Church not only
because of the religious differences but also because they though their religion was part of
their identity. So, we can conclude that their alliance was temporary and for a special reason,
their anti-Communism plight. But in daily circumstances, Protestants attacked Catholicism
and Communism, as well as Rome and Dublin. Catholicism attacked Protestantism and
Communism, England and Ulster. Hence, the fear that communist ideas were inflicted in the
Northern Ireland working class made both the Catholic and the Protestant Churches ally fight
against their common enemy.
4.9 EDDIE
Uncle Eddie is the boy’s father’s younger brother. Eddie was a member of the IRA
who disappeared in April 1922, during a fight between the IRA and the police in an old
distillery in the Bogside in Derry. That took place when Ireland and Britain were negotiating
the Anglo-Irish Treaty which would establish the Irish Free State under British dominion, and
without the six counties of Northern Ireland. There are different stories about Eddie’s
disappearance. Some say he has been seen in America, Australia or Canada, others say he was
shot to death that day. His father has never talked about his brother, or about that night.
Throughout the novel, the boy tries to put together the fragments of what he has been told, in
an attempt to unveil the secret related to this “silence” that permeates his relationship with his
family. He learns through his grandfather, and Crazy Joe, that Uncle Eddie was sentenced and
executed as an informer during the confrontation, in spite of being innocent. After Eddie’s
death, the boy’s mother told her father, the leading member of the IRA who had denounced
Eddie, that her sister’s husband, McIlhenny, was the informer, not Eddie. He boy’s mother did
that because she was jealous and wanted to separate the couple. But she recanted and ended
up telling McIlhenny that he had been denounced, and that he needed to escape. In short,
despite knowing that Eddie was innocent and, and that he was executed in McIlhenny’s place,
the boy’s mother has never told her husband about his brother’s innocence. In addition, when
she realizes that her son is searching for the truth, she starts to avoid his presence.
60
My mother’s father had my father’s brother killed. She had known that now, since
just before Grandfather died. My father didn’t know it at all. My mother had gone
out with McIlhenny, the traitor who had set Eddie up for execution. My father did
not know that. And McIlhenny had dropped her and married Katie, her sister. Then
he had been tipped off and fled to Chicago. Katie didn’t know that. Nor did my
father. My mother had always known that McIlhenny had fled, had known he was
an informer. Her father must have told her that; what he hadn’t told her not just
before he died was the truth about what had happened to Eddie. She knew it all
now. She knew I knew it too. And she wasn’t going to tell any of it. Nor was I. But
she didn’t like me knowing it. And my father thought he had told me everything. I
could tell him nothing, though I hated him not knowing. But only my mother could
tell him. No one else. It was her way of loving him, not telling him? It was my way
of loving them both, not telling either. But knowing what I did, separated me from
them both (ibdem, p.193-94).
The boy`s mother is not the only one who knows what McIlhenny did. The boy learns
that Crazy Joe saw McIlhenny secretly getting out of the police car at four o’clock in the
morning and that he was the traitor, the informer. Crazy Joe says he does not know who told
the IRA McIlhenny was an informer, or he does not want to say. The boy suspects that that is
the reason why Joe is considered crazy. Joe identified McIlhenny after the IRA had killed
Eddie. Nobody should know the IRA committed such a mistake. They led the Catholic
Bogside, they were powerful because they kept the ideology of hatred against the Anglo-Irish
alive. If people started to distrust them, they would become enfeebled, and they needed the
Irish Catholics to support their cause. The police helped McIlhenny to escape to America and
the IRA never confessed their mistake.
The narrator finds out that several lies have been told and several secrets have been
kept. They made his family and everybody in his community accept the stories as they were
told, in order to create a false consciousness of the political dispute. He cannot tell how much
his family, and especially his father, knows about it, or why the real story has never been
reveled. He realizes that this search for truth is his own private search. In fact, his discoveries
are part of his self-enlightenment. He also knows that revealing the truth is betraying not only
his mother but his family’s need to accept their reality as it is. Knowledge is often a bad thing,
after all. It always tears people apart, for it makes people suspicious of people and events.
When you know something, your life is in danger and your spirit may die. Not telling the
truth, however, means accepting the dark history of a family as a microcosm of the dark
history of a nation that is incapable of fighting for some clarification, and, as a consequence,
forgets its past and gets involved in stories of hatred.
61
4.10 SERGEANT BURKE
Sergeant Burke has been stationed in the Bogside since the partition and the birth of
Northern Ireland. He has participated in all public disturbances which have happened in that
area. He has seen people being killed and being accused of treason. He has arrested people,
beaten them up, and sent them to prison several times. One day, he visits the boy’s mother
while her husband is at work and tells her he is not there to bring any more problems. He has
a lot of things on file but he wants to end to the dispute. He tells the boy’s mother about
[…]a separation from all that grief, a walking away from it, a settling. Look at your
father […] dying with two deaths on his conscience and both of them the wrong
man. Look at Katie and her shattered marriage, and her child left without a father
and the father living a double life out there in exile. Look at Frank, your husband,
living in silence, believing his family disgraced by an informer and unwilling to
talk about what he had had to suffer all those years with his children around him
asking questions and other people wondering about him- wondering why he had
been let go that night the young fella found the gun. He had fixed that himself,
Burke claimed, for he didn’t want to see Frank take any more, and he knew he was
not involved in anything. (Ibdem, p.213).
Then the mother answers that it is magnificent to say that all of this has to stop when
there are people who have been the victims of the police and the political problems they have
faced for decades.
Dirty politics. […] What were they supposed to do? Say they were sorry they ever
protested and go back to being unemployed, gerrymandered
44
, beaten up by every
policemen who took notion, gaoled
45
by magistrates and judges who were so
vicious that was they that should be gaoled, and for life, for all the harm they did
and all the lives they ruined? (Ibdem,, p.213)
Their dialogue shows that the tradition of violence was internalized in Northern
Ireland. The violence against the innocent, the resentment and grievance of the population
after having their house searched, or after the internments, detentions, beatings, and public
humiliation have built a collective unconscious in most of the working-class Catholic families
that guaranteed the anger against the police or anything that meant to bring some order, for
this order meant political control. The unlimited power of the police, and later, of the British
Army, was used against the Catholic population, even though their aim was to protect this
population against the attacks of unionist organizations. Their presence ended up by bringing
44
To gerrymander means to divide a voting area so as to give a political party a majority in as many districts as
possible, or to weaken the voting strength of an ethnic or racial group or urban population.
45
To be in jail.
62
an exacerbated feeling of displeasure and reinforced the actions of the IRA. Sergeant Burke
was a representative of this structure brought up against the Catholic ghetto. But now Burke is
there as an individual, trying to make peace. After all these years he realizes “politics
destroyed people’s lives […], he wanted to retire soon and he had had enough of it himself.
Wanted to make peace with it, but it was hard for him too”(ibdem, p.215).
4.11 AFTER
The closing chapter is set in October 1968, at the beginning of “the Troubles”. The
narrator refers that while the IRA was rioting against the British soldiers, a British soldier was
killed on the front doorstep of their house. Some time later, the soldier’s father knocks on
their door to ask about his son. When the man leaves, the boy’s father says that, even if from
the “opposite” side, that man was a father too, who had lost his son in a war that was not
theirs, but had been triggered by two political ideologies which aimed at alienating their
society. Once more the narrator understands how empty that discourse of war can be for
individuals, as you can see the following passage,
I opened the [door] to the man who hesitantly took of his hat an asked if he could
speak to someone in the house about who had been killed here on Wednesday.
Before I could say anything, he added hastily that he was not army intelligence or
police. He was the soldier’s father. I invited him in. He introduced himself to my
parents, told them he was from Yorkshire, a miner, and that his son, George, had
been shot, he was told, at our doorstep. He wondered if anyone had seen what had
happened. There was a silence. My parents looked at him. He knew, the
Yorkshireman said, he knew what people around here felt about the British
soldiers. But this was his son. […] Well my father told the Englishman, his son had
died instantly. He had heard the thud, not the shot. He had opened the door. The
boy was lying there, looking quite peacefully. But he was dead, definitely dead.
‘So he didn’t suffer, didn’t speak?’ The miner asked.
No. They talked a little more, but there was not much to be said. The English shook
hands all round, we told him we were sorry for his trouble, he nodded and left.
‘Poor man’, said my father. ‘I feel for him. Even if his son was one of those. It’s a
strange world’. (Ibdem, pp. 244-45).
For me, this is one of the most moving passage in the book. It brings to the first plan
what should count the most, all the suffering individuals, families and entire populations of
different countries have had to undergo when they were used like puppets because of the
interests of political or religious groups who have led them to believe they belonged in a
determined nation, or race, even though they did not really understand what that meant, or
63
were not really treated as if they belonged. Humanity is often called to fight for arbitrary
ideologies. We live and we grow old believing, preaching and teaching pre established ideas
we have been led to believe, because someone we trust has said that they were right. And
when individuals dare to say something against those ideas they are either regarded a mad
person, or as not belonging to that so-called national identity. Mankind has been following
this pattern for thousands of years. Wars have been fought in the name of race, religion and
politics. It seems that, until today, the major players of these unjust wars have not come to
think that this fight is unfair to most individuals. What shocks the boy is the fact that, in the
end, the Englishman is a father, just like his father. In the end, what is the definition of truth,
if there is no room left for individual happiness, dignity and freedom from imposed
ideologies? And this is where this boy comes to, in his attempt to learn and understand about
the shadowed history of his family. Throughout the novel, he refers to the history of his
family and country in order to tell about his struggle to liberate himself from generations of
secrets, myths, betrayals, and sectarianism that have kept both communities of Northern
Ireland subordinated to the conflicts between the British Empire and the Irish Nationalists.
Sadly speaking, a struggle that was also imposed by the political and religious groups.
According to Michiko Kakutani (1997), “the tragedy of the narrator’s family, a family
fractured and burned by love and betrayal, has become a metaphor for the tragedy of Northern
Ireland, a land whose troubles have been handed down from generation to generation, from
father to daughter to son”.
The narrator in Reading in the Dark, unlike his parents, searches for his family history
in an attempt to relive his own history, and consequently, the history and culture of his
country. He was born in another context; he is part of the generation who wants to change the
present situation. He knows that by finding the truth he will also recover their past as a nation
and their fight against repression. This repression is not related to one specific politics or
policy, but all of them, which have kept people believing in arbitrary ideals. While his parents
have lost their hope, and have accepted the course of life as it is, the boy wants to free himself
and those preconceived ideas and beliefs. But he also knows that by revealing the truth he will
tear himself and his parents apart, even though his parents have already been separated by
their silence.
64
4.12 MY FATHER
Then when he has finally reached his truth, our protagonist realizes he can do nothing
but keep the secret, so as not to hurt his family, especially his father. Even so, he feels guilty
about not telling his father about his uncle’s innocence.
Staying loyal to my mother made me disloyal to my father. In case I should ever be
tempted to tell him all I knew, I stayed at arm’s length from him and saw him notice
but could say nothing to explain. I went away to university in Belfast, glad to be free
of the immediate pressures of living there, sorry to have so misled everything that
had created a distance between my parents and myself that had become my only
way of loving them. So I celebrated all anniversaries: of all deaths, all the betrayals
– for both of them – in my head, year after year, until to my pleasure and surprise,
they began to become confused and muddled, and I wondered at times if I had
dreamed it all. (DEANE, 1998, p. 236)
The protagonist/narrator also says that “hauntings are, in the way, very specific, Everything
has to be exact, even the vaguenesses” (idem, p.236). What he has learned about his family came in
fragments, told by different people who did not realize what they were really telling him. And he does
not really know if he remembers the stories he has listened to, because he has just been told. However,
there is something the protagonist knows. He has “reconstructed his [father’s] life out of the remains
of the stories about his father’s dead parents, his vanished older brother, his own unknowing and to
[him], [his] beloved silence” (ibdem, pp.237-238). What the boy does not know is how much his
father knew or did not know.
After putting together the bits that were told by other people, and after allowing some
temporal distance and internalization of the facts, the narrator is ready to tell his story. What
was strange and difficult for the boy becomes important for the adult narrator, since he does
not want his story to be forgotten. The narrator presents the origin of all secrets, distortions,
and lies that led to the choices that his family and members of his community have made.
This search leads the protagonist to self-understanding, individual freedom and a sense of
identity. In the introduction of Nationalism Irony and Commitment in Nationalism,
Colonialism, and Literature Seamus Deane (1990, p.12) asserts that “in the attempted
discovery of its “true” identity, a community often begins to the demolition of false
stereotypes within which it has been entrapped. This is an intricate process, since the
stereotypes are successful, precisely because they have been interiorized”. Both the collective
memories and the private experience form the identity of peoples. However, there is always a
clash between the collective memory and the individual experience. Adding to that, there are
65
different associative and emotional memories within individuals due to their own experience
and emotions, allowing them different perceptions of reality. Thus, there is not one universal
ideology of a determined community, or a universal truth, but different ideologies and truths
that form different identities.
4.13 MY MOTHER
The protagonist’s mother has always felt guilty about what had happened to her sister,
to her husband’s brother, and for her husband’s grief. At the same time she cannot tell all the
truth because the truth is too hard to be told after all these years of bad decisions,
misunderstandings and secrets that led to a disastrous situation. So, she has become
frightened, depressed and introspective. At the same time she turns away from the boy and
becomes hostile, because she knows the boy has found out about a great deal of the whole
story. Not only is she hostile against the boy, she is also distant from everyone in the family.
Sometimes she intercalates anger with panic. One day the boy gives her a flower, in order to
show her his affection, and indicate to her that he will not say a word about what he knows.
Then the boy tells his readers that she starts to tear the petals off and then she says “if you
want you can tell” [...] “If you don’t, that’s just as well” […] “Get it over, get it done, Father,
lover, husband, son” (DEANE, 1998, p. 227). These people’s stories are totally interwoven.
The grandfather is from the IRA. So are Eddie and McIlhenny. But Eddie is pointed out as a
traitor by McIlhenny, who is the real traitor and is helped by Burke, the Anglo Irish
policeman, to flee to America. Eddie is executed. But Eddie is Frank’s, her husband’s brother.
His mother has to protect the IRA and cover the IRA’s mistakes. They are the ones who
“protect” the Irish Catholics. They are the ones who want Northern Ireland to be independent.
And when Northern Ireland becomes independent there will not be internments, gaols, or
unemployment anymore. The “real Irish” will be free from the British Empire. This is what
she tells Burke. By not telling the truth, she is enforcing the myth that the IRA is protecting
Northern Ireland against the invader. Casualties happen when people fight for a cause.
Nevertheless, her husband’s family are the real victims in this battle. Lives have been
destroyed in every way. The boy knows this is all too delicate. Telling the truth would destroy
the last bonds in the family. On the other hand, he knows that the whole struggle against the
66
British made his family incapable of living in peace. He also realizes that his mother is the
only one who can really tell what really happened. So he says,
I imagined talking to her like this, rehearsing conversations I would never have
‘What you don’t know doesn’t hurt you,’ I would say. ‘What I don’t know you
won’t tell that does hurt me. That’s happening here. If you loved me more or knew
what’s happening here. If you loved me more or knew how much I loved you and
him, then you would say everything. How can you not know? I’d do anything,
anything, to help you if you’d let me’. But was that true, that she would tell
everything if she loved me more? If she knew there was something more, but didn’t
know what it was, wasn’t that worse for her, wasn’t that what would stop her saying
anything more to me? Imagining something, like the way Eddie died, like who was
there, like exactly what had happened, that was maybe worse than having just one
set of facts, the one story that cancelled all the others, the one truth she could tell.
But everyone who had been there was dead or in exile or silenced one way or
another. And how did I know I had been told the truth? Shouldn’t I ask her? What
did you know, Mother, when you married my father? What did he know? When did
you tell each other? Why did you silence me over and over? (idem, pp. 216-17).
There are two things I would like to say, before closing this chapter. The first is that I
am aware of the fact that the pitch of my argumentation went a bit too high here and there
against the Catholic Church and against the use of Ideology made by the State. I also know
that my defense of individual rights was a bit too heated. I am perfectly aware that there are
many different sides to any questions, and that there are causes that deserve to be fought, and
moments in which the interest of the group predominates over individual choice. But as I
proposed to offer my reading of the thirteen selected sections, I ended up deciding to allow
myself to be carried away here and there, as a direct result of the effect the moving rhetoric of
this novel operates on me. Seamus Deane is much more subtle than I am as he pleads his
cause, though.
The second point I would like to stress derives from the fact that Deane, as a
university professor of Irish Literature, is a well respected specialist in Joycean Studies. As A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is widely read by Brazilian academics, I would like to
observe that part of the resemblance between the Boy in Reading in the Dark and Stephen
Dedalus, in A Portrait comes from the influence exerted on Deane by Joyce. But mostly, in
my opinion, they are similar because they are the product of two Irish artists who see things
through the same prism. We have two novels shaped in the format of a life-story, with
autobiographical characteristics, showing the story of the growth of two persons that are
interested in the exchanges between life and Literature and that will grow up to become
authors who tell about their stories so as to help things change. The two protagonists are
aware of the many sides to all questions, and refuse to take part in any of them, until they find
67
their own way to fight their personal battles. Fighting for their own rights of free choice and
free expression, they are also fighting for the rights of their fellow citizens.
68
5 CONCLUSION
This argumentative thesis has been built around the idea of exorcizing ghosts. The
ghosts in the family of the protagonist of Reading in the Dark and the ghosts of its author,
raised in Northern Ireland in the shadow of “The Troubles”. In a way, these are, in one
manner or another, a type of exorcism. Disempowering ancient ghosts leads one, inevitably,
to the reshaping of one’s sense of identity. The focus of the change achieved here relies on the
social and political History of Northern Ireland, more specifically considering the clash
between British Unionists and Irish Nationalists that led to the present state of the discussion,
as posed by the members of the cultural movement known as The Field Day Company.
Seamus Deane, as a member of the Field Day, transposes the revisionist point of view
into his novel, where we can feel and analyze the cultural dimension of imperialism as well as
the reflex to the colonized consciousness. Deane’s novel exposes history and the function of
the universal ideal, characterizing its disfiguring effects by deconstructing the dominant
narratives about Ireland. Reading in the Dark plays a role in the process of national
demythologizing, uprooting fixed stereotypes that have been set throughout early and late
colonial periods.
Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark questions the role of identity, by examining
discourses that led to failure of communication and the clash between two communities living
in the same territory. The myth that the British conquest, which took centuries, would be put
to an end by the Gaelic Irish and that the Irish language and the true Gaelic culture would be
reestablished after centuries of miscegenation was an appropriate excuse advocate the rights
to restore what they considered to be the authentic Irish and led the fight against the British
Empire. At the same time the ones who have fought for what they consider to be nationalism
have forgotten what they have done in the name of religion and in the name of a nation. The
have set Easter Ring 1916 as the birthday of this dispute but have forgotten that this dispute
has been going for centuries. In fact this fight has been going on since the times of the dispute
between different Gaelic tribes that from time to time had different interests. In order to
defend their interests and gain what they wanted, these tribes made alliances with the
Normans, the Scots and the Saxons. Furthermore, after the Easter ring they have set a series of
myths that have redefined the past events to fit the idea that one needed to be a Catholic
Gaelic and speak Irish to be the true Irish. The myth of Irishness has denied diversity,
considered Catholicism the symbol and the political emblem of nationalism, caused heroic
69
battles against their antagonists. This myth has also validated the IRA actions since they have
practiced guerrillas in the name of a nation. Deane also examines the individual subject self-
experience in relation to his community, the present mythology and the memory of facts. He
shows how important it is for individual subjects to examine and reconsider the facts, in order
to come to an understanding and, consequently, find a coherent explanation, which will help
liberate themselves from established ideologies.
In Reading in the Dark, the protagonist tells the readers how his experiences formed
his identity. By organizing the fragments of the history of his family, he reaches a historical
understanding of the society in which he lives. This historical intelligibility presupposes the
understanding of his individuality as the unique experience of a person living in a collective
society. His family’s history, and the culture and history of his place, with their contradictory
reality, are intrinsically related. The protagonist, returns to the past and clarifies the
imperfections in order to understand his family, community and, consequently, himself. When
the protagonist finally disempowers all the ghosts that have haunted his family and
community, he also realizes he is in a crossroad. If he tells what he has learned he will reveal
decades of secrets which made the myth of a Gaelic nation be reinforced time after time and
produced a collective unconsciousness of anger and hate between Catholics and Protestants.
At the same time, as an individual, he knows the old discourse does not help to solve the
trouble and destroys people’s lives, as it has happened to his family. This discourse of race
and identity created tensions and violence in the ethnic relations. And these tensions were
fully accepted by those who were involved with them. After combining the opposing
assertions and reasoning them, the protagonist realizes such discourse was, in fact, creation of
culture and of history. Thus, he does not only learn how to live with the imperfections of his
society, but also decides to show his readers that his identity is a consequence of his own
experiences. Moreover, he chooses to show how important it is for an individual to have
coherent discourse in order to achieve self-understanding. Instead of accepting the imposed
ideology, the protagonist reaches his own reasoning, his self-enlightenment and his freedom.
Seamus Deane is one outstanding name among a new generation of writers, and
Reading in the Dark a good example of a successful work which makes us think about how
these contradictions of the universal and particular can be solved in favor of an individual
enlightenment – an individual who is also part of a broader society. Reading in the Dark may
be one of the many autobiographies produced by Irish writers, but no less important. Seamus
Deane is part of a group of writers who, by being born in a colonial country like Ireland,
needs to search for a plausible explanation of their oppressing condition. He chooses to give
70
light of the facts through examination of self-experience and of people and events that led to
the loss of identity and freedom. This search enables him to build self-enlightenment. But it is
only possible through historical analysis of the institutions involved: family, religion and
politics. His autobiographical work describes his experiences as a child of teenager living in
world he feels he does not belong. Most importantly, Deane’s Reading in the Dark not only
shows how traumatic personal experiences are kept in the people’s memory but also how this
personal experience is intrinsically related to the social experience.
Moreover, by analyzing ‘the intellectuals of the Field Day Company, we observe that
their practices meet their aims since all of them propose a new kind of trans-national approach
which will re-examine a number of national issues as an attempt to redefine the interpretation
of Irish national culture, history and tradition in order to help solve the established crisis. For
them, it is necessary to create a new discourse in order to resolve these ethnic and religious
disputes and find a new direction; the Field Day Movement believes that the whole island of
Ireland is much in need of this sort of re-valuation.
I hope to have succeeded in exploring such links in the comments made about the
excerpts selected from the narrative, which have been contextualized and discussed in Chapter
Three. Deane’s novel is very much in tune with the purpose of The Field Day Company,
which is namely to analyze and deconstruct the existent paradigms of colonialism, domination
and nationalism. This group puts into discussion the political, social and cultural aspects that
have been established in the long run, in order to break up with them and bring into life a new
set of theories that deal with a new reality.
Every one writes from within their specific circumstances, and I am no exception to
the rule. Therefore, as I close this discussion about Reading in the Dark, it is important to
state that I am aware of the fact that I am a Brazilian researcher, and that many of my
impressions and reactions to the text derive from this perspective. More than that, I am also
aware of the fact that most of the future readers to this thesis will be my Brazilian colleagues.
There are three things concerning this set of circumstances that have determined my choices,
as a Brazilian researcher, in the shaping of the thesis. The first refers to religion, the second to
nationality and the third to the Field Day Company.
Brazil is acknowledged as the largest Catholic country in the world. This means two
things. The first is that Catholicism is the predominant religion here. Predominant religions
tend to be lax. Most of the social rituals, such as baptisms, first communions or wedding
ceremonies are practiced within it. As a result, predominant religions often become more of a
social display than a reference to religiosity. Most of the people who sign in formularies and
71
questionnaires that they are Catholic are in fact agnostics or even atheists. In this sense, being
a Catholic in Brazil is totally different from being a Catholic in the United Kingdom or in
Ireland. In the U.K. Catholics belong to a minority. There is a strong bias against Catholics as
a result from the religious partition provoked by Henry VIII when England broke with Rome,
in the sixteenth Century. Catholics are looked down by Protestants in the U.K. In the island of
Ireland we have yet a different situation. Ireland’s acceptance of Christianity precedes the
coming of the English in more than four centuries. As the Christian doctrine fitted the ancient
Celtic myths and folk traditions, the Irish adopted Christian rites in a very enthusiastic way.
So, being Catholic is a notion that means three different things in Brazil, in the United
Kingdom and in Ireland. In Northern Ireland the expression acquires still a fourth meaning.
The population of Northern Ireland is divided between the Catholic, poorer population, who
wish to resume its original link with the rest of the Island, and the Anglo-Irish Protestants,
who mostly descend from the soldiers who surveyed the administered the territory subjugated
by the English. As a consequence, when we, Brazilians, read or listen about the clash between
Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, we tend to think in terms of religion; but, in fact, the
dissent is a political one, and refers to their sense of national identity rather than to their
religious commitment.
Concerning the issue of nationality, we Brazilians seem to take it for granted that the
words country and nation are synonyms, because we live in a place where the geographical
and the cultural backgrounds are shared by all the inhabitants of our country. We also assume
that people who are born in a country are meant to become citizens of that country, even if
their parents are foreigners. This is the way things work in Brazil, but not in the British
Islands. People born in Northern Ireland are Irish, and are British, only if their father is
British. And, even so, they may have divergent notions about their own nationality. Catholics
will predominantly refer to the island of Ireland as their nation, whereas Protestants will refer
to the United Kingdom for that purpose.
The third question that may sound peculiar to a Brazilian student is the policy of
toleration proposed by the Field Day Company. Brazil is a relatively poor country, full of
inequalities and several dissimulated forms of prejudice. Still, in spite of all that, it is a multi-
racial country, more or less used to dealing with multiple cultures and not used to what in this
thesis I have been calling a “policy of hatred.” Out of the many different peoples living in our
country, only the Indians may probably understand the huge dimension of recognizing the
need for toleration and for an atonement regarding an enemy settled in one’s territory, when
one does not have the power to repel it or destroy it. The line between accepting the facts one
72
cannot go against and surrendering may seem very thin at some points. It is also very difficult
to separate what is racial and political from what is personal. In my opinion, Reading in the
Dark presents all such issues in a very clear and competent way. Besides, globalization and
economic changes have brought a new reality all over the world. Economically, the Republic
Ireland is in a more favorable financial position in Europe than England. Brazil also makes
part of this new reality, even if with its own characteristics. I consider the study of Reading in
the Dark important also because, perhaps, learning about the Irish contemporary social,
cultural and political process and its representation in the novel will help us as individuals
who make part of a determined society, to rethink our reality in our good fortune, since Brazil
is also an emergent postcolonial country which also was and has still been influenced by
alienating ideological discourses. Besides, as a student of the Graduate Program at UFRGS, I
have had the pleasure of introducing the works of Seamus Deane and the Field Day into my
academic community.
73
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SONTAG, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador, 2003.
WILLIAMS, Raymond. Second Generation, London: Hogarth Press, 1987.
79
ANNEX A - EASTER 1916
http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/maps/towns/derry_religion.gif
Access on 23.04.2008
80
ANNEX B - THE PETROL BOMBER
Battle of the Bogside
http://images.google.com.br/imgres?imgurl=http://irelandsown.net/bogside.jpg&imgrefurl=htt
p://irelandsown.net/murals.htm&usg=__t-
JwNzl_TOLkIec0V4BIIKl5sk4=&h=436&w=404&sz=42&hl=pt-
BR&start=21&um=1&tbnid=LApH3ulgCh6JqM:&tbnh=126&tbnw=117&prev=/images%3F
q%3Dbogside%2Bpictures%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dpt-BR%26sa%3DX
Access on 23.04.2008
81
ANNEX C - THE GREAT FAMINE
www.chrisandmegan.com
Access on 23.04.2008
82
ANNEX D - IRA MURAL
www.doglegs.net
Access on 23.04.2008
83
ANNEX E - UFV MURAL
http://www.chrisandmegan.com/belfast/UVF2.jpg
Access on 23.04.2008
84
ANNEX F - RELIGIOUS DISTRIBUTION IN LONDONDERRY
http://www.wesleyjohnston.com/users/ireland/maps/towns/derry_religion.gif
Access on 23.04.2008
85
ANNEX G - THE BRITISH ARMY WATCHOVER
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://mares.english.sbc.edu/images%2520folder/m
apscapes/derryCage.gif&imgrefurl=http://mares.english.sbc.edu/Spring2005/derryDonegal.ht
m&usg=__PSSkUJY0bPpWrES3qeOScRYrGI0=&h=563&w=614&sz=238&hl=pt-
BR&start=1&tbnid=Jmwd4N7Wa-
6PtM:&tbnh=125&tbnw=136&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dderry%2Bcage%26gbv%3D2%26hl
%3Dpt-BR
Access on 23.04.2008
86
ANNEX H - FREE DERRY
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Derry_Free_Derry.jpg
Access on 23.04.2008
87
ANNEX I - GRIANAN OF AILEACH
http://www.stonepages.com/ireland/griananhi.html
Access on 24.04.2008
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