Summer 2010 Book List

And of course, it wouldn't be an English department trip without some books - IRISH BOOKS!

• Friel, Brian 'Translations.'
• Doyle, Roddy. 'A Star Called Henry.'
• Friel, Brian. 'Dancing at Lughnasa.'
• Joyce, James. 'Dubliners.'
• Devlin, Anne. 'Ourselves Alone.'

Academic Journal 7 - 'A Star Called Henry'

I’m a member of an organization that maintains a global role-playing game (trust me, this becomes relevant momentarily). Not long ago, word came down that the Irish affiliate had instituted a policy that any character that had spent time in Ireland required written approval from them. The reason that was most widely cited was Irish players coming to games in America and other countries and being offended by people not from Ireland who were portraying characters with IRA histories and ties. We all accepted this decision, but a lot of people felt that it seemed a bit excessive; although I supported their right to have this policy, I sympathized with those who were against it, until I read this book. I’ll admit I never really stopped to think about the bloodshed and destruction that revolution carries with it, and Doyle does an excellent job of working it into the narrative so that although it never feels like he is trying to comment on it, the read can’t help but internalize a real sense of horror.
As Henry’s violence escalates (along with the revolution itself), it becomes subtly oppressive – reading the passage where he and his wife are pouring oil into a roof to burn out the soldiers inside is a great one where I was reading along and suddenly just struck by the sheer insanity of what was happening. The plan was so casually introduced that it wasn’t until I was well into reading about the resulting fire and explosion that what they were doing really hit home for me. The planned “hits” that Henry discusses and engages in also stuck with me, as I think we tend to think of revolutions (those that we approve of somehow) as wars, with soldiers on both sides attacking each other. In the reality of the novel however, it truly comes across more as a gang war, with hits and retribution coming fast and furious, killing soldiers, policemen and civilians alike for sometimes flimsy reasons justified as part of the war effort. The tactic Henry discusses of forcing the British to crack down on innocent Irish families is chilling, as again it isn’t a thought process that we associate with warfare, where the goal is to destroy the enemy outright, or at least to outlast him until he retreats. It’s the mindset of total warfare – everyone is a target.
I think that Americans tend to idealize revolution, which is logical given our history, and the Irish revolution is no exception. We know there was violence and destruction, but somewhere in our minds we get the idea that it was a glorious fight for freedom against an oppressive aggressor. It may have been that, but it was also a bloody, violent conflict that had no qualms about forcing itself on those who wanted no part in it, and I think it’s important to bear that in mind while reading.

Academic Journal 6 - 'Ourselves Alone'

I’m thrown by act 2, scene 1, where Donna has a monologue about the devil. I don’t quite know what to make of it. It seems like she is drawing a connection between this devil and her asthma, and says that Liam’s imprisonment made the asthma and devil vanish temporarily. So it seems like Liam and the Devil are tied together, but it seems like such an obviously stated connection that I have trouble accepting it. Liam’s behavior towards her in the rest of the scene certainly indicates he is a relentless and negative influence in her life, but why include this devil business?
Since the devil first appeared while she was with her first husband, and vanished when her second was put away, maybe she has trouble really accepting that she can live without a man in her life. Blaming the devil for things we don’t like is not a new trick, and personifying him into an oppressive presence could be a way of blaming the asthma on an unavoidable evil rather than a husband she could leave. The attacks start while unhappily married, and continue until the man in her life is forcibly separated from her, at which point they clear up. When he is released from prison and returns home to her, the attacks resume. She’s clearly deeply devoted to him, as she tells him in the same scene, and so it would presumably be difficult for her to accept that he is the trigger for her attacks.
I’ve tried to come up with some grander connection for the devil, but I’m hard pressed to do so. He seems to be a Donna-specific tool for the author to externalize the character’s conflict over her marriage. Maybe the last bit of the monologue, where Donna tells us that she asked the Devil to leave her alone and he agrees to do so (though not, she suspects, for long) is a way of hinting at growing strength for the character, that her time away from the husband and devil have shown her a better life that she is almost willing to fight for. This isn’t particularly supported by the end of the play where Donna suggests she has lost the ability to be happy, so maybe the fact that she suspects the devil won’t stay away forever is the key, showing that she believes herself trapped no matter what, with only Liam’s periods of absence to look forward to.

Academic Journal 4 - 'Translations'

I was confused at first when reading this play as to why these characters were studying classical languages – not that it isn’t a worthy pursuit, but the utility of this kind of knowledge in a largely agrarian setting eluded me. What I came to realize though is that it is all a part of Friel’s take on language as a tool of conquest. The languages they study are the languages of empires, classical Greek from the Hellenistic period and Latin from the Romans. Both were spread through conquest, and thus became critical to communication among the conquered. This is paralleled by the British military surveyors who are working to make a detailed map of Ireland (surely a helpful tool to retain control of the island), and to translate the Irish place names into English. Although they claim that their aim is to help the Irish join the world community, it is clearly the imposing of a conqueror’s language on the conquered. As Lancey and Owen work to translate local names, Owen muses on the strange way they came about (while marveling at the bewildering variety of recorded names for a single feature) and debates whether it is better to translate the sounds or the meaning. In either case, the translation doesn’t really mean what the original does.
This struggle carries over into the issue of the incoming national school, which is expected to replace the local hedge school almost entirely, providing a modern curriculum with study of the modern world in place of the hedge school’s emphasis on classical and historic learning. Of course, this instruction will include learning the English language at the expense of Irish. In this way, the British seem to be trying to rob Ireland of her history, renaming landmarks and reeducating the people in a calculated effort to bring the Irish firmly under control. Loosing their language will make it much harder for the folklore and history of the people to survive, allowing them to (in theory) rewrite not only the map, but the entire history of a people.

Academic Journal 1 - 'Dancing at Lughnasa'

I found the narrative style of this play to be very interesting; the narrating character (Michael as an adult) fills us in on the setting and history of the other characters before the narrative begins, and tells us of the fates of the other characters after it ends, and in-between speaks the lines of his own younger self without actually playing the part (Friel dictates that dialogue I addressed to the imaginary “Boy,” while Michael speaks in his narratorial, adult voice). There is no actor playing the part of young Michael, and all physical interactions with him are pantomimed; his presence is referred to by other characters and implied by his ability to present this story in flashback as an adult, but his physical absence leads the reader to forget that he is there, only “feeling” present when attention is directly called to him.

In reading, it feels as though Friel has taken an external narrator and a focal character and rolled them into one part, moving freely in time and story-space. This technique allows Friel to set up the story and give us a glimpse of the future via a narrator without having an awkward, unexplained “extra” character wandering around observing things (or clumsily written into the background). Using the actor playing adult Michael to voice the young Michael as well creates a connection between the past and present, forging a strong and explicit link between the focal character and external narrator which would have been weakened by having a child play the part.

At the same time, I feel that this technique risks casting Michael as a particularly unreliable narrator. The entire narrative is presented as the memory of a child as recounted by him as an adult, putting a particularly lengthy gap for memory to overcome and implying that it is subject to forgotten details, shuffled timelines and mental editing. The child who becomes our focal character often appears to be absent, even when he is implicitly present (and then, only rarely in the same room as the adult characters), and moreover is presented as preoccupied with building kites, hiding and bushes, writing to Santa and so on. The idea that a child with such a busy schedule would have paid any attention to the goings-on of the house, much less committed them all to memory, seems questionable.

I suspect that reading the play rather than watching it performed weakens these effects; although I knew that Boy and Michael are the same actor using the same voice, in my mind Boy always sounded like a child, and Michael like an adult. Conversely, this tendency to forget the link between them also seemed to reduce the sense of unreliability; it was only when I forced myself to picture the play as performed that these things occurred to me.