From the beginning and throughout Delaney’s Ireland things are all about politics, self-government, forms of government, citizenship and autonomy of the individual in a governmental system as well as invasion and oppression. All sorts of political implications are present. And they are all weighted and assessed in regard to the Irish ideals, values, possibilities and realities. Delaney is telling a historic novel and is consequently taking us through the different eras of Irish and foreign rule on the island. According to the novel, the first invaders were Vikings, the Danes, who came in their famous longboats to raid and plunder the monasteries (Delaney 211). Other Scandinavians stayed and founded Dublin, from an ancient settlement along the river Liffy. However, these kinds of intruders either came for booty, and ultimately got defeated and expelled, or they chose to stay and to integrate themselves into the existing population after the rout of their fellow Vikings. In a direct contrast of these developments and utter shock, can the reader of Delaney’s novel witness the successive invasion of the English and the radical English politics of occupation with its campaigns of ethnical and religious cleaning. Delaney’s count ends with the Easter Rising in 1916, giving us a glimpse of the events in one of the key locations in Dublin that were seized by Irish republicans with the aim of ending the British rule.
In the beginning of Irish history, the power was in the hands of the strong, smart, free, eloquent and knowledgeable Irish people, as in the cases of the Engineer of Newgrance , Conor O’Conor, St Brendan, St Patrick and others. With the arrival of the invaders, ambitions and military capacities of the leaders became more important, but the ideal leader was still more than just a pugnacious military leader. He reigned with wisdom and personal charisma, like King Brian Boru, the hero of Clontarf. The arrival of the Normans in Ireland fundamentally changed the political powers within the Irish society. And the reader soon learns that a new kind of leader had made their way into the Irish history. They were more ambitious and focused on their own personal short termed gains, like Dermot McMurrough, who is willing to bestow his country’s throne onto an English; or well meaning, glorious commanders like Hugh O’Neill who were able to win a glorious battle, but bitterly failed to win the war, because they were lacking the necessary foresight and miscalculated the political implications of the time. And Delaney announces this shift to us through the “English gentleman called Chesterton” whom he makes say: “the great Gaels of Ireland are the men that God made mad. For all their wars are merry and all their songs are sad.” (Delaney 231) At this point of the novel the average Irish increasingly changed into an, impulsive, emotionally domineered, notoriously drunk, uncontrollably rebellious and undisciplined, unorganized rebel whose efforts are doomed to failure or who sinks into dull passivity and helplessness. He is the victim of his own belligerence and despair, as he fails to persevere when necessary and to control his desires when crucial. All that is left to him of the above values is his knick for poetry and sad songs, while he is sinking deeper and deeper into his feebleness and vulnerability imposed on him by the English occupiers. He becomes a foreigner in his own country expelled from his lands, driven into slavery. Later on, after slavery was not a lucrative business anymore, he was forced into emigration on vessels that frequently brought death by illness or starvation to its passengers during the journey. If he succeeded to survive, he mostly had to continue his live in a new type of misery and slum somewhere abroad, for he was a Catholic and a disease-ridden danger to the general public.
As opposed to the Irish agony and anguish, the British are portrayed as the victorious and unjust. The barbarity of their Penal Laws is demonstrated by Ronan and his professor. (Delaney 334) For the Irish these laws meant the loss of all they cherish, their land and their horses, and the loss of what they needed for their very survival, their fields, livestock and homes. As the English poet, serviceman and landowner of Irish soil phrased in his recommendation to the Queen about the Irish problem: “[There is] no need to waste soldiers and money to kill [the Irish]. Cut off their means of farming, destroy their food base, and one day they’ll turn to eating each other and that’ll be the end of them.”(Delaney 340) The English ruled merciless and with it seems a demoniac plan. Their goal was to rid the island of the unruly inhabitants without concern for the weak and defenseless and without distinction between fighter and civilian. They first criminalized them through their legislation; next they sent Oliver Cromwell, to massacre and reduce the Irish population as much as possible. The ones that his campaigns didn’t kill were shipped to the West-Indies into slavery, choosing the strongest and most fit for the journey, and leaving behind a population robbed of their heads, strongholds and workforce. The slaves had to suffer an unknown fate and many of them died from the exertions of the journey and the abuse of the slave owners who starved or worked them to death or used them for commercial interbreeding with other slaves. (Martin)
The laws and battles often reflected the controversy of the two religious groups: the Protestant English and the Catholic Irish. Being Catholic was part of being Irish and the English counted on the effect of de-rooting the people of Ireland by taking away their religion and forcing them to join the Protestant church. Under the cloak of a difference of religions the battle continued for the Irish population while in reality the fight was about power and profit. In 1690, the Battle of Boyne took place and it is denotable that this war was fought between the “Protestant Dutchman, William of Orange, who had become King William the Third of England in the previous year” and the man that “he had put off the English throne, James the Second, the Catholic-convert son of King Charles the First, the man who was executed by …Oliver Cromwell.” (Delaney 375) Ireland had merely become a pawn in the hands of the powerful.
What the Penal Laws, Oliver Cromwell and the day to day life under the English law of dispossession did not accomplish, the Potato Famine almost achieved it. Those who had succeeded to cling to their piece of land or rented land from rich Protestant land owners were doomed to succumb to the last wave of mass starvation or deportation, euphemistically named as emigration to Canada and the US. And while the people of Ireland were living in burrows, just like animals and starving to death under the very eyes of those who had robbed them from their means of living, the English parliament had little interest in helping or easing the burden on them. According to the President of Quinnipac University, the disaster could have been avoided, “if only the British authorities had possessed the will and compassion to deliver food to the starving Irish”. He also points out, that recent historians found out that there was more than adequate food during the time of the famine and that the country’s food exports actually increased during these years. (Lahey)
Considering the ongoing violence, oppression and intentional neglect, it is little surprising that there were always part of the population revolting in one way or the other against their oppressors, when they found themselves in a position to do so. Delaney takes the reader through the story of uprising and fight of the troubled county of Wexford. He tells us about the brave and victorious Irish rebels who after long battles –once more- lose the war due to “traitors and slaves” in their own lines. (Delaney 456) This seems like an eternal theme of the Irish fighting and failing, and Delaney makes it clear to the reader that at the end of these struggles the Irish never achieved much, but paid a high price. However, he admits through his stories, that their resistance helped them to preserve their national pride and served as inspiration for generations to follow.
However, this is where Delaney’s novel falls short. Those inspired by the armed uprising of the oppressed do not have much place in the story. As these fights are often regional, along the Northern border, he lets Uncle Bob explain to Ronan, who is from the Southern border, the impact of the armed assaults on the English for the people in the neighboring counties: “The IRA attacks barracks and policemen, they kill people when they can, close up, if they’re able, and just because we’re Catholics, we get blamed.” (Delaney 405) In another chapter, Ronan has an encounter with the family of one of the fighters; his reaction is right away that he does not want to know about it, but clearly avoids to even learn more about the subject, even though this might have been an interesting story – which is bizarre because the one thing that keeps Ronan’s character going throughout the novel is his hunt for stories: But here he flinches and Delaney only allows the comment of “Pacifism is a cover-up” to represent a different point of view. (Delaney 428)
Yet the picture would not be complete without the opposed protagonists of the active armed fighter. Delaney depicts the lawyers and politicians that are struggling for Irish rights and sovereignty as the ones that have been successfully improving the situation of the Irish during the last two centuries. They are educated enough to enter the legal, juridical or governmental system of the English. His message is that only the one who adapts can survive and change. However, their power often proves to be very limited to what the English are willing to give and to allow. Delaney hints that some of them might have relied on the pressure that the armed forces created to press for the changes they wanted to achieve. But they would never officially join them or associate with them. Their power was almost more based on the admiration and respect that they received from their compatriots than their achievements with the English. Ronan’s father himself a successful layer, left Ronan a considerable fortune after his death which clearly stands for social and financial achievements. Another protagonist is Daniel O’Connell, who the author uses, once more, as a vehicle to transmit the message of pacifism. In Charles Steward Parnell, who developed the system of civil disobedience, the reader found yet again an example of the brave and glorious fighter –this in the political arena instead of the battlefield- who let his skillfully gained power fall victim to his own personal desires and whims.
During the third part of Delaney’s Ireland, it becomes rather evident, that the author does not particularly call for a forceful rebellion against the British. He is trying to smooth things out, starting with the Potato Plight, which catastrophic consequences he fails to emphasize in his narration. He forgets to mention, that the English parliament refused to help in any possible way, but instead was hoping for the complete and final collapse of the Irish population. They did not want to deal with rebellions and guerilla wars against their citizens any longer and thought that this would be an easy way to resolve the problem. Considering that the English at the time were rather satisfied with a vanishing Irish population, one could be tempted to speculate, that this might have been an early case of biological warfare. Delaney also chooses to leave out the consequences of deportation into slavery or emigration. He does not follow the slaves to the West Indies or the emigrants on their death vessels to Canada or America. He kindly omits the detail of their brutal lives as slaves and he ignores the fact that Irish emigrants were anything but welcome in the new world. As Catholics, they represented the old world values and oppression that the first emigrants had tried to escape from. Destitute and often ill from the exhaustion of their journey they ended up starving again in the slums of their new homeland.
When it comes to armed resistance, the author’s message could not be clearer: he openly endorses the pacifist way as the only acceptable mean of gaining rights and equality for the Irish. He never really discusses the North-South conflict and clearly does not think that the English are supposed to ever return Dublin to the Irish. Currently, this is surely not on the negotiating table of the British. On the contrary, he has Mr Yeats repeating once more: “Man shouldn’t make war, it opposes the natural spirit, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” (Delaney 304)
Throughout the novel, Delaney seems to prepare the reader on several occasions to the fact that Ireland is an occupied country, almost by nature. He speaks about the natural vulnerability as an island and later on he has an authority on the subject, Ronan’s professor, lecture the reader about the fact that many Irish families have Norman names. (Delaney 248) However, he fails to mention, that this is a very common “phenomenon” in most places in the world. However, over time and especially nowadays, these are integrated citizens with equal rights and they are not affiliated with an oppressing outside force. His attempt to confuse the reader into thinking that people are what they are by name is misleading – they are what they are by their behavior and their level of integration. Nowadays, the people the professor is mentioning are of Irish nationality and are treated as Irish by their own government and by the British. Prepared like that, Delaney believes, the reader does not feel the urge to question why Ireland has to be an occupied country as its status quo and its predestination.
Delaney’s proclamation against armed resistance finds his peak in the relation of the Storyteller’s experience in the post office during the Easter Rising. Under the excuse of describing the human side of live in his stories, he has his protagonist describe the fighters that are going to face the heavily armed and well prepared British troops: two monks, an armed couple, and a boy are the persons of choice. One would assume that when describing an army, one would look at the actual fighters, which he later belittles as “young Irish boys”. (Delaney 538) The leaders of the uprising are described as unconfident, remaining “puzzled that no greater attack came”. (Delaney 539) A surprising fact, as no one would assume that a leader would be foolish enough to lead his followers in a fight from which he would not expect some kind of gain or victory. Delaney continues to display the foolishness of the Irish rebels to the reader by introducing the heart breaking story of Jerry Quinlaun and his family. If he continues to fight, he will let down his family, because he is going to die. If he leaves his fellow fighters, he is letting his country and fellow fighters down. The desperate narration goes on showing one example after the other, explaining to the reader why this fight was doomed to failure from the beginning. He is also letting us know, that many of the Irish did not agree with the actions of the fighters, calling them “a bunch of lunatics”, “jackasses” and making it clear that the “military’ll rout them out soon enough”. (Delaney 529)
Delaney’s Storyteller left the scene when the defeat becomes obvious and under the last sacrifice of a young soldier who wanted him to relate the story of the Easter Rising to the generations to come. However, Delaney’s version omits to mention, that the post-office incident was part of a bigger plan. He does not inform the reader, that the majority of the British troops were heavily engaged in World War I at the time and that the Irish were expecting a German ship with arms on board, which never made it to Ireland, because it was intercepted by the British Navy. The day of the uprising, several paramilitary groups, seized key locations in Dublin, proclaiming the independent Republic of Ireland. They were supported by other strikes against central locations in other counties. (Wiki “Easter Rising”) Would the result have been different, if the weapons would have reached Ireland, if more would have participated at the time? Was the plan really that foolish? In hindsight, one must admit, that the leaders were not as plan less as Delaney describes them and the fighters might not have been as inexperienced. However, the uprising seemed to have impacted the rise of republicanism form these days on and in the General Election to the British parliament in 1918, the republican Sinn Fein party, the political wing of the IRS won 73 out of 105 seats. (Wiki “Easter Rising”) The political success of Sinn Fein was in the following often interweaved with the campaigns of the IRA.
So why does Delaney offer a fragmented picture of this period? Is it because he does not want to involve in the difficult debate about the legitimacy of occupied people fighting for their sovereignty with the use of weapons? Being a relevant and controversial topic, it is not the material for a nostalgic story. It is a highly challenging question to answer. Delaney, however, does not aim that high. He, himself Irish, only seems to capitalize on the tell-able and sellable part of the Irish history. And one cannot be too surprised by this. He left Ireland after he finished his education to work for the BBC, and, later on, exchanged his new home country Britain against one in the United States. He overcame his Catholic bonds and married an American divorcee. He turned his back to most of the things that he uses to characterize his Irish fellow citizens, but still he remains the writer that tells their stories and sings their tales. His calling for a peaceful solution today would be a worthy and noble one, if he would have been able to mention the involvements of the IRA fighters just as he mentions those of the long ago past of Ireland. He would have sounded unbiased and more credible. There is surely nothing wrong with being a pacifist, but cutting history short by making the audience believe that Ireland’s independence was only achieved by democratic ways is misleading. Today’s reader ought to know this, because it is part of the historical reality of Ireland.
Overall, Delaney is telling history in a novel, a fiction and he relates what he wants and omits what he chooses. And in his own words, transmitted by his protagonist, the storyteller: “A story has only one master – its narrator; he decides what he wants his story to do. I know, I have always known, what I want my stories to achieve – I want to make people believe.” (Delaney 278). Whatever Delaney wants to make us believe by his novel Ireland, history has its own ways to resurface facts and if the reader desires to gain knowledge of the Irish history and politics, then he will hopefully realize that he is better of with a more authentic, detailed and unbiased source of information than a novel.
Works Cited
Wikipedia “Easter Rising” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Rising)
Delaney, Frank. Ireland – A Novel. Harper, 2008. Print
Martin, John. The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten ‘White’ Slaves. Global Research, January 2013. (http://www.globalresearch.ca)
Lahey, John L. Ph.D. President of Quinnipac University. The Great Hunger. Hamden, Connecticut. January 2013. Exhibition.
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