39 pages • 1 hour read
Reading in the Dark
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Themes
Political and Governmental Power Structures
Political and governmental power structures are a dominant theme of the novel. In Derry, everyday life is deeply enmeshed in political strife. Though the Troubles do not officially begin until the 1960s, divisions and tensions still exist between the Unionists and the Nationalists. The country is split in two, and people living in the same town oppose each other. Deane explores some of these tensions by describing the bonfires held by both Unionist Protestants and Nationalist Catholics in Derry. He also delves into the shoot-out at an old distillery in Derry, which occurs when the state of Northern Ireland is formed. During the shoot-out, the IRA fights against the British forces in a hopeless battle. Thus, the setting of the novel is fraught with political turmoil.
The police represent the government’s power in Derry, and they are the enemy of the Nationalists and the narrator’s family. When the policeman Billy Mahon kills a civilian, his friends and family have no legal recourse. Brother Regan explains, “There was no point in going to the law, of course, justice would never be done; everyone knew that, especially in those years” (24). Here, the police are corrupt. They can abuse the citizens without official repercussions. When the narrator’s grandfather kills Billy, he sets in motion the secrecy and trauma that affects his family for years. The narrator’s mother also expounds upon the ways in which the government seems to be against the people of Northern Ireland: “What were they supposed to do? Say they’re sorry that they mandered, beaten up by every policeman who took the notion, gaoled by magistrates and judges who were so vicious that it was they who should be gaoled” (213). Ireland is a country with a history of police and governmental abuse. This abuse becomes very personal and affects the narrator and his family for multiple generations.
Due to the public’s widespread mistrust of the police, any hint of collusion with the police is one of the greatest crimes a person could commit in Derry’s community. To become a police informant was to betray one’s family and community. The act of informing is at the root of the narrator’s family’s trauma. Eddie, the narrator’s uncle, was accused of informing, and his father ordered his execution as a result. The narrator gets his own taste of what it means to be an informer in Derry when he has a run-in with Sergeant Burke and confirms that his friends were accessories to a minor crime. Though he does not share any significant secrets with the police, he is nonetheless ostracized by the community and judged by his family. His father says, “Thank God my father’s too ill to hear about this—the shame alone would finish him. A grandson of his going to the police!” (102). In this way, it is unthinkable to collude with the police, and the narrator witnesses this firsthand.
Religious Power Structures
The community of Derry is significantly influenced by religious power structures. There, the Catholic Church wields great authority, and the residents make religious tenets a part of their daily lives. Though the police and government are powerful, religion reigns supreme, as Brother Regan explains: “there is a Law greater than the laws of human justice, far greater than the law of revenge […] That judge is God” (26).
Religious clergymen have great sway and influence in people’s lives. Priests serve as the narrator’s teachers. In this way, his intellectual education is tied to his religious upbringing. In fact, the narrator even learns about sex from a priest. He has a meeting with Father Nugent, who tells him, “The danger of the flesh was, he announced, that it could become an appetite that lived by what it fed on” (159). In this way, the narrator’s education and knowledge of sex is woven into a religious structure. Religion permeates into almost all aspects of his life.
Priests also have the ability to exorcise demons. Within the context of the novel, demons often represent repressed trauma, so priests have the power to dispel trauma in people’s lives. For example, a woman named Brigid calls upon a priest to exorcise the demons possessing two orphaned children and their house. In this manner, she is asking a priest to heal the trauma and heartbreak loosed on the children’s household as a result of their parents’ deaths.
Secrecy and Repression
Secrecy and repression are dominant themes throughout the novel. The narrator’s family, as well as the community at large, refuses to speak about aspects of the past. In fact, the whole novel centers around the mystery of Uncle Eddie, who disappeared in the 1920s. While some believe he died in a shoot-out, others believe he escaped to America. Though the family refuses to talk about Eddie, the trauma they struggle with as a result of his disappearance is prevalent in their lives. The narrator notes, “I felt we lived in an empty space with a long cry from him ramifying through it. At other times, it appeared to be as cunning and articulate as a labyrinth, closely designed, with someone sobbing at the heart of it” (43). Whether vague or specific, Eddie’s memory haunts this family and instigates sadness and regret.
Even when the narrator finally learns that his grandfather ordered Eddie’s execution, he maintains the secret. He states, “I left him and went straight home, home where I could never talk to my father or my mother properly again” (132). Here, the issue is larger than Eddie’s actual death. The real trauma lies in the family’s silence. In fact, now that the narrator knows the truth, he becomes more and more distant from his parents. His mother knows the most about the situation, but his father remains in the dark about it. The narrator goes on to ask himself, “Was it 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” (194). Here, the narrator finds himself in a fraught situation. Airing the truth openly would cause deep pain. Ironically, however, keeping the secret drives a deeper wedge between him and his family.
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