The Donnelly's Must Die By Orlo Miller

974 Words2 Pages

“There's one did laugh in’s sleep, and one cried, murder!” (Miller, 1). This quote from Shakespeare examines the elegant plot in The Donnelly’s Must Die by Orlo Miller. The thrilling idea of gruesome and bloody revenge results in the famous death of the Donnelly family. The story about how this black Irish family finds themselves caught in a never-ending conflict with the white English men in Lucan, Ontario. Between cultural vendetta, revenge and vigilante justice, they result in a gory battle between the Donnelly family, looking for survival and the small town of Lucan, hunting for revenge. Vigilante justice is the act of a citizen or group who takes the law into their own hands and enforces it. The town of Lucan, Ontario takes the law into …show more content…

The novel follows a long-lasting feud from Ireland when the Irish had continuous conflicts with the English settlers. In this novel, the black-skinned, Irish Donnelly’s settle on new land in Lucan. This sparks a new beginning in the vendetta and the plot of the novel revolves around this theme. The town of Lucan consisted of white, middle-aged English families. This ideal community was soon disrupted when the Donnelly’s migrated here from Ireland. Since the English men already had a predominant stereotype set of black Irish men, when James Donnelly first murdered Patrick Farrell, this started a cutting-edge battle in the novel. “Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families” (Miller, 104). This quote reinforces the importance of the cultural feud in this novel. The Donnelly’s were a well-off, healthy and owned a farm. As soon as James murdered Patrick by accident, the town of Lucan saw this crime as discrimination against the English culture. The town then was on the hunt for revenge and took out anyone in their way in order to seek revenge on the Donnelly family. Overall, the Donnelly family was blamed for everything that happened in the town. Every crime, accident or fire set in the novel was blamed on the …show more content…

Each character’s first instinct is to go after the perpetrator who hurt them in the first place. This has caused a never-ending bloodbath throughout the novel. There is never any chapters where crime is not present. The story lacks a calm mood which enlightens the main idea of the novel, which is revenge and fighting. “Let us have a quiet hour” (Miller, 60). This quote generally refers to the amount of crime occurring throughout the novel. If there was a quiet hour, this would cause controversy and a load of suspense for the reader. In addition, this quote has a meaning behind the message of forgiveness. The author examines the idea of forgiveness earlier in the novel with the quote from Francis Bacon which explains that you should forgive someone if they hurt you, and give yourself time to

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