Some Surrender
I have recently read, analysed and enjoyed the short story “Some
Surrender” by Bernard Maclaverty. I found this story very enjoyable as
the author’s background themes were portrayed through a memorable and
interesting dialogue in a thought provoking manner.
The plot revolved around a hill walking trip for a father and son. It
starts off with the climbing of the hill and the two catching up with
each other as they have not spoken in a long time. They are
celebrating the fathers 75th birthday. We hear of Roy’s – the son –
failed relationship with his parents. This is due to his mother’s
disapproval of him marrying a catholic woman and having a child out of
wedlock. “She wasn’t even a good catholic.” Once at the top of the
hill the two men share and discuss their views on the troubles in
Ireland. They also talk about Roy’s job and his road to success i.e.
writing a book. We learn about their secret meetings and how they used
the rugby matches as an excuse. Afterwards, on their way down the
hill, Roy realises how his father has aged and how fragile he has
become.
I found that characterisation had a major part to play in this prose
as they each showed different political opinions and how these views
have major effects on their lives.
The father – who has lived and worked in Belfast all his life - is
seventy five years of age and is getting on, although there is an
obvious deterioration in health he is still fairly fit and has a
“spring in his step”. He was an architect and had designed quite a few
high-rise buildings, all due for demolition within the next few years.
We hear that he has always been loyal to his wife and is well educated
“I chose your mother. I didn’t choose you.” He stood by and respected
his wife’s decision to disown their child, but he did not completely
reject him. His views on political matters are very prejudiced and
bigoted, always being anti-catholic .
The son - Roy - is forty four years old and is a fairly successful
photographer.
“I see your postcards all over the place. Supermarkets even.”
He has a book to be published and has got a new position working in
Dublin. Despite his good job, we learn that he did not work hard in
and came out of school with little or no qualifications.
“You failed because you didn’t work hard enough.”
After twenty years, only now has Roy got an easy and relaxed
relationship with his father, despite his decision.
As the first and only one in his family to achieve, a college education and move away from home, he is seen as not only smart, but suspicious.
The family discussed includes a father (M.M.) age 27, a mother (J.M.) age 25, and an infant son (J.L.M.) age four months. M.M. and J.M. are the biological parents
degree from Yale. He has spent a great deal of his life abroad, first in
Living "in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen" (Joyce 103), Mr. Duffy provides an example of the unwittingly mechanized individual. Mr. Duffy attempts "to preserve an interior life of introspection against the overwhelming and machine-like activities of city life" (134) but he resembles nothing so much as a well-oiled machine. Duffy tries to live self-contained in the gap between nature and culture, when these terms are defined so that "we can see the infant's relation to the mother as somehow 'natural' and the post-Oedipal child as one who is in the process of assuming a position within the cultural order as a whole" (Eagleton 156). Associating with "neither companions nor friends, church nor creed" (Joyce 105), Duffy removes himself from familial and societal ties and from "his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances" (104). The first threat to...
There is particular consideration given to the political climate in this story. It is incorporated with social and ethnic concerns that are prevalent. The story also addresses prejudice and the theme of ethnic stereotyping through his character development. O'Connor does not present a work that is riddled with Irish slurs or ethnic approximations. Instead, he attempts to provide an account that is both informative and accurate.
was very independent and has always done things he wanted, as he was entrusted with the
“I wanted to grow up and plough, /To close one eye, stiffen my arm.” (“Follower” 17-18). Seamus Heaney is writing about a son; interested in following his father’s footsteps to become a farmer. The poem depicts the son’s past memories of his father. Fascinated in his father’s work, influenced by his mastery at farming, the son strives to become the same at a young age. “The Writer” on the other hand, portrays a father’s observation of his daughter, struggling to write a story as an author. Both pieces, share a common interaction between parent and child, but the parent-child relationships themselves are fundamentally different. These poems represent a reflection of how the parents respectively tackle the task of raising their child.
Stoddard, Eve Walsh. “Home and Belonging among Irish Migrants: Transnational versus Placed Identities in The Light of Evening and Brooklyn: A Novel.” Eire-Ireland 47.1 & 2 (Summer 2012): 147-171.
Born in Brooklyn in 1930 to recent Irish immigrants Malachy and Angela McCourt, Frank grew up in Limerick after his parents returned to Ireland because of poor prospects in America. Due to the Great Depression, Malachy could not find work in America. However, things did not get any better back in Ireland for Malachy. A chronically unemployed and nearly unemployable alcoholic, he appears to be the model on which many of our more insulting cliches about drunken Irish manhood are based. Week after week, Angela would be home expecting her husband to come home with money to eat, but Malachy always spent his wages on pints at local pubs. Frank’s father would come home late at night and make his sons get out of bed and sing patriotic songs about Ireland by Roddy McCorley and Kevin Barry, who were hung for their country. Frank loved his father and got an empty feeling in his heart when he knew his father was out of work again. Frank described his father as the Holy Trinity because there is three people in him, “The one in the morning with the paper, the one at night with the stories and prayers, and then the one who does the bad thing and comes home with the smell of whiskey and wants us to die for Ireland” (McCourt 210). Even when there was a war going on and English agents were recruiting Irishmen to work in their munitions factories, Malachy could not keep a job when he traveled to England.
The McCourt family leaves their apartment in Brooklyn to set sail for Ireland, leaving behind an apartment with indoor plumbing and the memory of a dead sister in hopes of finding a better life amongst “the poverty, the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father, the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire, pompous priests, and bullying schoolmasters” of Ireland. This tragic story is told from the point of view of a child, Frank McCourt, whose father is a driftless alcoholic and whose mother does moan by the fire.
Many of these Irish immigrants had no skills, no previous experience and no money. They also had only a few clothes and little hope as well as little education. In hopes to finding better times and opportunities, however, instead they encountered times no better than the conditions they left behind in Ireland. The living conditions were not glamorous or even comfortable. Often times t...
But you also see him still enjoying the lifestyle of being the son of a wealthy oil man by reading about high class parties where young women are flirting with him, then back to being apart of the socialist with his friend Rachel Menzies and her family who are garment workers.
going to be his heir, take up the head of the business and lead the
McCann et al. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109).
His parents were very hard workers, his father was an air brake mechanic, at the