In addition to sorting out his own problems, the narrator seeks the truth about his uncle's death. Early in the novel we learn that Uncle Eddie, an Irish Republican Army gunman, was blown up in the town distillery in 1922. But the initial lie on the part of the policeman and the narrator's corresponding trickery are only part of the tangled web Deane weaves here. Deception becomes his only means of self-defence. The hero of the novel is an unnamed young man whose life turns upside down when a policeman frames him. And hovering over all the violence, poverty and despair of 1940s Northern Ireland is the spectre of the "Troubles". Ghosts haunt the stairwells of apartment buildings, a curse follows two families down through the generations, close friends turn out to be police informers and the police are as likely to persecute an innocent man as protect him. GradeSaver, 8 February 2019 Web.The Derry of poet Seamus Deane's first novel, Reading in the Dark is a perilous place. Next Section Glossary Previous Section Reading in the Dark Summary How To Cite in MLA Format Anonymous "Reading in the Dark Characters". Will review the submission and either publish your submission or provide feedback. You can help us out by revising, improving and updatingĪfter you claim a section you’ll have 24 hours to send in a draft. Allegedly, the hit was put on Eddie for informing about someone else, but actually, the boy decides that this is a false narrative, and that the real snitch got away to America. Having been killed by police who were executing the decision of the IRA, Eddie's death is mysterious at best. Uncle Eddie is a character who only appears in the narrative as the subject of the boy's curiosities.
The boy wonders whether the mother might have done something to upset or betray his father, to explain his father's emotional aloofness. The fatherĪn aloof figure whom the boy understands to be unhappy in their marriage. He also notices that she has guilt in her eyes when she looks at his father. Suddenly, he becomes free of her superstitious worldview. Then, when the mother becomes depressed and untethered, the son realizes that she might have a demon. This religious woman raised her son to believe that he should be superstitious about life, interpreting life's many twists and turns as ghost or demon hauntings. Most of all, the boy develops an obsession with his uncle's death in an IRA hit (executed by the police, if the boy's memory serves).
Written by people who wish to remain anonymousĪn unnamed, poetic-voiced narrator who details the intimate ways he feels the IRA has hurt his life.
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