Contemporary Ireland Through John Barnville And Patrick Mccabe

A vision of contemporary Ireland through John Banville's The Book of Evidence and Patrick McCabe's The Dead School.
These two novels, the former from 1989, the latter from 1995, are two of the greatest novels by Irish writers in which contemporary society is reflected through two very different stories: the first one examines a scientist who kills a maid while trying to steal a painting whilethe second one looks at two teachers whose lives become linked following the death of a boy during a school trip.
To begin with, the plots of both books indicate a very important characteristic of Ireland today. They both deal with events which take place following a death, which may be seen as a reflection of the pessimism of the Irish, contrasting significantly with the view of Irish people asbeing kind and positive, in the eyes of people from outside Ireland. This juxtaposition is reflected through characterisation as well as plot. For instance, in Banville's book both Raphael and Malachy, the main characters, experienced very difficult childhoods; furthermore, Malachy's father is very unstable and even suicidal, while Raphael's father is shot to death in front of him, causing aradical change in him and ultimately leading to him committing suicide (and then nobody shows up at his burial). As well as this, the death of the boy from their school – Pat Hourican – leads to them losing not only their jobs but also their women, and the story becomes increasingly pessimistic as each event occurs. All this drives Raphael to insanity, and he opens “The Dead School”. In sum, at the endof the book one of the main characters end up committing suicide, while the other becomes an alcoholic and has to go and live in London because he can no longer bear his life in Ireland. A sense of pessimism is pervasive throughout the novel, full of sadness, depression, madness and death.

The same is true of McCabe's novel: the main character kills a maid and ends up in jail, which maysuggest that ultimately there is little hope for anyone. It becomes evident that McCabe is trying to recount a story about Ireland as close as possible to reality, since the murder in his book is based on a real life story about a murder in Dublin (even though he chooses an unreliable narrator to tell the story). Therefore, as both novels seem to be referring to two very tragic stories with no happyendings for the main characters and many of the secondary characters that appear in them, we can suggest that, if the authors are endeavouring to capture a sense of contemporary Ireland, then it is a place where despair and pessimism, as reflected through the characters, reign.

Religion is another important topic in both novels. Both authors attempt to show the religious decadence of recentyears by presenting their characters’ internal struggles with their beliefs. For instance, in Banville's novel, the main character – Montgomery – does not seem to regret any of his actions until the very end, mostly because of his background story (which is very important in both novels too), since he thinks that there is no such thing as free will, but rather that it was God who wanted him to do whathe did. That means that he is a believer, but clearly does not take very much into consideration the existence of any God, for he thinks that whatever he does will never be punished by any greater power.

In McCabe's novel, characters are constantly struggling to get what they want from their lives, but they eventually lose a sense of direction, along with their faith. After what happens tothem, nobody would think that there is a God who helps you during the bad moments and yet, it is Raphael who opens a religious school in which everything seems to be black (which is the way in which McCabe sees the world), after losing his mind.

Another very interesting theme which is present in both novels is that of the role of women in society. It seems that both McCabe and Banville want...