Introduction

204
Melanie Swiatloch
Although she feels Irish she does not belong to her classmates and friends in the
way other Irish girls do. Being the daughter of a Protestant father from the North
and a Catholic mother from the southern Gaeltacht, Saoirse’s background does
not allow her to be fully integrated in neither the group of Irish people nor the
community of Protestant Northern Irish people. When she drives back to the
North in order to visit her father Saoirse stops at a newsagent’s in a Protestant
area to ask for directions. She suddenly realises her accent’s Southern Irish touch
and is carefully observed by two women in the shop. “I am glad to hurry on. I am
a Greyabbey Pentland, I want to say; I belong here, too; but like Derry, this isn’t a
familiar place, either” (Caldwell 224).
Belonging to two different communities Saoirse at the same time does not belong
to either of the two, so Tabouret-Keller’s claim is reversed in this case.
Membership seems to be only valid for people coming from one group, not for
people of mixed descent as this feature rather turns the individual into an outsider
who is observed with mixed feelings than into an insider who is welcomed by
both communities.
That the Irish language is an “indicator of cultural identity” is also stressed by
linguist Diarmait MacGiolla Chríost (45). Still the majority of the population believes
“that the Irish language is an integral part of the ideology of Irish Republicanism
and Nationalist separatism” (ibid. 46). In Robert McLiam Wilson’s Eureka
Street this conviction is used to mark off nationalists from non-nationalist inhabitants
of Belfast. The only characters speaking the native language here are people
promoting their Irish character. Aoirghe Jenkins, for instance, strongly believes
that Northern Ireland should be reunited with the Republic (McLiam Wilson 98).
She also sympathises with the Just Us, a group of nationalists who sometimes uses
violence to make its goals plain. When there is a demonstration against the IRA
planting bombs on the Belfast to Dublin line it is the Just Us who turn the peaceful
event into a violent scenario with “peaceful heads […] being kicked” (ibid.
195). When Jake Jackson, one of the main characters and part-time narrator of the
book, meets Aoirghe for the first time he at first cannot understand her name and
even thinks she is coughing when introducing herself, which leads to a tense atmosphere
between them (ibid. 92). For Aoirghe her English surname “Jenkins” is
a bit of a problem. Jake, however, finds it hilarious: “I passionately wanted not to
laugh – but Jenkins. Aoirghe Jenkins. It must have broken her republican heart
that she wasn’t called something Irish like Ghoarghthgbk or Na Goomhnhnle. I
laughed. Like a drain” (ibid. 292). In this scene the difference between Jake and
Aoirghe is underlined once more. For Aoirghe her English surname is a burden
that stands against everything she is fighting for. Yet, it makes up a part of her
that she cannot deny. Jake in contrast can only think of strange sounding Irish
surnames that are impossible to pronounce, thus mocking Aoirghe’s longing for a
true Irish heritage.