Introduction

Construction of Identity in Northern Irish Novels 217
strate their presence and Cate sees “footpaths […] painted red, white and blue”,
“Republican graffiti” and “INLA 21 rule” letterings (ibid. 82ff).
Finally, symbols and rituals serve individuals both as aggressive markers and as
uniting factors for each community. As has already been said, typical symbols and
rituals in the Northern Ireland context are wall murals, flags and religion (Mitchel
57). Protestant and Catholic housing areas were thus clearly separated from each
other. The practice of rituals “reminds participants of their common belief system”
and at the same time “renews the link between past and present” (ibid. 58).
Both Catholic and Protestant nationalism/unionism thereby exclude each other.
In Helen’s memory the Orange Parades were always a faraway event and certainly
not meant for any Catholics to participate in:
And yet for all this they knew that their lives, so complete in themselves,
were off centre in relation to the society beyond those fields and houses.
They recognised this most acutely every July, when they were often taken to
the Antrim coast for the day, and as they went through Ballymena and
Broughshane, they would see all the Union Jacks flying at the houses, and
the red, white and blue bunting across the streets. They thought that the
Orange arches which spanned the roads in the towns were ugly, and creepy,
too, with their strange symbols: a ladder, a set square and compass, a fivepointed
star. They knew that they weren’t supposed to be able to understand
what these things meant; and they knew, too, without having to be
told that the motto painted on the arches: ‘Welcome here, Brethren!’ didn’t
include the Quinn family […] They never, in all their childhood, actually
saw an Orange march taking place, for their parents always made a point of
staying at home on that day, complaining bitterly that you were made a
prisoner in your own home whether you liked it or not (Madden 75).
One of the major problems of humanity has long since been the stubbornness of
people. Conflicts cannot be solved if one cannot compromise. An example here is
Aoirghe from Eureka Street who fights for a united Ireland during most of the
novel. After a violent escalation caused by the Just Us, a republican group, she
argues with Jake advocating the nationalist side and calling Jake a fascist because
he attacked one of her friends in the confusion:
I stopped. ‘I’m a fascist?! What were you all there for? You’re the people
with all the ordnance. You were looking for trouble’. She snorted scornfully.
‘Those middle-class shitheads wanted to have their pathetic little protest.
We just thought we should have one as well.’ ‘All they were doing was
asking for peace.’ She snorted again. ‘Don’t you want peace?’ I asked. ‘Not
21 INLA: Irish National Liberation Party, a republican paramilitary group founded by the Irish
Republican Socialist Party, which was a Marxist and militarist splinter group of the IRA (Aughey
162).