Introduction

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Melanie Swiatloch
Saoirse. Nevertheless, different perspectives are presented by her parents Deirdre
and Colin as well as through other minor characters like Johnny Mahon or Manus
Dennehy.
Fragmentation and ambiguity in the novels are both used stylistically as well as
within the stories. Kennedy-Andrews has noted that One by One in the Darkness can
best be called a trauma narrative. It is “the struggle of the four women to recompose
themselves after the Troubles have invaded the vulnerable space of family
and ordinary life” (Kennedy-Andrews 2003, 152-153). The death of husband and
father Charlie thereby marks a crucial event which is marked by repression. Only
in the end does the reader learn what really happened to him and is Helen able to
confront herself with his violent death (ibid. 153). Prior to this, the reader only
learns bits and pieces about the incident. Kennedy-Andrews also points to the
theory that only through talking about a cruel event the concerned person can
learn to deal with the results. The process of remembering, of reconstructing the
past experience takes time and “does not produce a rational, linear narrative”
(ibid. 153). Thus, Cate, Helen, Sally and Emily remember various stages of the
past in mixed order – happy childhood days as well as disturbing events linked to
the Troubles like the intrusion into their home by the British armed forces. Other
signs of repression include dreams and nightmares, which make up a “prominent
element of the text” (ibid. 154). Almost everyone in the novel refers to a dream
sooner or later. Emily, for example, dreams both about the threat to her family in
the form of a raft heading for a waterfall and of her husband’s murder (Madden
124/125). Cate’s dreams are less threatening but equally concerned with repressed
fears. One is about her baby and the father “denouncing her loudly” for her decision;
another one shows her baby in an “adult posture” and a skeptical look on its
face (ibid. 89/90). Her whole family is a somewhat doubtful about the baby at
first, especially her mother. So, Cate’s uncertainty about her decision is mirrored
in her dreams. Nevertheless she knows she did the right thing. In a world in which
families and homes can easily be destroyed having children to Cate means having
“something real” (ibid. 93).
In One by One in the Darkness as well as in Eureka Street and Where They Were
Missed, fragmentation seems to be the result of a huge bomb exploding directly
into lives of the characters. Like pieces of shrapnel the family is blown apart after
Charlie’s death. In Eureka Street the physical and real bomb is dedicated a whole
chapter, which brings the characters’ inner fragmentation to the surface. The most
obvious sign for fragmentation again becomes visible in family relations, though.
After “the cops and the social workers had nabbed [him]” Jake grew up with his
foster-folks Matt and Mamie (McLiam Wilson 103). Chuckie equally grew up in a
fragmented family as his father left his mother and ended as an alcoholic “in a
docker’s bar that never closed” (ibid. 29). Like the sisters in One by One in the
Darkness the two of them are always feeling that something is missing. Love (also
in the form of empathy as elaborated on in chapter 3.3.2.) and again children ap-