Introduction

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Melanie Swiatloch
clichés (D’hoker 32). He receives a grant of eight hundred thousand pounds from
the Industrial Resources Board for invented and non-existent projects. “Chuckie
had simply made it up as he went along” (McLiam Wilson 118) such as persuading
the Ulster Development Board to give him money for a business that “would
bring the Catholic nationalist sports of Gaelic football and hurling to Protestants,
and the English Protestant pursuits of rugby and cricket to Catholics” for “these
sports were sharply divided and a significant emblem of the apartheid in Northern
Ireland” (ibid. 153). It is quite amusing that Chuckie, though initially driven by
greed, suddenly overcomes his own pretensions by making a good point. In an
interview with the republican Jimmy Eve he highlights capitalism and globalisation
and puts them over sectarian issues, which leaves the politician rather speechless:
“What America understands is what I understand – making a dollar, cutting a deal.
There are no nationalities, only rich and poor. Who gives a shit about nationhood
if there’s no jobs and no money? Bread before flags, that’s what I say” (ibid. 331).
He even calls to do business “the real peace” (ibid. 331).
In the end of Eureka Street various relationships have developed:
The antipolitical Jake and Republican Aoirghe, the Muslim Rajinder and the
Jew Rachel, the Englishman Luke Findlater and his Catholic working-class
waitress, the socialist Slat and Wincey, his right-wing middle-aged Protestant
fiancée, the Protestant lesbian housewives Peggy and Caroline
(D’hoker 33).
D’hoker sees in these relationships a “reconciliation of opposites or a marriage of
different perspectives” (ibid. 33). She concludes that they “represent the impossible
New Irish Jake has dreamt of” (ibid. 33). Thus this working pluralism also
suggests that the New Irish has already become reality.
Hybridity in One by One in the Darkness is most strongly articulated in Cate. Although
each of the sisters has chosen her very own way of life after their father
Charlie’s death it is only Cate who leaves the country. As Jerry White has argued
Madden shows how hybridity can be successful in a postcolonial Northern Ireland
thus challenging Declan Kiberd’s denial of a working hybrid (White 459). At this
point he refers to the posh Cate who has moved to London to work as a journalist
for a fashion magazine. “Even as Cate leaves her marginal community for the
metropolitan/imperial center of London […] she retains central parts of her marginal
identity and manages to update them and make them relevant to her condition”
(ibid. 459). This is done by Cate’s still existing religiosity. Although Helen
suspects her sister of having left her faith behind she learns that Cate still is a
“regular churchgoer” and even has a “religious picture hanging in her apartement”
(Madden 22). White calls this “the ability to form a new life without completely
depending on the old existence or completely leaving it behind” (White 459). She
also changed her name from Kate to Cate because “it was too Irish, […] too
country” (Madden 4). Her family is very hurt by this but her change of name also