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39 pages 1 hour read

Seamus Deane

Reading in the Dark

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1996

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Part 3, Chapter 5 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 5 Summary

Religious Knowledge, September 1954

The narrator sits through a religion class in which his teacher, a priest, asks a series of questions with no discernible answers, such as “How many angels can balance on the head of a pin?” (186) The narrator is unable to answer these questions, and the priest emphasizes the importance of faith.  

All of It?, November 1954

In this section, the narrator pieces together all of the information he has learned about Eddie from various sources, trying to create a cohesive narrative. Some of the information seems certain, while other parts of it are questionable.

Deane confirms that Uncle Eddie did not disappear after a shoot-out at an old distillery. Instead, the narrator’s grandfather and Tony McIlhenny suspected that Eddie was a police informant and take him to the family’s old farmhouse in Derry for an interrogation. During the interrogation, the narrator’s aunts, Ena and Bernadette, are sent outside where they hear everything. The men decide that Eddie is guilty, and they take him to Grianan. There, the narrator’s grandfather orders Larry McLaughlin to shoot Eddie. Eddie’s murder takes place on the same night that Larry supposedly has sex with a she-devil.

The narrator is unsure of what happens in the farmhouse and at Grianan, and he creates many theories about those incidents. He concludes, “My mother’s father had my father’s brother killed” (193).

Crazy Joe, January 1955

The narrator takes a walk with Crazy Joe, and it is Joe who “almost completed the story for me” (195). Joe acknowledges that the narrator knows about Eddie’s murder, and he recalls that Sunday in 1922. On the day of the shoot-out, Joe sees Tony getting out of Sergeant Burke’s police car as Tony was “Informing. Selling his people for a few shillings” (200). The narrator concludes that Joe may have ultimately identified Tony as the informant. 

In Irish, October 1955

The narrator feels a deep urge to speak about Eddie with his mother and Liam, but he hesitates to do so, fearing the consequences. Though he is afraid that his mother will find it, the narrator decides to write out the narrative of Eddie’s murder. He translates the narrative into Irish, which his parents do not speak, and burns the English version of the document. One night, he reads the narrative to his parents in Irish, saying that it is a school essay. Though his father does not understand what he is doing, the narrator notes, “I knew [my mother] knew what I was doing” (203)  

Political Education, November 1956

An Anglican priest in a “British army uniform” comes to the narrator’s school to speak to his class (205). The priest stresses that there are more pressing global concerns, like communism, than the internal conflict in Ireland. The narrator’s teacher attempts to contextualize the speech for the class, explaining that it was meant to “lift our eyes from our own petty squabbles and let us see our place in the world at large” (208). 

Sergeant Burke, December 1957

Sergeant Burke comes to visit the narrator’s mother, saying “We’ve got a lot of things on file I want to clear up for good” (211). He lays out the whole history of the family’s trauma and run-ins with the police. Sergeant Burke reveals that he knew the narrator’s grandfather murdered the police officer Billy Mahon. In retaliation, Sergeant Burke leaked false information to the narrator’s grandfather through Larry that Eddie was a police informant. Sergeant Burke apologizes for getting the narrator in trouble for throwing a rock at his police car.  

Chapter 5 Analysis

The theme of secrecy is paramount in this section as the text finally clarifies the family’s history. Before this happens, the narrator tries to piece it all together. To do so, he must use the fragments he has learned from relatives and community members. As all the accounts bleed into one, he questions, “Was it Dan who said this? Or Katie? Or Grandfather?” (189). Sources become blurry, bringing into question the nature of truth and narrative.

The narrator eventually concedes that he must use his own imagination to piece together the actual events of the night of Eddie’s death. When thinking about that night, he asks, “Did Larry make him kneel and shoot him in the brainstem from behind? Did Larry tell him it was all right, he could go now, and let him go on ahead and then shoot Eddie as he bent down to crawl out the passage” (192). Here, it is crucial for him to delve into the emotions and details of the experience. As he slowly learns the truth, he assumes some control over the narrative, and it becomes more personal and meaningful to him.  

Even when the narrator comes up with a fairly coherent story about Eddie’s death, he cannot experience a real catharsis because he cannot be open about what he knows. Though he and his mother know the entire narrative, they do not discuss it with each other. However, when the narrator reads his version of the narrative in Irish to his parents, he suspects that his mother understands what he is saying even though his parents do not speak Irish: “She knew it all now. She knew I knew it too. And she wasn’t going to tell any of it. Nor was I. But she didn’t like me for knowing it” (194). By refusing to discuss the narrative, the narrator and his mother continue to follow the patterns of suppression that they have been subject to throughout their lives. By refusing to openly acknowledge their family’s history, they allow the family’s trauma to fester. Rather than healing, they sink deeper into their anguish. As a result, the rift in their relationship widens.  

The state’s power structures are also featured in this chapter. Sergeant Burke becomes a central figure in the family’s trauma when he admits that he leaked false information about Eddie being a police informant to avenge a murder that the narrator’s grandfather committed. In this way, the state is deeply enmeshed in the personal lives of Derry’s residents. This illustrates just how pervasive politics and the state are in the narrator’s world.  

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