The Heart's Invisible Furies

“As they walked toward the bridge, my mother looked over the side of the railings into the River Liffey, a filthy determination of brown and green making its way urgently toward the Irish Sea as if it wanted out of the city as quickly as possible, leaving the priests, the pubs and the politics far behind it.”

When Catherine arrives in Dublin, she is shocked by the pollution and cultural degradation that seems to her fresh eyes to be everywhere. The presence of alcohol is on every corner, and the influence of Catholicism in politics looms in the air. This quote foreshadows the way Catherine, in Bearing Witness to Prejudice, Intolerance, and Hatred, will react to struggle and violence as effects of intolerance and repression.

“I waited a few moments to gather my thoughts before opening my lungs for the first time and with an almighty roar, one that must have been heard by the men in the pub below who came running up the stairs to discover the cause of such a racket, announced to the world that I had arrived, that I was born, that I was part of it all at last.”

Cyril is born in a moment of violence as a result of the prejudice and hatred that often results in hate-based attacks against LGBT+ people. As he narrates his own life in first-person perspective, he gives himself the full awareness and cognition that he imagines he had in that moment. His tone indicates he intended to be born then, and not at any other time.

“For all the luxury to which we were accustomed, we were both denied love, and this deficiency would be scorched into our future lives like an ill-considered tattoo inscribed on the buttocks after a drunken night out, leading each of us inevitably toward isolation and disaster.”

Cyril and Julian’s experiences as children shape the adults they become. Both boys are given what they need to survive and even be wealthy, but neither are shown love and affection by their parents. As a result, each in their own way the two boys grow up to seek love and affection desperately, compulsively, and dangerously; their plight illustrates Loneliness as Part of the Human Condition. This eventually leads to Cyril’s crisis and Julian’s death.

“There was a good chance that a jury would forgive a man a murder if the victim was a whore.”

Julian tells Cyril about a case his father worked on in which the man murdered his wife for cheating on him and was let off due to it being a reasonable cause for such an act. The ruling on this case illustrates how misogyny through the 20th century was also a problem in politics and law; the man’s actions illustrate how viewing women as subordinate can have violent consequences.

“Did I spend much time examining my feelings for Julian in those days? Probably not. If anything, I deliberately avoided analyzing them. It was 1959, after all. I knew almost nothing of homosexuality, except for the fact that to act on surge urges was a criminal act in Ireland that could result in a jail sentence.”

In mid-20th century Ireland, a law was in place that criminalized gay men. Cyril is 14 years old but scarcely aware that gay male sexual orientation exists; as a result, he does not understand his own feelings. Cyril’s confusion demonstrates how prejudice and intolerance can lead a person to be confused about their own identity.

“A half-dozen men were seated at stools, smoking at staring at their pints of Guinness as if within that dark liquid the meaning of life could be discovered.”

Alcohol is a central motif in the novel, illustrating the hypocrisy of a culture ruled by Catholicism and the ways in which such a rigid culture can cause an overall lack of satisfaction with life. Cyril visits many pubs over the years, and many key events happen in them; sometimes his drinking experiences are positive ones, and sometimes they are not.

“‘And is your wife on her way in to us too?’

‘I’d be shocked if she was,’ he said. ‘Maude died a few years ago. Cancer. She beat it when it was in the ear canal but once it spread to her throat and tongue that was it. Curtains.’”

John Boyne’s use of dark humor as he portrays the many characters in the novel adds an extra dimension to each character, brings levity to often morose circumstances, and keeps the reader interested. Here, Charles makes a casual joke about his own wife’s death, illustrating his matter-of-fact manner that is present in all situations.

“As I lay in Julian’s bed staring up at the ceiling, I began to come to terms with who I was. I had known from as far back as I could recall that I was different from other boys. There was something inside me that longed for the intimate friendship and approval of my peers in ways that others never did. It was a disease that the priests referred to from time to time as one of the most venal of all sins.”

At age 14 and while living with Julian in college, Cyril starts to realize that he is in fact gay and was most likely born that way. He has always known he was different and focuses on the attention of other boys more than others. This dependency becomes the crutch that on one hand holds Cyril to Julian, but on the other leads him to live a life of deceit. Cyril also knows he is growing up in a culture where intolerance against gay people is rampant, developing the theme Bearing Witness to Prejudice, Intolerance, and Hatred.

“It was a difficult time to be Irish, a difficult time to be twenty-one years of age and a difficult time to be a man who was attracted to other men. To be all three simultaneously required a level of subterfuge and guile that felt contrary to my nature.”

As a young adult, Cyril is forced to hide who he is. Like thousands of other men his age, he finds intimacy in secret or public places, but never feels emotionally fulfilled by any of his encounters. When Cyril looks back on his life in the 2000s and realizes how much has changed, he laments how different his life may have been if he had lived in another time. Cyril remains victim to Loneliness as Part of the Human Condition for much of his life.

“It was as if she understood completely the condition of loneliness and how it undermines us all, forcing us to make choices that we know are wrong for us.”

Alice admires Maude’s work, believing Maude to have pinpointed something within humans that is deeply truthful but also one of the saddest aspects of being human. Maude is a character who represents The Strength of Women Against Misogyny. All humans feel lonely, even those surrounded by people, and it’s this condition within humans that causes us to act out in ways destructive to our own nature; for example, Julian has sex with many women, Cyril with many men; in both cases, it leads them nowhere but toward their own demise.

“Years of shame and regret began to overwhelm me. A lifetime of lying, of feeling that I was being forced to lie, had let me to a moment where I was not only preparing to destroy my own life but also that of a girl who had done nothing whatsoever to deserve it.”

Cyril prepares to marry Alice and realizes how decades of lying to himself and others has brought him to this point. For much of his life, Cyril was driven by loneliness and a deep desire for human companionship. This tragic flaw in his character leads him almost to a point of no return, and it is only when he leaves Ireland for several years that he is able to rid himself of this crutch.

“The place of my birth and a city I loved at the heart of a country I loathed. A town filled with good-hearted innocents, miserable bigots, adulterous husbands, conniving churchmen, paupers who received no help from the State, and millionaires who sucked the lifeblood from it.”

Cyril has a deep affection for Dublin, where he grew up, a richly described and complex setting full of sensory imagery. Everything he knows and has ever experienced has been there. However, Cyril laments the deep entrenchment of the Church and the rich people who use their power to influence the government, making Ireland a place filled with prejudice, intolerance, and hatred cemented right into its laws.

“I would have seen it all, had I been able to see, but I could see none of it because I had spent my entire life blind and deaf and mute and ignorant, devoid of any senses save the one that governed my sexual compulsions and that had brought me to this terrible place from which, I was certain, there could be no return.”

As Cyril stands on the hotel balcony after his wedding, nude and in full contemplation of his situation, he realizes that he has spent his entire life in a state of ignorance. By lying to others and himself, and by closing himself off to what the world has to offer him, Cyril robbed himself of his youth. He strongly contemplates suicide, but in this key plot point realizes he must leave and start over instead.

“Bastiaan and I could hold hands as we made our way home and passing couples didn’t bat an eyelid. In Dublin, of course, we would have been assaulted, beaten to within inches of our lives, and when the Gardaí finally arrived to scrape us off the pavement they would have laughed in our faces and told us that we had no one to blame but ourselves.”

Cyril notes the stark contrast between the prejudice against gay people in Dublin and the open, accepting culture of Amsterdam. Here, meets the love of his life and enjoys being openly gay for the first time. This period of Cyril’s life serves as a time of healing and reconciliation with his past mistakes. Amsterdam as a setting symbolizes inclusivity, love, and acceptance.

“The way I see it, this is the beginning of the end of the world. And it’s you people who my people have to thank for it.”

Cyril and Bastiaan move to New York City during the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Cyril volunteers at Bastiaan’s hospital visiting patients whose families have abandoned them upon hearing of their disease. One man that Cyril visits is particularly pessimistic, viewing AIDS as a plague that is going to take the entirety of humanity. As a heterosexual man, he blames gay people for spreading the disease and killing him. Again Bearing Witness to Prejudice, Intolerance, and Hatred, Cyril observes how intolerance against gay people reached a height during the AIDS epidemic.

“A line came to mind, something that Hannah Arendt had once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart’s invisible furies on his face. He looked a hundred years old. He looked like a man who had died several months earlier. He looked like a soul in pure torment. But still I knew him. All the changes that the disease had made to his once beautiful face and body and still I would have known him anywhere.”

In the quote that explains the novel’s title, Cyril describes the moment in which he walks into Julian’s room and recognizes the patient lying there as his childhood best friend. Julian is thin, bruised, and balding, but Cyril would know him anywhere. This is the mark of true love, and Cyril has always had a deep platonic love for Julian. Cyril and Julian’s reunion illustrates The Interconnected Web of Human Life.

“Nothing changes, I thought. Nothing ever changes. Not in Ireland.”

When Cyril returns to Ireland, he has several conversations that lead him to believe that prejudice and hatred are still rampant within the country, even if laws have begun to change. He is frequently bombarded with personal questions and insults regarding his sexuality. This establishes a dichotomy between the protagonist, who has changed as a result of his experiences and observations, and the place in which he was born and raised, which seems in this moment to be largely unchanged.

“I waited with him until he was asleep before going to bed myself, lying in that single bed looking through the skylight at the stars above, the same stars that I had stared at more than forty years earlier.”

When Charles develops a brain tumor, he asks Alice if he can move back to Dartmouth Square to die there. Alice agrees, and she also allows Cyril to move in as he wants to be with Charles in his last days. Cyril stays with Charles every day and sleeps in his childhood bed at night. He marvels at The Interconnected Web of Human Life and how his life has led him right back to where he started.

“If you’re going to ride your bicycle on the wrong side of the street, you can expect to be knocked over, am I right?”

While waiting in the hospital for Liam’s second son to be born, Cyril sits with Alice and Liam’s wife’s parents in the waiting room. Liam’s wife’s parents are clearly prejudiced against gay people, and they believe that they’re sitting with Alice’s new husband, not Cyril, the previous husband who was gay. They spend the entire conversation mocking gay people and claiming that it’s their own fault if they’re attacked, never realizing that Cyril is sitting right in front of them. The author often employs situational irony in Cyril’s given circumstances for complexity and interest.

“I’ve lost people before. I’ve known violence, I‘ve known bigotry, I’ve known shame and I’ve known love. And somehow, I always survive.”

Catherine has led a life filled with struggle and turmoil, but she has always managed to hold her head above it all, remain unbiased, and do what she can to help those who need it. Catherine represents the epitome of The Strength of Women Against Misogyny.

“I was out in the corridor again before a sentence that she had spoken came back to me, bursting through my brain like a shot of electricity. A little hunchbacked Redemptorist nun took him away from me and I knew that day that I would never see him again.”

The Interconnected Web of Human Life is perhaps most evident in Cyril’s interactions with Catherine over the years. It’s not until he is in his sixties that he finally realizes who she is; the novel builds consistently toward this climax.

“Why did they abandon me? Why do we abandon each other? Why did I abandon you?”

Loneliness is part of the human condition; it’s something everyone must grapple with throughout their life. When Catherine finally realizes who Cyril is, she wants to believe that she did the right thing by giving him up for adoption but knows that Cyril deserved and needed her love.

“I was taken aback to see a boy in the hallway, looking at some of the family photographs that decorated the wall. He was standing in the exact spot that had once held the chair where Julian had been sitting when I first laid eyes on him sixty-three years earlier. As he turned to look at me, the way the light was coming through the glass above the door recalled him to me instantly, with his messy blond hair, good looks and clear complexion.”

In the final months of Cyril’s life, he has a brain tumor and the medication he is on often causes him to hallucinate spirits of the people he knew and loved and who have since died. When he sees Julian standing in the hallway of Dartmouth Square, seven years old and as fresh as he was the day Cyril met him, it’s as if his past comes careening back toward him.