Belfast
Since Irish writers began writing about Ireland, imagery has been devoted substantially to establishing the inextricable relationship between setting and story. Twentieth century Belfast is a city that has been described a thousand memorable ways in novel and short stories over that period of time and the imagery here becomes just another valuable addition:
“Belfast shared the status of the battlefield. The place-names of the city and country had taken on the resonance and hard beauty of all history's slaughter venues. The Bogside, Crossmaglen, The Falls, The Shankill and Andersonstown. In the mental maps of those who had never been in Ireland, these places had tiny crossed swords after their names. People thought them deathfields—remote, televised knackers' yards. Belfast was only big because Belfast was bad.”
Violence
Alas, imagery of violence is also part and parcel of the Irish canon of twentieth century literature. How many ways are there to describe the brutal consequences of bombs exploding and bullets firing? The world may never know because Irish writers keep coming up with ways to make the violence horrific despite its predictability:
“Her left arm was torn off by sheeted glass and most of her head and face destroyed by the twisted mass of a metal tray. The rim of the display case, which was in three large sections, sliced through or embedded in her recently praised hips and some heavy glass jars impacted on her chest and stomach, pulverizing her major organs. Indeed, one substantial chunk of glass whipped through her midriff, taking her inner stuff half-way through the large hole in her back.”
Allusion
Allusions can render imagery more potent through the power of connection. The referencing of known quantities with the context of a brand new expression serves to clarify at the surface level while enhancing the subtext. Such is the case with this example in which allusions to Russian literature and the Bible lend gravity to the philosophical component of the imagery:
“But most of all, cities are the meeting places of stories. The men and women there are narratives, endlessly complex and intriguing. The most humdrum of them constitutes a narrative that would defeat Tolstoy at his best and most voluminous. The merest hour of the merest day of the merest of Belfast's citizens would be impossible to render in all its grandeur and all its beauty. In cities the stories are jumbled and jangled. The narratives meet. They clash, they converge or convert. They are a Babel of prose.”
The Aftermath of Violence
The stories and images of violence associated with the ongoing war between the Irish and British are often breathtaking in the quality of the mercy that has been strained from the human heart. What typically goes unseen, however, is the collateral consequences following the moment of outburst. The bombings that define the Irish civil war are not like mere shootings where everything is contained. The horror can linger on long afterward, just waiting for its secondary victims:
“A man called Francis, a father of two, found a small blue thing he could not recognize. He was about to throw it in the pile in which the discovered clothing lay when he realized that there was a scrap of blonde hair attached. His heart blew like another bomb and he dropped it in horror. It was a bit of a blue hat with a part of a little girl's skull attached. (It was later identified as a piece of the greater remains of Natalie Crawford.)”
