A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, Part 4 - Extreme Unction

Reading Land Under the Wave through the lens of its title was so successful last week, that I used the same approach for Extreme Unction.

So, I had to start by finding out what 'extreme unction' actually is. A quick google/wiki search yields the info that Extreme Unction is an archaic term referring to the anointing of the sick: one of the seven Catholic sacraments, more specifically, one of the three Last Rites administered to a Catholic who is likely to soon die from old age or disease. The goal of this rite - somewhat surprisingly to me - is not primarily to impart divine healing, but to instill comfort, serenity, courage, and in some cases absolution of sin. The term 'extreme unction' could be stated in more familiar terms as 'final anointing', thus, extreme unction serves as a sort of mirror image to the first anointing in Catholic tradition: baptism. I find this connection very interesting given the heavy usage of water/bog-based imagery in Part 3, as well as - albeit to a lesser extent - in other sections.

The imminence of death, the prerequisite of extreme unction, becomes established pretty early on, when, in the first paragraph of chapter 2 the mother says "I think. I think. Your brother's going to die." It turns out that the brother's cancer has reawakened, causing memory lapses, nosebleeds, and a fall resulting in a hit to the head. An interesting allusion to religious last rites occurs in chapter 4 with the local protestant fellowship. The brother says "They're here all the time... Saying prayers you know and lay on hands. I don't. Yes. I don't like that much. Sometimes. Too much I get. I get. Scared. Of die of dying of go to hell." Here, the literal religious approach to extreme unction has proven a complete failure, instead of inspiring comfort, serenity, and courage, it effects the opposite: fear. This failure of religion is supported by depictions of the mother's feverish prayers, which are suggested to be from a place of naivete. This recognition of religion's failure by the girl is precipitated by even her attempts at religiosity failing: "In the chapel. Down on my knees. Oh god Jesus. I beg you. I am pleading. See. I plead. But stones in my mouth. Lead on my tongue." This schism from the religious traditions of her family, and society, cause the girl to seek a meaningful relationship in place of one with God. She turns to her brother.

The Girl's relationship to her brother is given distinction in her life by its unique placement among the water/bog-based imagery in this section. Girl's relationship with the Uncle continues to be described with diction suggesting drowning, burying, suffocation. "Stinking smothered by life by. Encased where there's no need to breathe to think... Where the air is. Where is the air?", "I feel his body now like weights under water. Drag me down.", "When he kisses. I am. Strangle. And he pushes me down. Something flooding.", "I'm lost. In the deep sea. In as the saying goes over my head with what." Her relationship with her roommate and college social circle is stated in similar terms: "Fuck her everyone. Fuck them all for I'm being buried right here on my own." Her return home is also framed within themes of suffocation in the bog: "What's before what's before. Me. Spreading out like muck like shite." Unlike all of this drowning imagery - a continuation from section 3 - instances of water in connection with the brother take a new light. At the opening of chapter 3, seeking a moment of reverie, the Girl goes to the beach and thinks of escape: "I'd be free or. Looking from very far back to this beach. I baptize. Baptize me. That I take. For I can't complain it's wrong. Free me clean me and save me from, Mt brother from this. I have to. I still have to go home." Here Girl connects thoughts of her brother with baptism, suggesting that this relationship with her brother is the one where she will find meaning, not the relationships of drowning and suffocation with her uncle, her friend, or her society. This idea is again repeated in a scene in chapter 5. In the middle of an internal dialogue about longing to help her brother, the Girls says: "Of the rain give me the rain and all that. Wash oh yes that's it wash away. My. Sin. Do you see. I can do what I can and that is that's what I can do... Let me. Pick you up. In some way. Just a little? These are my bits... Held. Out to you. You need. I see that. You have fallen down. My brother. My brother and my love. For you're the first one that I ever had." Here it is made very clear that Girl has come to understand how important her brother is to her, and it is described in the midst of a sort of baptism in the rain.

This discovered latent love for her brother, and the importance that the relationship holds for the Girl is shown in an interesting way near the end of the section: in religious terms, circling back around to the allusion to Rites in the title: "Do you love me? Can you love me even after that? Even now. I won't ask and I won't say that inside myself or ever out again. Forgive me brother. I know not what I do. Forgive me brother for I have sinned." In this passage Girl takes two extremely important prayers from Christendom - Jesus' prayer on the cross for his executioners "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do." and the Catholic Confessionals prayer - and replaced the word "Father" in them with "Brother" This powerfully suggests that Girl has been able to overcome the feeling from lacking a father by connecting instead with her brother. At the very end of the section, this connection and compassion will culminate in a pleading with the brother to comfort him, and possibly encourage him to live, a sort of non-religious extreme unction: "What did I ever do for you. I'll do something that you want once. What. You're off. Escaping all these things. Go away a little bit now. Now and more but still and still. I'd like to say. Don't. Stay here. Please. If you will. I won't. I swear. Leave you alone."

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - Part 3: Land Under the Wave

One of the things that really stuck out to me in this whole section was the themes and imagery of drowning at home, and choking in the city. Throughout the whole section, and really the novel at large now that I think about it, seems to be constantly put in terms of the Girl's ability to breathe - both physically and metaphorically. Thinking back to the first sexual encounter with the uncle, she describes it something like all the air being forced out of her, the bus has a stifling pubescent smog to it, and so on. This thread of breathing and air is picked up in part 3.

In the first two sections, the Girl's home is a place of drowning - she in fact almost literally drowns at one point in a lake near her house. When the Girl leaves home in ch1 pt3, she thinks "Pulling off pulling off for the city. Leaving that. Go back. All you behind. Put breath back in my body." She clearly hopes that college will afford her an escape from the smothering and stagnation of home.

She escapes her bog-like home only to find that the city is like "black in my lungs. In my nose. Like I am smoking", her talkative new-found friend is similar "with all that smoke she is blowing up my nose" the social scene features "Music hurting on the innards. Door. Lungs." She picks up smoking and initially reacts with "That Jesus rips the tender throat out." Just as the smoking causes her to have a "whirling head... spin the brain away from here" we begin to see a return to the more difficult language from the first part Lambs (compared to the somewhat more straightforward second part A Girl Is a Half-formed thing). The narration reverts to "Strings of words. Strings of words." The dialogue - both internal and external - picks up a more frantic, frenzied quality: one of breathlessness.

In the third chapter the trend continues. Both times she returns home, the episode is located within terms of drowning, and the bog. At home for Christmas break "there's so much. Dredge up so much muck. I'd drown in that much shit." The language is even more explicit on the second return home: "Those fields. Going through them just like them. Drowned over. Filled up with rain. Even cows drown here. Even sheep. Even people if they're lucky. Children falling under every year. ... The world's submerged in raining. And feel old lady rosaries crossing over me. Like music's going in my brain. Against me. I would. Push. Away. Get off this shore." By connecting herself to the rain-flooded fields in the opening of the paragraph, she sets it up as a mirror image. The fields are flooded in rain, the Girl is flooded in memories from the past, hanging over her head, acting as an incessant music driving her insane. Just as cows, sheep, even people apparently, drown in those fields, the Girl seems to be concerned with drowning in the cacophony of her own psyche, doomed for self destruction: "It's a cesspit. A suck pool. Where all dead go. Am I. Will I. End up like them. Live and drown here. Filling my lungs. There's no escape. Get out for likes of me. Gurgle liquid up. Hold my nose. Fall in."

This nagging fear of self-destruction also manifests with the Girl's life in the city. When she briefly turns retrospective, she says: "I met a man. Should have turned on my heel. I thought. I didn't know to think. I didn't even know to speak. ...Sorry for that now. I don't really know what I was up to."

Finally, the second encounter with the uncle heavily features breath, suffocation, and drowning. "Quiet quiet in the car. All I hear is breath.", "Give my eyes back. Let me. See. My. Choke. Stop. Don't stop he says.", "But still. The ocean comes. I'll put my hands in. I'll baptize." "Put the air in my lungs. The fright out."

Lake Champlain International Film Festival 2016

I attended tonight's (Friday's) showings and am glad for it! Tonight's films were - for the most part - celebrating the importance of roots and cultural heritage, in particular, those of the Adirondack Community.

'The Michigan' took the interesting approach of examining Adk heritage via one of its relics: the Michigan hot dog. This film, in tracing the winding path by which the North Country inherited and made this not-quite-a-chili-dog its own shows the faculty of a community to combine ingredients from several and disparate backgrounds into something more bizarre, beautiful - and delicious - than any one of its sources individually.

'Harvest' was a less straightforward piece, showing the making of a mural in downtown Plattsburgh, but also scenes from a festival(?) farmers market (?) I really enjoyed this one because I personally identified with it a lot more than 'The Michigan'. 'Harvest' highlighted the Downtown Rising movement, which celebrates the quirkiness of Plattsburgh, the wilderness meets agriculture meets academia. All of these different backgrounds have been slowly combining and germinating for roughly two centuries in Plattsburgh. So now, we get to harvest and enjoy the fruits thereof: the Strand Theatre and Center for the Arts, Downtown Rising, the LCI Film Fest. This film really highlighted what I've come to love about living in the North Country: the pursuit of mental progression and social thinking at the University, the family I gained working at the Fledging Crow farm in Keeseville (where, among others, I worked with Jeff Cochran the turtle guy in the film), the stunning beauty of the natural setting of lakes, peaks, chasms, and woods.

I admittedly had mixed feelings about the 72-hour cellphone contest films. I thought 'XO' was amazing. It succeeded where - to me at least - the other entries weren't quite able, namely, in working the mug prop, 'the Hammer', and the required line in well with the plot. Additionally, I thought it used the short time limit to its advantage, gaining power by its brevity, and still saying everything it wanted and needed to. 'Memoriae' I think was a bit less successful, but I still appreciated what it was exploring; anxiety, uncertainty in life, and the uncertainty of life. I really disliked 'The Phone Call'. It felt kind of cheap and out of place among the other films of the night. It came off largely as using horror movie tropes as an attempt at dark comedy - a not particularly successful attempt at that.

I thought it was a very interesting organizational decision to sandwich the 72-hour cellphone contest entries between the AdironDoc films. I don't know whether this was the intended effect, but for me it made the bridge between the retrospective study of roots in 'The Michgan', and the forward looking meditation on fruits in 'Harvest'. The cellphone films are themselves shaped by the filmmakers roots, but also are fruits of the upcoming generation, whose power and vitality is in a large part driving movements like Downtown Rising.

'Inez Milholland: Forward Into the Light' I thought accomplished much of the same: it looked retrospectively at a movement that is in some ways in the past, but also that we still identify with today as voter disenfranchisement, and women's rights continue to be issues. I hadn't heard of Milholland before and was very moved by her story. Also, in connection to Irish lit, I liked the song at the end "I'll dig for you", very Heaney.

'It's an Adirondack Thing' was interesting, fairly lighthearted and jocular, relative to some of the other films of the night. I thought it was an interesting juxtaposition with the other ADK focused films. It celebrated the North Country, but a very different facet of it. The AdironDocs, and the 72-hour cellphone films, were made by people who are active in the Plattsburgh/North Country community and culture, people who live here, study here, work here, and thus the films celebrate, or reflect, the richness of that culture and community, In contrast, 'It's an Adirondack Thing' is more from the view point of an outsider, who appreciates the solitude of the mountains and lakes, the escape they afford from him from NYC. This put me in mind of the sort of idealization and motivations we saw in Yeats' Innisfree. This of course got me wondering if the idyllic image of 'Adirondack Thing' is as dangerous for the North Country as we concluded that Yeats' was for Ireland.

I was really captivated by 'And So...', I thought it was a great inclusion - and conclusion - for the night, setting a story of personal drama against the backdrop of the North Country setting, culminating in a scene on the shore of Lake Champlain. To me it seemed as almost a corrective to the idealism in 'Adirondack Thing', showing a more real, perhaps darker, side of the people here. It's definitely worth noting that 'The Michigan' does the same, in particular with the portion of interview with the grown daughter in the hay-loft, detailing how life has been hard for locally-based businesses in the North Country.

'The Sky Over Berlin of My Childhood' was brilliant. I thought the juxtaposition of the trio of young boys first with the ruined warehouse, then the clean angelic young woman, the Crimean rights guy, the unceasing train, the dead bodies in the train yard, and finally the burning box were all extremely powerful images. To me the piece was commenting on the nearly apocalyptic experience of adolescence; self rapidly changes, and knowledge about the world crumbles and has to be rebuilt. I admittedly have trouble locating this one among the other films of the night, but it does kind of remind me of 'Girl is a Half-formed Thing' showing the power of youth, and the jolting experience of coming of age.

The trailer for 'Lama La' was very intriguing, hopefully I'll be able to come back on Sunday to watch it!

Heaney - Digging, Personal Helicon, and Bogland: The Irish Artist in His Landscape

For my close reading essay I want to look at Digging, Personal Helicon, and Bogland, and examine what each has to say on the roles of the Irish artist, and his relationship with the land. In all three poems, Heaney looks to the earth - into it. In Digging he looks down through his window at his father and sees him turning over root-laden earth, he looks backward in time at his grandfather digging down under the surface for "the good turf." In Personal Helicon Heaney again looks down into the earth, this time via wells, and sees himself reflected in the still pools. Finally, in Bogland as he looks down into the earth, he looks backward in time once again, seeing relics from the past: extinct animals, ancient butter, decomposing trees.

Towards the end of all three poems Heaney turns from discussing the tangible sorts of depths, diggings, and discoveries towards the artistic ones with which Heaney aligns himself. In Digging he resolves to dig with his pen rather than the ancestral shovel, in Personal Helicon he eschews the childhood seeking out of reflections in water in favor of using poetry "to see myself, to set the darkness echoing." in Bogland Heaney notes that as the bogs of Ireland are inhabited by endless shadows of the past, the Irish psyche - that which Heaney is determined to dig into - may be similarly crusted.

My main idea for the paper is to present the three poems as a progression from the next, Digging suggesting the role of the artist - to dig; Personal Helicon telling why the artist digs - to discover the self; and Bogland showing what the artist digs up in himself.

Half-formed Visions of McBride and Joyce

The opening chapters of Eimear McBride's "A Girl is a Half-formed Thing" are confusing to say the least. It took me two readings just to figure out the setting for most of it, the main narrator, and basic information such as the structure of the family portrayed. However - like most stream-of-consciousness works - what it lacks in clarity, "Girl" more than offsets by it's raw vibrancy.

When McBride opts for stream-of-consciousness, she decides that the feel of the story, what it has the potential to evoke in the reader, is more important than it's specifics. As such, its hard to give a bulleted list of what happens in the first chapters. There's a family a boy is born. The brother is sick, he's healed, now he's not quite living "but he's just stopped dying". The parents fight, the father leaves. A second child is born, evidently the narrator, even though she's also been first-person narrating everything preceding her birth. The vagueness in these chapters make sense given the narration: that of a narrator going off the secondhand stories of others, and memories from her very first days being mashed together into a blurred half-formed vision of the past. The narrator remembers a stern but loving feminine force, this must be her mother; a kindred spirit, comforting her, and subjected to the same circumstances as her, this must be her brother; the shadow of masculine force, must be the father. Our narrator, however, can't recall the names, their faces, so there's uncertainty on some level, not on any rational level - of course these outline memories and impressions belong to these roles, but there's still some obscurity. So the father becomes the "shape of a man" leaving behind jigsaw-like "empty spaces where fathers should be". Sensations are recalled, but not their causes: "Hand on my head." Whose hand? The vagueness also manifests as an abundance of pronouns: all people lose their names, becoming "he"s and "she"s, all objects lose their definite identities, becoming "it"s and "that"s, instead, direct objects and names seem to be only used in the context of figurative language and indirect allusions, both making it extremely difficult to tell what is being discussed by the narrator. Formal structure breaks down: incomplete sentences, interrupted thoughts, confusing grammar, no punctuation to differentiate between narration, dialogue, and description. All of these combine to make reading "A Girl is a Half-formed Thing" a bit like experiencing sculpture with your hands, blindfolded: it can be frustrating, and you're almost definitely missing some of the finer points, but rewarding nonetheless.

It is clear that McBride - as she has stated it herself - owes a massive intellectual debt to James Joyce. Joyce's classic Irish novel "Ulysses" is often hailed as the most difficult English work to read, primarily because it exhibits many of the same qualities as McBride's "Girl". "Ulysses" has very similar approaches to formal structure as "Girl", namely, ignoring it. Additionally, it has a similar usage of pronouns, to the same confusing effect as in "Girl". The one large difference in obfuscation tactics is in the imagery. Whereas McBride utilizes vague, outlined images, Joyce employs a more free-association approach. By following loose associations between words - be they linguistic (puns, homophones, homonyms, acronyms, Latin translations), religious, historic, or pop-culture in derivation - Joyce follows rapid fire tangents, perpetually circling around the central image or occurrence at hand, seemingly only able to relate to it via these third-party sources.

Both of these styles are very fascinating, however, I'm not quite sure what they are saying about Irish culture. Maybe McBride is suggesting that Irishmen can only see themselves as positioned among these - possibly outgrown, possibly broken from the outset - Irish totemic roles and stereotypes. Maybe Joyce is suggesting a similar thing, but about the more day-to-day grassroots Irish culture.

Irish Escape Artists/Escape Poets

This week's readings show a new side to Irish literature. "Pot of Broth" examined the Irish human condition, "Cathleen Ni Houlihan" called for aspiration towards the Irish legacy, and "Playboy of the Western World" suggested the need for a reimagination of the Irish identity. Yeats' "Stolen Child", "Lake Isle of Innisfree", "Irish Airman Forsees His Death", and Joyce's "Araby", however, all put forward the idea of simply trying to withdraw from the perpetuity of cyclical chaos and conflict which seem to be inherent to Irish nationalism.

James Joyce's "Araby" portrays an Ireland which seems to get in the way of the Irish. A boy trying to get a gift for his love - a pure pursuit - is delayed several times. First, the aunt says "I'm afraid you may have to put aside your bazaar for this night of Our Lord", then the father provides the following reason for delay "The people are in bed and after their first sleep now", and finally, after the boy decides to set out, the father once again tries to delay him by reciting poetry to him. These three delays serve as synecdochies for the classically Irish concerns of religion, family, and national tradition. The Irish Concerns as barriers, along with details such as the "chanting of street-singers, who sang a... ballad about the troubles in our native land", serve to show an Irish people seemingly mismatched to the results of its own Irishness. This results in a frustrated Irish people "burned with anguish and anger."

In "An Irish Airman Forsees His Death" Yeats shows a certain level of apathy towards the Irish condition: "Those that I fight I do not hate Those that I guard I do not love" The poem also features a strong sense of hopelessness "No likely end could bring them loss Or leave them happier than before" This sad figure seeks to rise above - literally - the meaningless and depressing reality of Ireland which he sees. He manages to physically rise above, but his ultimate hope for escape is that of death: "I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death." We saw a similar longing for death in "Cathleen", but the death the for which the Airman hopes is markedly different from the one Michael is moving towards. While the rebels in "Cathleen" are fueled by a longing to enter the immortal national tradition by their sacrifice, the Airman is expecting, even counting on, a meaningless death; one which will the Irish myth will forgo, thus effecting a permanent removal from the national Irish narrative.

In "The Stolen Child" Yeats uses another somewhat bizarre and unexpected image to show a longing for escape from the narrative of the bloody Irish epic: the image of a child being kidnapped by faeries. Several times in the poem he repeats the refrain: "Come away, O human child! To the waters and the wild With a faery, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand." Yeats here makes it clear that he seeks withdrawal from a world "full of troubles". He yearns to answer the magical call to a more care-free life of restful quietness, and jubilant celebration.

In "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" Yeats suggests a way to escape the tumultuous Irish society. The poem outlines the adoption of a Thoreauvian life of voluntary isolation and self sufficiency. Yeats is most likely not genuinely suggesting that all Irishmen take on hermitage, however, he is saying something about the relation between Irish society, and the peace of the Ireland. In the poem, Yeats suggests that when the elements of tempestuous Irish society are removed, then Ireland will begin to afford her serenity and beauty to the Irish people. Which, is perhaps the desire at the core of all Irishmen: "I will arise and go now, for always night and day I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, I hear it deep in the heart's core."

National Heroism in The Western World

W.B. Yeats' "Cathleen Ni Houlihan" is very clearly a nationalistic play: it explores the possibility of the ordinary man rising to immortality via the national myth by sacrificing himself for Ireland. The play exhorts its viewers to shed their trivial, mundane lives in service of Ireland's national pride.

Such evident didactic nationalism is absent from J.M. Synge's "The Playboy of the Western World". While "Cathleen" asks the Irish to shift their focus from the unimportant everyday concerns to large national values, "Playboy" seems to mock not only common concerns, but the larger Irish values as well. Throughout much of the play Christy Mahon is held in view as a hero by the other characters for what should be a detestable act - patricide. When it turns out that he had failed to kill his father - failed twice by the end of the play - he falls from favor of the other characters. This of course mocks the Irish longing for heroes, which we've noted in both "Cathleen" and "Pot of Broth", by showing one such small-town "hero" as a cowardly and thoroughly false man.

Synge also mocks the value placed by the Irish on the family. This is accomplished by having the characters in the play - all supposed to be everyday Irishmen - honor Christy for patricide: "There's great temptation in a man did slay his da," Patricide: an act which the viewers - actual everyday Irishmen - would vehemently condemn. The "Irish family" ideal is further mocked when A) Pegeen decides to leave her betrothed for the wandering murderer, and B) when we discover that Widow Quin not only killed her own husband, but that most everyone seems to know and not care much.

Further more, Synge mocks the strong national faith of Irish Catholicism. While the Irish did historically have a love/hate, devotion/defiance relationship with the Catholic church, lines such as "'A daring fellow is the jewel of the world, and a man did split his father's middle with a single clout, should have the bravery of ten, so may God and Mary and St. Patrick bless you, and increase you from this mortal day.' 'Amen, O Lord'" would surely have not sat well with Irish audiences.

It is possible Synge simply "went too far" in his humor, but I find it more likely that he knew exactly the kind of outrage that "The Playboy of the Western World" would garner. Thus, the play could be in fact very nationalist: a sort of reverse psychology to push the Irish people to anger and thus realization of just how important their national identity was to them by mocking that very same conception of Ireland.

The Plays of WB Yeats: A Search for an Irish Identity

One of the foremost issues in Yeats and Lady Gregory's plays "Cathleen Ni Houlihan" and "The Pot of Broth" is that of an Irish identity. What does it mean to be Irish? How important is one's Irish-ness?

In "Cathleen Ni Houlihan" Ireland, the location, is given an actual physical identity that walks around, talks, and acts: the old wandering woman Cathleen Ni Houlihan. Throughout the play the old woman is constantly seen as a stranger whom noone recognizes. She is portrayed as being a widow with a deeply troubled past, and downtrodden. These characteristics seem to refer to Ireland's sordid and long history of constant invasion and oppression. She is, however, at the same time shown to be resolute despite being downtrodden, bold despite past troubles, and having throngs of loyal men despite being a widow. The seemingly inherent contradictions of the character traits of Cathleen Ni Houlihan are compounded by the final lines of the play, in which her physical appearance is revealed as a double as well: "Did you see an old woman going down the road? I did not, but I saw a young girl, and she had the walk of a queen." So, apparently Cathleen Ni Houlihan - and Ireland as well - is apparently both courted by many, and a widow; resolute and downtrodden; both old and young; homeless and a queen.

"Cathleen Ni Houlihan" didactically makes unambiguous commentary on contradiction in Irish society by making it abundantly clear that Cathleen Ni Houlihan is the personification of Ireland, and lends the play a serious tone by setting it on the eve of a doomed rebellion. "The Pot of Broth" ,however, relates the nature of duality in Irish legacy and identity through a more subtle approach of a fable-like comedy.

In "The Pot of Broth" there are many converse pairs sprinkled in the plot. On one side there is a very real belief in fairies and magic, but at the same time, strong Catholic faith. You have men that can turn themselves into hares and enchant stones, as well as priests that loom large in the community. Clever tricksters, and the earnestly convicted. Despite all of the contradictions "The Pot of Broth" remains a unified consistent story, and one that in some way rings true as purely Irish. Perhaps the play's Irish-ness in because of - rather than in spite of - these contradictions. Just as the Catholic celtic cross is as identifiably Irish as the pagan Tree of Life symbol, so are the priest and the fairy, cleverness and honesty, Catholicism and Pagan occultism.

In all this, what I think Yeats and Lady Gregory are saying about Irish identity, is that its messy, can't be clean-cut or told what to be. Catholic missionaries come in and try to convert Ireland to Catholicism, and are met with mixed results: the Irish people hold on to their pantheistic heritage. England tries to force the Anglican church into Ireland, and are met with resistance, Irish society can't simply be told what to be, how to define itself, at the direction of invaders and tyrants. "Cathleen Ni Houlihan" and "The Pot of Broth" reflect this sentiment by highlighting the contradictions and unlikely combinations that make up the character and culture of Ireland.