The Trends -- Reading in the Dark

Most of my observations on "Reading in the Dark" have been structural, how to read the novel. Here I will try to connect how I'm reading to partition, and maybe to partition literature in a general sense. (If there is such a thing?)

"So, I celebrated all the anniversaries; of all the deaths, all the betrayals-for both of them-in my head, year after year, until, to my pleasure and surprise, they began to become confused and muddled, and I wondered at times had I dreamed it all.
Hauntings are, in their way, very specific. Everything has to be exact, even the vaguenesses. My family's history was like that too. It came to me in bits, from people who rarely recognized all they had told." (236)

This quote from the novel described to me exactly how the novel felt. What happened with Eddie, and McIlhenny, and Buddy Mahon came in bits and pieces from different people in the family and community. Each story kept reworking itself, retelling its story recognizably, but differently. I was struck by the boy who gets run over by the wagon in the beginning of novel. The protagonist feels pity for the policeman, even though there is this history/presence of police brutality towards Catholics. A little while later, a schoolmate retells the story, but says the cop doesn't care, doesn't even look back at the child. The novel ends with the father feeling pity for the Englishman whose son was shot on their doorstep. "Even if his son was one of those," the father claims.(His son is a solider not a policeman though.) There are also multiple stories of the haunted Grenaghans and the curse of the man who had sex with the devil-woman. The novel repeats objects (for lack of a better word), in order to further conflate these multiplicities of story. Over and over again stairs, fires, roses, and ghosts are part of the scene. This retelling is also why the title is "Reading in the Dark" after the section of the same title. The narrator reimagines, retells, and arguably relives what he has seen on the page, and overheard about his family.

In the chapter "Political Education" the reading of the novel is taken to a new definition. At the school a British army chaplain speaks to the class about the threat of communism, begging British allegiance by brushing off Catholic/Protestant disputes by framing them as quarrels within the Christian family. "We were the of the West and must throw in our lot with it," is similar rhetoric the teacher spouts. The next day the class returns to their normal lesson on European history. This time the rhetoric is, "History was about trends, not people. We had to learn to see the trends." (209) One friend realizes the kind of shite this is. "Propaganda...That's all that is. First, it's the Germans. Then it's the Russians. Always, it's the IRA. British Propaganda."

I read this as a cue for the reader. See the trends! See the repetition! This is not just about these characters, it is the legacy of colonialism. People are belittled in colonial discourse, and we might also blur characters together when thinking about all we have read in conjunction. There is a reason "Reading in the Dark" includes multiple generations. It is the trends. It is building repression. This is also why it ends with the Troubles, instead of beginning there. This is the legacy and why informing is huge betrayal. The trends, the Bogside, the family, the shared otherness...memory.