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EMPLOYMENT, UNEMPLOYMENT, AND FAMILY CONDITION
IN DERMOT BOLGER'S THE BALLYMUN TRILOGY
Yingxu Wang
IAH 221C
06/26/2012
Dermot Bolger's 2010 book entitled The Ballymun Trilogy is a collection of three
inter/dependent plays exploring the problems and ills of Ireland's recent history marked
in its Ballymun project. The three plays included in this collection can be read as either
whole in itself or altogether connected. Written individually in separate years, these plays
greatly touch on the life and times in Ballymun from the late 1960s up to the first decade
of the 2000s. Well-researched by the playwright, the plays have historical connections
and references thereby, embedded in realism. Bolger's book collection is essentially a
literature from below, that is to say, a literature of and for the middle class in the modernday Ireland. As such, the interpretation of Bolger's The Ballymun Trilogy ought to be
historical and politico-economical. Bolger has a specific audience in mind in writing his
plays. And he intended this collection to be the medium for his audience to engage in a
conversation concerning their composite community and ever-changing identity. This
paper argues that Bolger's book collection should be interpreted in the light of Ireland's
socio-economic history relative to the Ballymun community.
Unemployment is a social problem substantially tackled by Bolger's “From These
Green Heights.” Christy, a family man, has a lofty hope for a positive future when his
family decided to move to the building complex famously called Ballymun. The building,
also known as Ballymun Flat (or simply flat), was a newly constructed structure built by
the corporation and financed by the government of Ireland. Housing numerous people
from the slums of Dublin,1 Ballymun was an ideal and seemingly futuristic structure
characterized in the urban regeneration project. Like the high ideals of Ballymun, Christy
aspires for a home full of comfort and ease for his family. To attain this end, Christy has
1 Niamh Malone and Carmel O'Sullivan. “The Stage and the City: Narrative, Identity and Place in
Dermot Bolger's “The Ballymun Trilogy” (2004-2008),” Research in Drama Education 16, no. 2 (2011):
235.
to have a decent and regular work to support and sustain the needs of his wife Carmel and
his five-year-old son Dessie.
For certain event, however, his dream never becomes a reality. Comparable to the
dwellers in the flat, Christy has a difficulty finding a good job. Not to mention, Ballymun
is far from the metropolis of Dublin. Worst, such building complex is structurally and
architecturally unsafe and incomplete and its landscape is full of soils and earth.
Ballymun, as it seems, is a failed project similar with Christy's unfulfilled aspiration. The
flat represents an essentially retrogressive and economically downtrodden nation/state of
Ireland in the 1960s while its poor inhabitants represent the Dubliners who are
completely destitute and in need of help. The absence of work or employment was the
key factor why the micro- and micro-economy of Dublin was not progressing together
with its citizens. In the late 1960s, Christy and his family encountered the utter hardship
brought about by poor urban planning, massive unemployment, and an indifferent
government. At the end of the play, Christy regrets the decision he made in moving to
Ballymun, saying, “Ballymun was a mistake.”2
Bolger's first play in his The Ballymun Trilogy deals with issues involving family
relation and condition. Lonergan notes that one of the most prominent themes in Bolger's
book is the “use of familial relationships” in order to examine society's development.3
Christy, for one, finds it remarkably challenging to establish his being the father of the
family. As the head of the family, Christy believes that he has the obligation to uplift the
life and living of his family members. But such function is hard to be achieved because of
the absence of work. He simply has no job for reasons relating to the macro-economy of
2
3
Dermot Bolger. The Ballymun Trilogy, (Dublin: New Island, 2010), 23.
Patrick Lonergan. “The Ballymun Trilogy by Dermot Bolger, New Island 300pp,” The Irish
Times, May 28, 2010.
the 1960s Ireland. Moreover, Christy experienced the difficulty of travelling from his
house in Ballymun towards the city of Dublin where work was mostly available. The
road problem and the distance between his house and the workplace greatly add up to
Christy's hardly bearable troubles.
Like Christy, Carmel struggles to establish his mother/wife figure in the
household. With the uncomfortable and unsafe environment that is Ballymun, Carmel
failed to be a mother to her unborn child. Ballymun was becoming a dangerous place for
mothers. Further, she felt a sense of isolation in relation with her neighbors. In her former
place at Boston Street, Carmel knew the faces and names of the members of her
community. Being the smallest unit of the society, the family ought to be defined by its
place in the village. Surprising also is Dessie's assumed role in Christy's household.
Young as he was, Dessie embodies, or assumes to embody, the function of a much mature
person. Ultimately, the family in Bolger's “From These Green Heights” is problematic, if
not dysfunctional.
Employment or unemployment is a recurring subject in Bolger's plays, including
his second installment “The Townlands of Brazil.” Eileen's boyfriend and Monika have
the same situatedness concerning their physical distance with their loved ones. In spite of
their distant times – Eileen's lover lives (and dies) in the quarter of the 20th century while
Monika exists in the near 21st century – they have sameness of feeling or sentiment, that
is, a longing to be together, physically and geographically, with their loved ones. Work
was the chief reason why the two were forced to separate themselves from their dear ones.
Eileen's boyfriend, on the one hand, was far from Ireland because his job was in the Great
Britain. In the 1960s as well as the present, the Great Britain has have a healthy trade and
economy. Opportunity was there while, as one of the characters in Bolger's play said,
“There is no opportunity here.”4 That was before, of course.
Monika, on the other hand, was far from Poland – where her daughter resides and
where her native country is – because her workplace was in Ireland. In contrast to the
time-period of Christy, Monika's contemporary Dublin is truly progressive and
economically successful.5 Thus, foreign immigration in Ireland was strongest in the late
20th century and onwards. As it appears, Poland has a poor economy in contrast with
Ireland's robust trade and commerce. There is a great change in present-day Dublin's
socio-economic condition. Perhaps the urban regeneration project marked in the
construction of Ballymun was effective after all. But no, the crisis lingers to be pervasive
due to the effects of social stigma salient in Ballymun.
Eileen, a native of Ballymun, was uprooted in her home; the primary reason was
because of Eileen's parents' unacceptance of her untimely and blasphemous pregnancy.
The biological father of Eileen's baby was met with a tragic death. Being religious
devotees, her parents disown Eileen and banish her away from Ballymun forever. In the
process, Eileen's family – that is, she as the mother and the baby as her son – was lacking
a support either from a husband/father or grand/parents. The former is literally dead while
the latter considers them (Eileen and her fatherless baby) spiritually dead. The definition
of a family, then, becomes fluid and ambivalent. Here, the crisis is the constitution of a
true family. Eileen does not really want to leave Ballymun but she was, at the end,
helpless.
In the following years, however, Eileen's well-grown son shatters into thousand
4
Dermot Bolger. The Ballymun Trilogy, (Dublin: New Island, 2010), 56.
5
Christina Wald. “Dermot Bolger,” in The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary Irish
Playwrights, eds. Martin Middeke and Peter Paul Schnierer, (London: Methuen Drama, 2010), 32.
pieces the Ballymun complex. Probably a sign of destroying the old and erecting the new
one. Still, the destruction for Ballymun signifies a subversion of genealogy. Eileen's son
seems to disown her mother's lineage the same way her parents disown them. To my
mind, this is a cycle of violence/abuse between family members, a symptom of a
dysfunctional family. With respect to Monika, the meaning of family takes a new form.
Monika and her daughter are considered as family – meaning to say, the society accepts
her “family” despite the absence of the father figure. There is a sharp contrast between
Monika's life and that of Eileen. Ballymun harshly throws away Eileen in spite of her
being its native daughter while it warmly receives Monika in spite of her being a
foreigner.
Employment or unemployment continues to be the subject matter in Bolger's “The
Consequences of Lightning.” The time-setting might be 2007, yet, the issues at stake are
largely derived from the 1960s or so. Frank, a forty-something Dubliner, deliberately
separates himself from his ineffective father. He neither felt fatherly care nor fatherly
love from Sam (his father), which drove Frank to hate him very much. Sam was a diehard drunkard, always drinking alcohol perhaps to escape from reality. He remarked that
man ought not to be depressed or saddened by the cruelties of the world – for, to him, that
is not becoming a man – but instead turn to drink to swallow the bitterness of an
oppressive life. Without work, Sam drowns himself to conceal reality's indifference and
suffering. As a result, he was unable to watch over his sons. Little Frank needed a father
figure amidst the demise of his mother. However, his father failed him and Frank opted
for an absolute detachment, mentally and geographically, from Sam's disgusting presence.
The much older Frank is now residing and working far from Ballymun. So this is the
major effect of a family whose father is jobless and, thereby, turns to alcoholism, drug
addiction, and so on. Poverty breeds not only vice/crime but also a broken home.
A shattered home is indeed visible in Bolger's “The Consequences of Lightning.”
From the second play in Bolger's The Ballymun Trilogy, one sees Eileen and even
Monika in the character of Katie, Frank's childhood sweetheart. These three women have
a child born of wedlock. Nonetheless, the community in Ballymun has various treatment
to these women at various times. In the 1960s, Eileen's society was deeply conservative
with respect to marriage and sex. She was compelled to carry the burden due to an
unwanted pregnancy. Unlike Eileen, Monika was accepted in Ballymun probably by
virtue of her being a foreigner. The rule was only applicable to native inhabitants.
Comparable to Eileen, Katie also encountered the harshness of harassment caused
by her deeply religious neighbors. Both are separated by time and by personality as well.
Eileen was submissive while Katie was a fighter. She fought for her child against the
discrimination instigated by her community members in Ballymun. Frank even supported
Katie's struggle by continually loving her. (Yes, Frank has other personal war with his
father so he distanced himself to all his loved ones including Katie.) In the current period,
the definition of family is deconstructed like the deconstruction/destruction of the
building complex. The concept of family continues to be redefined in the postmodern era.
Frank, time and again, is confronted by his past in the death of his father. He is persuaded
to resolve the crisis in the present time; otherwise, the cycle of abuse will linger in the
future. Pierse argues that Bolger's The Ballymun Trilogy is an attempt to “engage
communities as co-authors.”6 Thus, Frank's dilemma, together with other characters in
6
Michael Pierse. “Dermot Bolger, The Ballymun Trilogy. Dublin: New Island, 2010. 300 pages,”
Irish University Review 42 (2012): 184.
the play, is an on-going process of deconstruction and construction of what
fundamentally constitues family, community, and economic life.
Bolger's book collection of plays ought to be read in the light of Ireland's recent
history relative to Ballymun. In particular, family relations and un/employment
prominent in Ballymun should be explored in order to fully grasp the conflict/s apparent
in The Ballymun Trilogy. Family relation and un/employment are deeply interrelated.
Bolger focuses on the middle class, which is an economic class. Thus, the employment
status, which is an economic status, is essential in understanding the crisis examined in
the book. The staying and the leaving, the entry and the departure in Ballymun are
dependent, one way or the other, on the economic needs of the family members.
Bibliography
Bolger, Dermot. The Ballymun Trilogy. Dublin: New Island, 2010.
Lonergan, Patrick. “The Ballymun Trilogy by Dermot Bolger, New Island 300pp.” The
Irish
Times, May 28, 2010.
Malone, Niamh, and Carmel O'Sullivan. “The Stage and the City: Narrative, Identity and
Place in Dermot Bolger's “The Ballymun Trilogy” (2004-2008).” Research in
Drama Education 16, no. 2 (2011): 235-250.
Pierse, Michael. “Dermot Bolger, The Ballymun Trilogy. Dublin: New Island, 2010. 300
pages.” Irish University Review 42 (2012): 184-191.
Wald, Christina. “Dermot Bolger.” In The Methuen Drama Guide to Contemporary Irish
Playwrights, eds. Martin Middeke and Peter Paul Schnierer., 19-37. London:
Methuen
Drama, 2010.