English 11.67
Unit 1: Nationalism & Ethnic Identity
Group Exercise: Analyzing Pathos in Literature

Identify the different emotions evoked by Tomás O’Crohan in his first non-fiction account of life on the Blasket Islands, Island Cross-Talk (1928). Discuss how the reader is made to feel (as a witness of and perhaps vicarious participant in whatever events are portrayed). Consider the event itself, but also the manner in which it is related. You might consider such devices as: diction, sentence length, 1st-person pronouns, verb choice, adverb and adjective use, personification, irony, religious language, anthropomorphism, and punctuation (and perhaps, to a lesser degree, such literary devices as repetition, imagery, metaphor, simile, tone, alliteration, and rhyme).

Excerpt #1

'I heard the cuckoo today, upon my soul, whatever sign it is,' Tadhg the Joker says to his wife. 'I wonder, Nell, if anyone else heard it?'

'I know nothing whatever about that,' says she.

'You are not so blind about other matters that are no concern of yours at all,' says Tadhg.

'Aren't you in a great state over it. How well nothing crosses your path but it scalds you. You have to be different from everyone else in the village.'

'But my dear woman, don't they say it's not a very good sign when anyone hears it at all; and I heard it clearly.'

'That depends on which direction it might be coming from. Was it from behind you heard the call? If so, that is no good sign.'

'Yerra, the devil, didn't I hear it in front and behind! And settle this question for me: it was calling in front when I faced uphill, but when I turned seawards, wasn't it calling behind me--so, my dear woman, 'tis hard for a man to be on his guard, if it means any harm.'

He set off westwards along the road and met a woman from the upper end of the village, drawing manure with an ass.

'Tadhg,' said she, 'the King heard the cuckoo today. I suppose nobody hearts it except a King or a man of high rank like him.'

'God help us,' said Tadhg, 'you have relieved my mind of a great burden!'

End of April 1919

Excerpt #2

The worst day of storm since the Famine years. A gale of exceptional fury, thunder and floods of rainwater. The deluge did not spare glen or bridge from its pounding. It swept out into the wide ocean anything that had stood more than seven years. The sea had turned yellow almost as far as Dunquin. The flood ran into many of the houses but there was no way of stopping it; they could only let it flow out the other side.

When there was a lull, the old people said the storm was not to be wondered at, for God was looking down on the great storms among the human race. Some of them said too that such storms among the people were always matched by a threat of the same from the skies.

The tempest is high and the sea raging, a high swell and a stormy sky, with every sign that it would not be today or tomorrow it would weary of its terrifying course.

'Mary, Holy Mother!' said one old woman. 'Will no fine day come this year? By the looks of this evening there will soon be blue mould coming on my pipe for lack of any shred of tobacco to put in it.'

'Isn't it all equal to you so long as you haven't blue mould in your belly for lack of food,' said I.

'I feel the want of tobacco more!' was the answer she made me.

December 1920

Excerpt #3

Around midday where did I find myself standing but on exactly that green grassy point between Boat Creek and Blind Creek. There my dawdling came to a halt and, although I have been there often since my first visit long ago, at this hour it was as perfect as I had seen it on any previous occasion when I had planted my two feet there. Then I started pacing up and down, to and fro, on the point. The sun was shining bright without a puff of wind in the sky; the murmur of the sea rose and fell pleasantly; no wildness now, no raging. The birds on sea and land were chattering together with every sign that they understood each other, for some would fly out and others fly in. On every hummock and grassy perch where I used to sit with the gentleman who was with me four years ago I placed my hand three times, and if I did not feel more sadness from it than gladness, I did not feel less.

A feeling of loneliness comes over a man on a fine balmy day like this, when there is no one else around to disturb him, and he feels affection for the man who was his comrade and who is far away from him now. Then he grows melancholy. I sat down on a low wall where we used to have that book Séadna [a certain Gaelic folk novel] open and, on my oath, it did not increase my joy--it was driving me further to the other extreme.

Roused from my thoughts by catching sight of Séamaisín with a bundle of seaweeed on his back, I walked home with him.

December 1921

Excerpt #4

The men of the village are on the strand today gathering loose seaweed--red seaweed it is called around May, for the creeks fill up with it at this time of the year. They are manuring turnips with it, for the handful of potatoes they have sown have been manured already. The hills are as white as milk still and there is thick driving hail today that would put out your eye. It is to be feared that an old woman from the village has lost the sight of one eye as a result of it too, after a hailstone struck her right in the eyes.

A young girl who is leaving for America was setting out. The usual custom is for all the people of the village to follow the emigrant down to the sea, and that's all that is left for them to do. It was while the old woman was accompanying her that the hailstone struck her in the eye.

It was at Ram's Cove that she had to be lifted into the currach. This was the spot where a lady visitor had to be lifted on board some years ago because the weather was so bad.

An enquiry has come to the Blasket from someone in County Clare for a girl who would improve his knowledge of Irish, write and read letters, speak it and teach it. That is not the case with Brian O'Kelly, of course. I don't know whether anyone else in the country has as much written Irish in front of him as he has to hand.

Wouldn't it delight my heart to be able to read a book of my own before I died.

April 1922

Paul Marchbanks
marchban@email.unc.edu