Padraig Pearse, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Harp

1. Outline how Henry characterises Pearse and the Irish Volunteers.

Henry has a really strong opinion of the Irish Volunteers which is first shown on page 96, line 5. He only sees the back of a head of one soldier and is pretty sure that he is one of “the Christian Brothers’ Boys”. He characterized them as inexperienced boys who still got their hair combed by their mother (p.96, l.17)

He also describes them as really religious people who are praying before a fight (p. 119, l. 10).

Padraig Pearse is also a volunteer and is declared “President of the provisional Government”. He is not mentioned a lot in this passage but Henry describes him as a “sweating bastard” (p. 99, l. 10). Henry is getting furious about the fact that the volunteers want to protect the Irish property but not the people (p.122, ll.14).

He starts pointing his rifle at Pearse and is ready to shoot him and Pearse is just turning his head to give him his profile which Henry describes as an “elegant death” (p.123, l. 3) which shows that Pearse is maybe not afraid to die or fearless.

2. Explain the significance of Irish harps and rosaries.

The rosaries are very important for the soldiers who are all religious which was common at this time in Ireland. The men are praying each time before a fight to get God’s help.

3. Interpret how Henry comments on the Volunteers, their efforts and their ultimate failure.

Henry thinks that the Volunteers are only a bunch of useless idiots who are only causing trouble. The others try to get the permission to kill the boy who is outside on the street (p.108, l. 29). Henry is calling them “gobshite” the whole time and after Collins does not want to give the women outside some money, Henry is getting mad and starts to curse in his mind that he hates all the Volunteers (p. 110, l. 35). Their efforts are not comparable to his ones which is shown when he feels that he is on the wrong side of the barricade (p.121, l. 16). He wants to fight for the people and wants to protect the nation instead of being more worried about the property which is getting stolen out of the shops.

4. Comment on Henry’s relationship to the Irish Volunteers.

Henry has a bad relationship to the Volunteers. He dislikes them because he does not think that they take their job seriously. They do not have even a whole uniform (p.100, ll.9).He also distrust them because of the O’Rahilly who was not going to turn up first because he thought that they would lose anyways. Henry also hates the fact about their religiosity (p.119, ll.10) for the simple reason that he could not see the sense to believe in god because he could not help them anyways. He looks at them very pejorative (p.100, l.9) and it seems like he could never give them his respect because he is, despite his age, a lot more experienced than them. But still, he is nice to them if he could get an advantage out of it like when he get the good meal of the Volunteer who do not want to eat meat on a Friday (p. 138, l.22).