51 pages • 1 hour read
Patrick MccabeBreakfast on Pluto
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Patrick Braden
Patrick Braden (also self-styled as Braden, Patrick-Puss, Pussy, Puss-Puss, Paddy-Pussy, and Mrs. Riley throughout the novel) is the protagonist, narrator, and central consciousness of Breakfast on Pluto. From an early age, Braden develops a sense of gender duality and expresses a desire to become a woman. This manifests externally in his donning of dresses and internally in his fantasies about a traditional family with a strong, male figure to protect and shelter him while he gives birth to and deeply loves many children. Although Braden’s desire to be a woman is evident in his actions and thoughts, throughout the novel, he uses both male and female pronouns to express his inner self, evidence of the powerful influence of the heteronormative culture in which he lives. The crucial aspect of Braden’s journey is his search for a resolution to this identity confusion. By the end of the narrative, Braden settles as Mrs. Riley, a middle-aged single woman. Even though this is far from Braden’s early fantasies of a lush, feminine life financed by powerful men, Mrs. Riley seems quietly satisfied, having found an acceptable place within a society that spurns people like her.
McCabe depicts Braden’s journey as a series of picaresque adventures, following the character as he blazes a scorching trail through Tyreelin and then London. In traditional Spanish picaresque novels, the roguish but loveable hero adventures through a series of narrative episodes, typically with humor or satire. While Breakfast on Pluto certainly falls into this definition, McCabe subverts it by making our hero as unlike his picaresque predecessors as possible. Braden is no knight in shining armor or vision of masculinity; instead, he is a gender fluid but predominantly feminine antihero waiting for his knight in shining armor who never arrives.
In Braden, McCabe delivers a caustic commentary on the perils of stereotypical Irish life, the Catholic church, the Northern Ireland conflict, and the alienation of members of society who are not “normal.” By letting us into the mind of an outsider, McCabe presents the reader with a new perspective on “normal” life. We witness the unforgiveable wrongdoings of the Catholic Church, which can accept “traditional sins” like rape and illegitimate children, but not untraditional embodiments of sexuality or gender. We experience the heinous, cruel crimes of the IRA and the forces battling it, which lead to Irwin’s death and the mangling of innocent bystanders in a restaurant. We see police brutality, sexual abuse, and child abandonment—all of which Braden rails against, even as all of society around him accepts these abuses and instead points at him as a culprit. While Braden is distinctly abnormal, by presenting these “normal” aspects of Irish life through his cynical perspective, McCabe subverts the reader’s perception of normalcy and calls for change.
Charlie and Irwin
Charlie Kane and Irwin Kerr are Braden’s best friends. As children, they serve as correlative antheses to Braden. Charlie, artistically talented and feminine, is their leader. She organizes modeling shows where Braden is able to explore his identity. Charlie represents the woman Braden wants to be: feminine, artistic, powerful, and, most of all, accepted.
Irwin, on the other hand, is the type of man Braden is expected to be by his community—and the type of man Braden desires as his protector. As a child, Irwin prefers to play war; as an adult, he fights for the IRA. He is masculine and patriotic, the polar opposite of Braden.
Together, Charlie and Irwin represent the epitome of Braden’s fantasy. They fall in love and find happiness together in their relationship, which is Braden’s greatest desire in life. When Irwin is forced to choose between protecting Charlie or the IRA, he willingly sacrifices himself to protect his love. It is this type of man—a protector—who Braden tries to manifest through his relationships with older, wealthy men and his infatuation with another traditionally masculine character, Brendan Cleeve.
Irwin’s involvement with the IRA also facilitates McCabe’s commentary on the ruthlessness and futility of the conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles. Irwin joins the IRA (Irish Republican Army), even though he is not a violent person and does not really understand the conflict. In doing so, he follows in the footsteps of most young men in their community, compromising their own lives for the sake of group-think patriotism. Irwin’s death, among the other deaths caused by the IRA throughout the novel, is representative of the widespread bloodshed plaguing Ireland at the time. So too, then, is Charlie’s grief a symbol of a national grief and the many wives, girlfriends, and daughters left behind by the Troubles. The conflict left over 3,000 dead and more than 47,000 injured.
Terence
Dr. Terence is a character who never appears directly in Braden’s narrative, only through the double mediation of Braden’s recollections of his words or gestures. Terence is a shadowy figure without a full name, and his role largely consists of wise if maudlin words that act as an impetus for Braden’s self-reflection.
Terence is perhaps a figment of Braden’s imagination. He appears only after Braden suffers a breakdown in jail, a point at which Braden proves himself to be susceptible to the imaginings of his own mind. Terence then disappears during Braden’s stay in the hospital as he begins to regain mental clarity. Although his disappearance hurts Braden deeply, it comes at a time when he is able to fully embrace his life as Mrs. Riley and thus no longer needs Terence’s advice or support. Significantly, Braden offers no physical description of Terence and only mentions his strong arms that hold him together—a physical act for which he has vocally searched throughout the novel, making it likely that he manifested it himself.
On the one hand, Terence is Braden’s alter ego, offering Braden insight and understanding of his inner self with the cool-headed professionalism Braden lacks. This allows Braden to fully integrate and inhabit a truer representation of his personality. On the other hand, Terence is a symbolic figure who represents the culmination of Braden’s desire: He offers the type of parental guidance and compassion Braden craves from his absent mother, and he also provides the strong, masculine leadership which Braden desires in a partner. With both these figures absent from his real life and unlikely to ever appear, Braden manifests them in his own mind in the form of Dr. Terence. When Dr. Terence disappears, although it hurts Braden—as abandonment always does—he is finally able to uphold the mantle of his independence.
Father Bernard
Even though Father Bernard’s presence plays a significant role in Braden’s life and therefore in the novel, much like Dr. Terence, we only learn about him through Braden’s imaginations of what he might be like, mediated through Braden’s anger and desire for revenge. Father Bernard represents a caricature of a sinful priest: a man filled with the passion of life and dedication to his priestly calling, yet unable to resist worldly temptations. In Braden’s reimagining of his father’s life, he assumes Father Bernard raped his mother, villainizing the religious figure and reducing his mother to an innocent trope.
Braden considers Father Bernard’s sin unforgivable, especially—or perhaps only—because the priest refuses to acknowledge Braden’s existence. In response to this perpetual slight, Braden attempts to provoke and torture his father with his scandalous behavior in Tyreelin. Braden assumes Father Braden’s weakness and cowardice shape his lack of response, but because he is absent from the narrative, his reasons could be diverse—it’s even possible that his religious office insulates him from the extent of Braden’s diversions. And in truth, Father Braden does respond with some of the generosity befitting his station: He pays a type of child support to Whiskers to support Braden throughout his childhood.
Although Braden’s vitriol regarding Father Bernard is palpable throughout the narrative, McCabe intentionally connects the characters not only by blood, but by name: “Braden” is a near perfect anagram of “Bernard.” If we trust Braden’s assumptions regarding Father Bernard, he is a man restricted by his culturally mandated position who acts out against those restrictions in a way that is perceived as sinful. So, too, does Braden. Although Braden only criticizes Father Bernard, their lives are parallel, if distinct.
Eily Bergin
Like Father Bernard, Eily Bergin, Braden’s teenage mother, does not appear in the narrative except through Braden’s fantasies. Her ghostly presence and particularly her cold absence shape Braden’s life in crucial ways.
Again, as with his father, Braden projects fantasies about his mother to stand in for the details he does not know. Yet whereas Braden’s assumptions about his father are largely negative, his projections about Eily Bergin are mythically positive. He imagines her to be the daughter of a poor but respectable and harmonious family, and her family’s desire to help the church becomes Eily’s downfall. This whole sequence of events is a projection of what Braden believes (or needs to believe) to be true and not necessarily what has transpired. Braden idealizes his mother because he cannot bear to be angry with her for abandoning her baby. Thus, Braden fantasizes about a perfect, glamorous, beautiful mother who comes to whisk him off into the universe, as far as Pluto and away from the harsh realities of life. In truth, Eily Bergin is long gone by the time Braden begins even to think about her, and she never reappears to support her son.
The complexity of Braden’s relationship with this idea of his mother is evident in the way he engages with other characters throughout the novel. Although he pines for his mother, when Louise attempts to embody her, Braden rejects her. When Braden witnesses another young woman, Martina Sheridan, in a position similar to what he imagines his mother experienced, we see the inaccuracy of his assumptions play out: Braden tries to rescue Martina, but she is a woman in no need of rescuing. Through these engagements with other characters, the reader develops misgivings about Braden’s idealized representation of Eily Bergin.
