Breakfast on Pluto

McCabe utilizes the setting of a stereotypical small-town community in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s to depict the pressure such an environment exerts on the individual, especially one as high-spirited as Braden. Braden paints a picture of Tyreelin as a typical small Irish town and invests it with tropes common in critical depictions of such environments: The people are narrow-minded and mostly uneducated; they perform menial, blue-collar jobs such as working in meat factories; and religion, specifically Catholicism, plays a significant role in their lives. In many ways, Braden represents the antithesis of his community members, and his actions, internal dialogue, and honesty call into question the supposed normalcy of the community.

The town’s relationship with Catholicism is particularly ripe with meaning. The townspeople use their religion not to inspire charity or acceptance, as the scripture might indicate, but as a rampart against unfamiliarity and uniqueness. McCabe further bolsters this depiction of small-town, religious isolationism by presenting Father Bernard as both the pillar of the community and Braden’s illegitimate father, which speaks to the hypocrisy of the church and disqualifies him as the pastor of the people. One of the greatest sources of Braden’s anger is that religion and tradition present smokescreens and camouflage for the worst kind of bigotry and small-mindedness. This type of literary challenge of close-minded religious norms is a common figure in 20th century Irish literature, such as James Joyce’s Dubliners. McCabe joins the conversation by openly critiquing the contradictory teachings and actions of the Catholic church via the mouthpiece of Braden.

By his very nature, Braden challenges the community and forces the people of Tyreelin to, if not embrace, at least live with his differences. As in most small communities, the custom determines the norm, and the norm becomes the only accepted way of behaving. Braden’s antics shatter the carefully maintained façade of false respectability. Braden literally calls into question that respectability, sharing stories in which married men cavort with teenage girls and priests rape their servants. For the reader, Braden’s narrative blatantly upends the accepted normalcy of his small town. Braden’s attempts to force the town itself to address its own demons, however, are largely unsuccessful: Braden suffers for trying to warn Martina Sheridan of the perils of engaging with an older man, and his attempts to villainize Father Bernard are rebuffed. Instead, the town continues to criminalize Braden for his differentness. After Braden causes a scandal in a bar, somebody kills his dog and destroys all his clothes to both punish him and relegate him to the laws of their society.

By depicting Braden’s punishment while the more serious moral and criminal offences go unpunished, McCabe invites us to critically assess the worth of a community that rejects anything outside of the prescribed norm while allowing “traditional” sins to happen under cover of false morality. By sharing these events from the perspective of Braden, an outsider, the reader’s eyes are held wide as McCabe subverts our sense of normalcy and forces us to question Ireland’s communal sense of morality.

Braden’s character is deeply involved in his personal journey of discovery and survival, and therefore the current events of his time are largely left untold, except when they come into direct contact (and conflict) with his life. We can see this most effectively in the depiction of the Irish Troubles. This period of conflict lasted in Ireland from 1960s to the 1990s, covering roughly the same time span as the novel itself. By placing the conflict in the background of Braden’s self-discovery, McCabe emphasizes the personal over the collective, yet simultaneously underscores how the collective influences the personal. Thus, Braden ignores the reality of political and criminal intrigue, yet Irwin, one of his best friends, is a direct victim of the Troubles, and Braden himself also barely escapes death in a disco-pub; these events affect Braden deeply and change the course of his life.

The conflict between the Irish and the British has its roots in nationalism and political wrangling. The region in dispute was Northern Ireland. Historically, the prevalence of Protestants in the region led to it being annexed by Great Britain to form the United Kingdom in the 19th century. The Catholic minority in Northern Ireland experienced discrimination and developed a strong Irish nationalist block whose desire was to reunite with Ireland proper (both form the same island and are apart from England, Wales, and Scotland, which form Great Britain). Unionists (mostly Irish Protestants) supported the United Kingdom as a political entity. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) was formed to militarize people into fighting for the dissolution of the United Kingdom. This caused violence to break out in all three regions—Northern Ireland predominantly, but also in Ireland and England as opposing parties. During the conflict, almost 4,000 people died, more than half of whom were innocent civilians. The events portrayed in the novel (particularly Irwin participating in the IRA efforts and informing the British and the bombing of the London disco), are emblematic examples of the violence and terrorism that defined the everyday existence of people in those regions at the time.

As McCabe notes through the example of the forbidden love between the Catholic Pat and Protestant Sandra, the Irish were battling amongst themselves because of the religious divisions. The overwhelming poverty of Ireland during this period served to increase people’s angst and despair. All these events may appear to take place offstage when it comes to Braden and his story, yet McCabe makes sure to underline how these circumstances inform the mentality of the people and their reactions. The reader understands that Braden’s very evasion of the topic is, in fact, a defense mechanism to protect himself from the trauma the conflict has inflicted on his life. The numbness exhibited by Braden regarding the Troubles reflects the numbness of his entire country, where people may have lived in fear but still had to live their day-to-day lives.