How the South sees the North

A very different discussion than one might have in the U.S. I read a book by Jennifer Johnson, an Irish author who wrote about the Troubles in the 1970s--when not many did. The Troubles had a small role in this book, which is about Clara, who lives in Dublin and is recovering from surgery and a broken heart. She befriends a man from the North who is also broken hearted after losing his wife and daughter (to an IRA bomb, so the Troubles are in there, just not the main thread). I found their conversations about the North very interesting. There were three bits, all of which follow.

one

Clara: I’ve never been further north than Drogheda. Even there you can smell the disease when the wind is in the wrong direction.
Laurence: Would that be the attitude of many people down here?
Clara: Quite a number. Just ask around and you’ll see for yourself.
Laurence: Disease?
Clara: Terminal hatred--infectious, contagious, hereditary. A bit like AIDS--incurable.

two

Laurence: Maybe you don’t know the North. We specialise up there win these long main streets.
She’d seen them on television--rubble and drifting smoke, gaping windows, people made dispirited by the knowledge of their own uncompromising hatred.

three

Clara: Why did you say gutted by history?
Laurence: It seems to me to be true. We are a gutless people, not just my family, who don’t speak, but the whole damn lot of us. We allowed ourselves to be collectively bullied. That’s pretty gutless, you must admit. Shaming, when you think about it. We subscribed seriously to the “whatever you say, say nothing” philosophy. We didn’t raise our voices against the unreasonable behaviour of the Unionists and now we’re having a problem raising our voices agasitn the unreasonable behaviour of the Republicans. Our voices disappeared years ago with our guts, out our backsides.
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