Fathers hatred

Everything In This Country Must left me confused and amazed. How much the father must have hated soldiers that eventhough the saved his favorite and prized horse, once they left he went to the barn and shot the animal. What was the poor man thinking? Im not ssure about the prices of horses in mid 80s england but here a fully trained draft will bring anywhere from 1000 to $8000 depending on pedigree, conformation, and temperment. The man is also left without what seems to be a very capable plow horse. besides the economic impact the man has lost another piece of his family or atleast thats how my horses are treated. So whaat is the difference between him killing his favorite horse and the soldiers accidently killing his wife and son either way the family shrinks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_horse

From the Page to the Screen

Many popular books are often translated from words on a page into actions that play out on a screen. This transformation from book to film can provide readers and watchers with two different perspectives of the same story. For instance, when I read the Harry Potter books, I pictured certain things in my mind that didn’t match up to the images on the screen. I therefore could compare my ideas to that of the director. I think this strategy is useful when analyzing literature. This opportunity is present to us after having read Everything in this Country Must. I discovered that a short film of a meager 20 minutes has been produced with the assistance of the author, Colum McCann. I think it is beneficial to watch the film. Here is a link to a video of it:

http://vimeo.com/26135598

Secrecy

I found it interesting in Wood how secretive the narrator and his mother must be in this seemingly harmless task of making poles. I think it speaks to the level of tension present in Ireland during the troubles. McCann barely writes of the political/religious issues in the background, yet we as readers are drawn into the story like a conspiracy. The making of poles seems to us like the making of deadly weapons. Oddly enough they are not hiding the job from an enemy or rival. In fact they are working for the "enemy" and hiding the job from the narrator's father.
I found it interesting how McCann chooses not to write about violence or death but something apparently innocent; milling logs. Yet the tension is there, and we see an aspect of war that isn't usually covered in "war novels": that of the family physically untouched by war, but still effected, and in this case split, torn between loyalties and survival.

http://www.linenmemorial.org/

This is an interesting site I found on a memorial dedicated to honoring those who died during the Troubles in Ireland. I thought it would be interesting to compare this memorial to McCann's memorial of the war through his story. You also see the immensity of the death that happened during this war that you don't get from Wood.

Voice in Everything in This Country Must

I was interested in the voice McCann writes in in his story Everything in This Country Must. I thought it sounded eloquent yet strangely childish. It added a surreal quality that draws the reader into the story more so than if it had been written in a straight, matter of fact tone. One thing I noticed in particular about the writing was the use of long, run on sentences with lots of conjunctions. I thought this gave a feeling of immensity, as if the story is too big to fit into neat, organized sentences. Though the straight facts of the story are not all that impressive, the emotional toll that it takes on the narrator and her father is significant. We see this not just in the description of the characters but through the language and the writing. Not everything the narrator writes makes perfect sense, and that combined with the long sentences reminds one of the ramblings of a disillusioned, shellshocked soldier.
This brought up the question to me of who is telling this story. Is it from the perspective of the girl as a fifteen year old, or an adult looking back on her past. I couldn't come to any conclusion, but I was leaning towards the former. The voice seems traumatized, and naive yet perceptive. It seems to be written in a burst of inspiration. Yet it is hard to imagine a fifteen year old poetic enough to write something like, "oh what a small sky for so much rain."

http://www.colummccann.com/interviews/everything.htm

This is an interview with Colum McCann about the writing of Everything in This Country Must. I found it interesting how he describes his writing process and how it relates to the particular voice.

Catholicism vs. Protestants in Ireland

At first I did not understand why the helping of the Protestants in the "Wood" was a big deal. I did further research and learned that there is some sort of feud between Protestants and Catholics in Ireland. In the 1600s the English came and took control of northern Ireland. This part Ireland was soon colonized by mostly Protestants from England. The rest of Ireland is a majority of Catholics. Over time the north became more profound in their industrialization, while the Catholics in the rest of country somewhat suffered. And during the 20th century there are even a few more occasions where the Irish Catholics try to rebel and take back their country, economically, from the British. The boy keeps him and his mother's mission a secret from his father because what they are doing would probably be considered treason to him.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/northireland1.html

War in Ireland

In the story "Everything in this Country Must", there seems to be a lot of tension between the father and the soldiers. Judging by the accents and the summaries of the story, it seems to be during "The Troubles" period in Ireland. During this period, their was much tension between the protestants and the catholics (or the british and the irish). Many irish felt as if Britain was invading their country and they wanted the soldiers out and to create an all irish constitution.

From the readings we have done this semester and from previous knowledge, it seems like most all war stems from religion. Religion is the very thing that people say unite them and spreads peace however it seems to actual just create a gap between groups of people. It is an interesting source of discussion because this class has focused almost completely on war. This is a link to some information about "The Troubles".

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Getting-Past-the-Troubles.html

McCann

I found McCann's style of writing weird but impacting. Both stories have their own little scenario of being in an awkward situation. It makes reader's think of how they would react to the situation that the narrator is in. This was really different compared to the rest of the stories we have read, because we know for a fact that this story is fiction and McCann does not have any authority to really make a story of fiction based off certain events from the past. He does have an Irish background, but it is not sure if he has actually ever experience any of these sort of circumstances. It is said that "Everything in This Country Must" was based off a story from his uncle. I still enjoyed the story and after looking around the internet, it says that most of his stories are like this. They include the themes of loss, remembrance and conflict between different cultures.

http://www.egs.edu/faculty/colum-mccann/biography/