Essay Questions

What is the historical and political context of events of this poem?

As the title indicates, the setting of the story is Belfast which is the capital of Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is not geographical reference, but the name of a country. Two completely separate countries occupy the dominant land mass of this geographical region. To the south is what Americans generally mean when speaking of the country of Ireland and it is a nation completely independent of the United Kingdom, mostly populated by Catholics. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, features a more diverse mixing of Catholics and Protestants and is part of the United Kingdom.

The unofficial civil war which has been going on for more than a century is based on the desire by some to unify the island of Ireland as a single country that is completely independent of British rule. On the other side of this squabble, of course, are those who want to maintain Norther Ireland as a separate state. This division has been famously marked by guerrilla warfare, extremist violence, brutal government crackdowns and a seemingly endless cycle of escalation and peace fires that have come to be known simply as “the Troubles.” The narrative of the poem situates the reader directly into the midst of this internal violent conflict.

How does the actual physical structure of the poem work to mirror the context and content?

Although it may not necessarily always be printed as such, the poem was designed to be split into two separate sections with the first stanza slightly larger than the second. This can be interpreted as a reflection of the literal geography of the setting in which one large island holds two separate countries, one physically larger than the other but the smaller geographic region backed by bigger political and military clout than the other.

Just as the two countries occupying the same island also differ culturally, so do the two stanzas differ diverge in the details of their content. The first stanza is primarily about what is taking place around the speaker and is marked by vague references whereas the second stanza takes the reader inside the head of the speaker where suddenly details are concrete: “the alleyways and side streets” become “Balaklava, Raglan, Inkerman, Odessa Street” and the metaphorical language of military action become very brand names of military equipment like Saracen, Kremlin-2 mesh, and Makrolon.

What is the significance of all the references which are specific to the Crimean War?

Ironically, it is the point at which the narrator describes the familiarity of a neighborhood known well transforming into the mythologically bewildering aspect of the labyrinth that the ambiguity of the setting falls away and things become very precise. The names of the streets mentioned—"Balaklava, Raglan, Inkerman, Odessa Street” are not only actual streets found in Belfast, but are all associated with Crimean War, a military conflict pitting Russian forces against a multi-national alliance including France and England.

This choice is purposely ironic for a number of reasons. The name Crimea forces a connection between the meaning of war and the position of extremist violence of “the Troubles” as crimes rather than acts of war. This irony is dual-edge: while the use of a riot squad indicates that the violence is being treated as a crime, the actual equipment used to quell the rioters is high-grade military weaponry normally used in war. Is the bomb that goes off and the government response to it an act of crime and law enforcement or is this crime a war being disguised as a law enforcement issue? Or is it both: crime and war (Crimean War).