Monday, April 21, 2025

For Those Who Care

 


We are having another sunny day in Dungarvan.  It was cloudy and a bit rainy last week, but it has been good for every side trip we have taken.  Actually, we have only had two rainy days the whole time we have been here. Today is a bank holiday in Ireland (Easter Monday) so government agencies and many businesses are closed. The news about the death of Pope Francis is just now being heard by the people of Dungarvan.  I had coffee with some locals this morning, and they were, as yet, unaware. His death has particular meaning not only because of it happening the morning after Easter, but also for what he has represented. For the Irish, this Pope has been particularly loved because of his stance on immigration, human dignity, people on the margins, and the poor.  Irish history makes the people here particularly sympathetic with those causes.

The suffering of oppressed people is on the minds lately around the world, but particularly it seems from both the former pope and the Irish.  The Irish know what it means to be oppressed, and they know what it means to receive harsh treatment.

Seamus Heaney remembers General Sir James Dombrain in “For the Commander of the Eliza,” who felt compelled to “interfere” and offer help when he saw people starving during the 1846 famine in Ireland.  While he was English, and “had no mandate to relieve distress” (17), he “urged free relief / For famine victims in the Westport Sector / And earned tart reprimand from good Whitehall” (30-32). Clearly the use of “good” to describe Whitehall is ironic.  The speaker of the poem is a commander who isn't as sympathetic as Dombrain and thus doesn’t offer help to 6 starving people, refusing them food even though they had “gaping mouths and eyes / Bursting the sockets” (8-9). The brutality of his actions culminate in him thinking “Let natives prosper by their own exertions; / Who could not swim might go ahead and sink” (33-34). He easily absolves himself from any responsibility, but the reader realizes that choosing to do nothing in this type of situation is an action that must have consequences. 

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