REFUGIADOS

‘types.’ However, the interaction between Aoirghe and Jake demonstrates that in order for the plurality which underpins the novel (and the carnival contained therein) to flourish, some o f the characters have to be re-invested with a layered personality which is necessarily at odds with the parodic stereotypes that could be associated with them.

This humanization is demonstrated towards the end o f the novel, through an incident that reveals Aoirghe’s deeper personality. This incident involves Roche, a young boy from a rough neighbourhood that Jake has taken under his wing. During a riot Roche urinates on a car, and gets badly beaten as a result. At the hospital, where Jake finds him, there is a delegation of Sinn Fein members and Amnesty International representatives, including Aoirghe. One of the Sinn Fein councillors has gained a small head wound while being arrested at the riot. Apparently his car has been urinated upon by the police. It is not difficult to draw the conclusion that the Sinn Fein member owned the car, and the vandalism is due to Roche. Presumably he has also been involved in Roche’s injuries, although this is not proved at any time. This is clearly a turning point for both Aoirghe and Jake. The fact that Jake takes out all o f his frustration with the situation on her alone does not help matters: ‘After a few minutes, she ran out into the corridor, sobbing. I followed her all the way to the exit, abusing her viciously. She fled the building’ (Eureka: 364).

However, as the ceasefire comes into effect, Jake feels that he owes her an apology for these actions, having blamed her for the whole situation: ‘She deserved a little and I’d given her more than a lot. Her politics were poisonous but she hadn’t beaten up any twelve-year olds’ {Eureka: 367). In reconciling himself with her, Jake seems also to reconcile himself with his own background. However, it is notable that the person who

is expected to change the most is Aoirghe. At the end o f the novel, as Jake muses on the uncertainty o f Belfast’s future in what is, after all, an uneasy ceasefire, his hope comes from the fact that Aoirghe, more than he, seems to have changed and now ‘sees’ more clearly: ‘She smiles and she looks at me with clear eyes’ {Eureka: 396).

However, the character which changes most in the novel (at least outwardly), and who is the most camivalesque character is Jake’s friend, Chuckie. Chuckie is a flagrant parody o f the working-class Protestant, in which the traits associated with such stereotypes are eventually inverted and made into a mockery. At the beginning o f the novel, Chuckie is depicted as money hungry (as well as uneducated, fat and unattractive) and he still lives with his mother in the house that he was born in. This is in contrast to his better educated, well travelled, and apparently more interesting, Catholic friends. In short, he is: ‘just a fat shite with no da’ {Eureka: 57). However, this begins to change on his thirtieth birthday. A chance meeting with an American woman, Max, and a successful money making scheme begin to alter his role. He transforms the political situation of Northern Ireland into a money-making carnival that he is the head of. He exploits every stereotype about any aspect of Northern Ireland in order to raise funds for his spurious businesses. Terrorism and ‘Oirishism’ are subjected to the same treatment, and both are dismissed as laughable: ‘To my horror, I discovered the rejected proposal for the chain of ready-to-wear balaclava shops. I was told how much money they had made from the leprechaun walking-stick scam’ {Eureka: 307).

Chuckie has no solid political knowledge or education, but he beats down Jimmy Eve in a debate on American television. This is a hilarious display of bravura, as his speech

is mainly induced by sheer nervousness and cocaine. He terrifies Jimmy Eve and the rest of the Just Us party with his popularity: ‘the Just Us people considered him the charismatic Protestant of ancient republican demonology and that he was the kind of imponderable in Ulster politics that they wanted to avoid’ (Eureka: 386-7). There are two things that are laughable about their reaction. Firstly, it seems highly amusing that Jimmy Eve can be out-done by a mixture of rugby tactics (Chuckie stuns him by whispering abuse in his ear while shaking hands) and sheer drug-induced eloquence. What is also amusing is that the Just Us party are so worried about Chuckie as a credible Protestant threat when Chuckie is, in fact, indifferent to whether Ireland is united or not. He states quite clearly that he would be happy to give up any nationality in return for prosperity: ‘There are no nationalities, only rich and poor. Who gives a shit about nationhood if there’s no jobs and no money?’ (Eureka: 331). Like the figures in Bakhtinian carnival, Chuckie is determined to take control away from those politicians who function at a remote, ideological level, and return some power to those who wish to make a material difference to the life of the ‘people.’ Bakhtin states that in carnival this principle is often undertaken by grotesque figures: ‘The essential principle of grotesque realism is degradation, that is, the lowering of all that is high, spiritual, ideal, abstract; it is a transfer to the material level, to the sphere of earth and body in their indissoluble unity’ (19-20). The lack of connection with the ‘people' that the Just Us party suffers from is underlined by their comparison with Chuckie.

Though Chuckie is a conduit for the political satire aimed at the ‘Just U s’ party in the novel, as a character he does not appear to be consciously satirical in his actions. For example, Bakhtin’s definition of the modern satirist seems to describe the opposite of Chuckie’s characterisation: ‘The satirist whose laughter is negative places himself

above the object o f his mockery, he is opposed to it’ (12). However, it becomes clear that Chuckie’s role in the novel as a whole is positive. He is rarely directly derided himself, nor does he deride anyone else. Rather, he demonstrates the ambivalence towards political matters which Bakhtin notes as an important feature o f the camivalesque. His sudden success would seem due simply to greed and opportunism, except that he gains a new self-knowledge as he moves through the novel. What was, at first, purely self-interest becomes a way of looking after others. After his mother is involved in a bombing in the centre o f Belfast, Chuckie buys her a whole catalogue’s worth o f goods (literally) in his distress at her shock. Most tellingly, the knowledge that he is about to become a father forces him to go out and consolidate his business position, not for his own benefit, but for his whole family: ‘It was time to provide for his international family. It was time to make some more money’ (Eureka: 319).

This intention to provide for his family is tested when he returns home from his business pursuits in America and finds that his mother has discovered that she is in love with her female childhood friend. However, while initially horrified, Chuckie’s ambivalence and acceptance wins out:

He had realized that he and his mother were both so small, so breakable, that each merited more love than they knew. He didn’t want to spend too much time thinking about it, but he knew that Peggy and Caroline could do whatever they liked to each other and there was simply no room for him to mind.

{Eureka: 377)

This sense o f generosity begins to suffuse Chuckie’s character as the novel carries on. His large girth changes from being the sign of consumption and laziness and becomes a sign of his generous largesse. Chuckie and his optimism expand out and include the world around them, which is reflected physically, in a distinctly Bakhtinian parody:

‘Chuckie’s chest swelled with unfashionable grandeur, and he headed for the fridge’ (Eureka: 390). This continues into his business interests. Chuckie decides that his real aim is to provide jobs for the region, replacing the nationality-centred politics with his economic aims and representing the true people o f Belfast:

The majority politics in Northern Ireland were not political. The citizens were too shy to give the grand name of principle to any o f the things that they believed, but there were still things that they believed. And that peaceful majority spent its life keeping down jobs, or failing to keep down jobs [...] he, Chuckie Lurgan, would bring back work to the city single- handed. He would be a hero. (Eureka: 381)

In the end, Chuckie is forced (again, by pure TV induced panic) to actually announce he will be setting up a full political party, which will be entirely non-sectarian, and will challenge the existing political parties. Additionally, this party will be linked to the OTG, a nonsensical piece of graffiti that has been popping up over the city. The man who is behind this evades capture, and his motives are never discovered, except that he clearly enjoys the confusion that the letters cause. Taken into Chuckie’s hands, however, it becomes a symbol for hope in the future. The contradictions and unlikelihoods which are part of the Northern Irish political situation, and which McLiam Wilson’s work is centred in, are bound together in Chuckie’s actions and are made into a possible way forward for the region.

It is apparent that the period between McLiam Wilson’s first and last novel is indicative o f a significant change in the camivalesque qualities o f life in Northern Ireland and their potential for change. In this second book, the change takes the form of a bloodless revolution, and therefore, for Wilson, it is far more deserving of the full carnival treatment. The romantic grotesque and its incipient darkness are abandoned

for an inclusive and regenerating set o f parodies that attempt to bring the community together and render those threatening parts of it harmless.

This is not to say that McLiam Wilson blindly believes the future to be rosy for Northern Ireland at this point. There are many issues that threatened the ceasefire at the time mentioned in the text, including the facts that punishment beatings went on, that neither the IRA nor Loyalist groups actually gave their arms up, and the general public’s concern with the early release of terrorist prisoners. Indeed, the ceasefire was not successful (the Canary Wharf bomb followed in 1996, and there was still inter­ group Loyalist violence), and it was not until the 1997 ceasefire and subsequent 1998 Good Friday Agreement that the possibility of a lasting peace seemed more likely, though this was still hampered by main-party wrangling and hard-line splinter groups. This on-going threat is encapsulated by Chapter Eleven of the novel, in which a bomb is set off in a busy shopping area, just before the ceasefire is called. Unlike the novel’s other camivalesque images, the treatment of the body here is far more reminiscent o f

Ripley Bogle, and contrasts with Bakhtin’s description of violence in Rabelais’ work in which the assaults on the characters known as the Catchpoles are described in gleeful detail: ‘We see once more the anatomizing dismemberment and the culinary and medical terms which accompany it: mouth, eyes, head, neck, back, chest, arms are listed’ (202). In Eureka Street the body parts of the victims are also listed, but in a way that maximises their ultimate destruction with no possibility of ‘rebirth’. In contrast to Bakhtin’s description, the characters are not there to represent a higher order being beaten, but are vulnerable individuals, prone to destruction:

Her left arm was tom off by sheeted glass and most of her head and face destroyed by the twisted mass o f a metal tray. The rim of the display case, which was in three large sections, sliced

through or embedded in her recently praised hips and some heavy glass jars impacted on her chest and stomach, pulverizing her major organs. Indeed, one substantial chunk of glass whipped through her midriff, taking her inner stuff half­ way through the large hole in her back. {Eureka: 222)

However, an intertextual engagement with McLiam Wilson’s previous text does indicate the extent to which a nascent hope can be taken. Jake meets Ripley Bogle towards the end of Eureka Street. It is clear that Ripley has done little to change his circumstances, except to move back to Belfast. Jake is now able, however, to offer him a new lifeline. He gives Ripley the number o f his own foster parents, who are desperate for someone to help, just as Ripley is in need o f aid. The ending o f this part of the story is unknown, just as the ending of the story of the ceasefire was unknown at the time of the novel’s publication. The act of Jake’s generosity and the act of the ceasefire are both made in the same spirit of a defiant optimism, and both show the determination to rectify the horrors of the past:

I had no idea whether he would get in touch with Matt and Mamie. I thought it was more unlikely than likely. I didn’t imagine I’d done anything to patch up that spectacularly damaged life. But the trees were bright in the sun and the women were pretty and half dressed and I was stubbornly jubilant. {Eureka: 348)