Why do we hear so much about family these
days? Perhaps it is because
relationships
between family members are assumed to be the prototype for all other
social
relations. In the novels, The
Commitments, The Snapper and The Van, Roddy
Doyle shows his
support of the family as an institution.
Each character demonstrates
strength and
direction within the family unit.
However, when the stability of the family
is threatened,
each character breaks down along with the family itself.
When we think of family life we associate
happiness, a life of sharing memories
and developing
unbreakable friendships. It is easy to create a family that is make believe,
we just tend to
leave the ugly side of the relationship out.
It may be true that there is a
family that lives
like the "Cleavers" in our society today, but speaking realistically
every
family will
breakdown eventually. In an interview about his novels the author said, "I
didn't set out to
capture the good in every family, or bad for that matter, I just wanted to
show a typical
Irish family."1 Doyle's writing is real--he deals with issues that might
not
hit home with
every reader however, they are events
that confront many people every
day. The Rabbitte family is used in all three
novels that make up the "Barrytown
Trilogy."
While the times are both good and bad for the eight members of this Irish
family, in some
way they find a way overcome every problem that faces them.
One of Doyle's strengths is his feel for
personality: his characters are neither
devils nor
clowns, dolts nor wits, but wobble between the extremes. "They're fish
gutters
and mechanics,
young knockabouts and unemployed workers who spend a lot of time
watching T.V.
drinking Guinness and jawing at the pub, trying to stave off the feelings
that they are
nondescript people in a nondescript world."2
The Commitments is Doyle's first full-length
novel. The main character Jimmy
Rabbitte, the
eldest son, puts together a band. It is
almost every teenager's dream, at
some point, to be
famous playing music in front of large groups of people. In fact, this is
how this book
started off. In the end, however, it turns out to be the complete opposite.
Doyle captures
the emotions of his characters when they are weak and leaves an impact
on the reader
with his humorous wit. He describes his
writing as "a challenge that's the
enjoyable
part. To an extent, that's what happened
with all my books because I've never
experienced any
of the subjects I write about. I used to
be a ten-year old boy, but I
certainly didn't
watch my parents marriage disintegrate.
I was never in a band, I've never
been pregnant and
I've never been unemployed for a day in my life."3 It is shown that
Doyle has strong
family values. In his writing he clearly
demonstrates that if one family
member falls, it
effects the rest of the family. In The
Commitments, throughout the entire
novel, the band
acts like a family. As the manager,
Jimmy plays the role of the father
figure and trys
to keep the band reaching higher levels, together. But, as members begin
to fight Jimmy
finds it more difficult to keep the group together.
"Now, said Jimmy-tell your
Uncle Jimmy all about it.
-I just.
-Jimmy could see Billy thinking
It's just- I hate him, Jimmy. I hate him -- I can't even sleep at
nigh'"4
The drummer, Billy's leaving was because of
Deco, the lead singer of the band
who he couldn't
face. Because they never talked, working out their problems was never
accomplished. The Commitments worked as a team to reach its
success but when the
group was on the
brink of acheiving stardom individual motives began to cause
problems. When
the band stopped acting like a family unit the fights broke out.
"Somewhere
in the quarter of an hour Jimmy had been negotiating with Dave from Eejit
Records, The
Commitments had broken up." Jimmy came to the conclusion that it was
over. He moved on
and kept his mind off the band. Success
had in fact destroyed the
once harmonious
group.
In The Snapper Doyle uses a interesting topic:
pregnancy. Sharon, the eldest
Rabitte daughter
accidentally gets pregnant. In the end, the father turns out to be her own
father's best
friend. The beginning stage of her
family breaking down is when she finally
confronts them
about her being pregnant. While the family accepts the fact that she is
unmarried and
pregnant, they have several fights over the identity of the child's father.
Sharon is
stubborn and won't reveal any names and the rest of the family is hurt and
angry because it
feels that it deserves to know who the father is.
"Jimmy Sr got down to buisness
-who was it
-wha?- Oh I don't know
-Ah now, jaysis
-No, I do know
-well , then
-I'm not telling
-Jimmy Sr could feel himself
getting angry now".5
Whether the problem is little or big the
Rabbitte family always muddles through
and deals with
it. Sharon had put herself in the middle of the biggest problem yet. She
feels hurt and
while she never wanted to put her family through pain or suffering, that
that is what she
was doing. At the same time, she was trying to deal with the changing of
her own body and
working on making herself come to terms about what she had done. In
effect everybody
was suffering.
-Wha' kind of a house is this at
all? he asked the table.
-He looked at Veronica. She was deciding
if she'd throw the marmalade at the twins.
-A man get's up in the mornin', said
Jimmy Sr.-an'-an'
-Oh shut up, said Veronica.6
It is now clear that as a result of tension in
the house the two parents in the family
were developing a
negativity against each other. It was Sharon's decision to hide the
truth, but it was
also up to her to become realistic and tell the truth before it tore the
family apart
anymore.
The
final novel in the trilogy is The Van. It focuses on the dad, Jimmy Sr. The
fun-loving father
of the Rabbitte family had been recently laid off work. So, Jimmy Sr.
and his best
friend, Bimbo open a portable fast-food restaurant called Bimbo's Burgers. It
is located in a
greasy old van that would never pass an inspection. The father's role can't
be left
unmentioned. Jimmy Sr. has a lot of
control over his family. Throughout the
series he is
viewed as the descision maker, a role model and as a source of family
strength. As soon as the father shows a little bit of
unhappiness the rest of the family
start to lose
hope. Doyle once said "Friendship is something that is understood the
world
over, and
unfortunately, so is unemployment."
Doyle makes his belief clear in The Van
by showing the
pain that is put on the family when one bread-winner loses his job.
Coming from a
family whose income is not very high, unemployment could possibly be
one of the worst thing to ever happen. There is no money for Christmas presents, so
the
kids are
upset. Darren the youngest boy in the
family has learned all about
unemployment and
welfare. One night when the family is
eating Darren says something
to upset his
father whose reply is:
"Darren, don't you forget who paid for
tha' dinner in front of you, son, righ'
-I know who paid for it, said Darren.
-The state did."7
This reaction not only made Jimmy Sr. upset
but, he came to terms with the fact
that he was going
nowhere and if he wanted things to get better he had better get a job
soon.
The Rabittes may have gone through times when
they wanted to kill each other,
but other times
they cared. Doyle is a down-to-earth
writer, he shows the way of life for
many families with
the use of slang in his writing and his abillity to capture humour
when the times
are hard. The Rabbitte family shared many bonds, they had many
memories and of
course many fights, but they are a family. They may be fictional but
they represent a
modern family. It is true that when the
stability of the family is
threatened, each
character breaks down along with the family itself.
Endnotes
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