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The Politics of Northern Ireland (2008) Catholics/nationalists identify with the Republic of Ireland whereas the Protestant/unionist community looks to Britain as their homeland, wanting Northern Ireland to be maintained within the United Kingdom. The concept of identity is important when it comes to ethnic groups and their selfdetermination. The national identity of a group is defined by ethnicity. An ethnic group is one in which
its ethnic members have common descend, culture, language and religion which serve as the demarcations od a given community. The members of the ethnic group share a common heritage and memories of past events as well as similar aspirations for their future. Also, the group must identify itself as a united, distinct group and must be recognised by other groups in this way.

(p. 23). The unionists sense of Britishness is expressed through social and cultural activities (the Orange parades and commemoration of WWI AND WWII which demonstrate their loyalty to the British state and the Crown). The nationalist identity focuses on the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Irish language. The problem is that the identity of an ethnic group must be recognized by other ethic groups. Unionist culture and collective identity are problematic to the extent that their sense of Britishness requires some recognition and acknowledgement of this from the British people and the British state. But since this recognition and affirmation is not forthcoming, this leaves the Ulster unionist identity unstable and unsure.1 (John Barry) But the nationalist/unionist dichotomy is somewhat over-simplified, since not everyone in Northern Ireland identifies themselves as unionist or nationalist.

Town of Shadows: Representations of Belfast in Recent Fiction Initially born as a British settlement, Belfast developed as a substantial settlement after the 17 century and was an important commercial and industrial centre in the 18th and the 19th centuries. Despite this, between about 1800 and 1950 Belfast rarely appears in the works of writers associated with it, maybe because they had little to say about it. Until recently, the city hasnt played any major role in the Irish culture. John Hewitt points out that in the works of Belfast poets of the last 19th and early 20th century there was not a word about where they lived and the people they lived among2. Moreover, in the fiction up to 1910, Hewitt can identify only two novels with a Belfast setting.
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Joanne McEvoy; The Politics of Northern Ireland, Edinburgh: Edingurgh University Press, 2008, p.22. P. 142. John Hewitt, The Northern Athens and After, Belfast: The Making of the City, pp. 71-82.

Belfast as gothic locale - urban corruption vs. rural innocence The city in the work of a whole range of Irish writers, became the focus of corruption and impurity, set against the innocence and simplicity of the peasant. (Fintan OToole, Island of Saints and Silicon: Literature and Social Change in Contemporary Ireland, Cultural Contexts and Literary Idioms in Contemporary Irish Literature, p. 23)

In the last decades Belfast started to be rendered in literary creations. This tendency of exploring the city life has been called the revival of Northern writing. The dominance of the rural in Northern Irish and Irish culture started to decline due to the social, economic, cultural and political changes in the last 60 years. The principal changes would be: the growth of Belfast, the consequences of more widespread educational opportunities, the emergence of a securely citybased and educated audience for writing about the city and the development of broadcasting and electronic technologies. John Wilson Foster has argued that there is no real urban consciousness in Ireland (1991). Still, there are novels in which the Irish culture is developing an urban consciousness, and Ripley Bogle is one of them, if not something more. I think it is something more than ifIconsider Fintan OTootles claim about the Irish urban writing. I dont remember many episodes in Robert McLiam Wilsons book that happened indoors. Ripley describes the streets of London. He admits that the vast outdoors is my house and hall. Im an exterior expert. Im the Prince of Pavements, Im the Parkbench King3. Furthermore, Ripley doesnt seem like the character who would appreciate country qualities, such as strong loyalty to family and social groups or of firm attachment to principle. There are many literary creations in which Belfast has been represented as a place of conflict, as a battlefield dominated by its Troubles, by danger and violence. According to Eamonn Hughes, the image of Blefast as mad, bad and dangerous is an exaggerated version of itself and is derived from a religiously-based distrust of the urban as Gothic, stricken and sinful4. In one of the first appearances of Blefast in recent fiction, the city is confusing and too complex for an old countryman and defeats him to the point of death ( December Bride, by Sam Hanna Bell, 1951). In Robert McLiam Wilsons Ripley Bogle, the narrator blames Belfast of thickening the body and the brains and chasing the soul away. He adds: Belfast shouldnt be allowed to get away with this kind of thing. Belfast has to be stopped. Its time will come.5 This urge for an inevitable destruction of Belfast is also evident in Mary Costellos Titanic Town or Gavin Bukes The Emperor of Ice-Cream. Ripley Bogle is Robert McLiam Wilsons first novel, written in his early twenties and was published in 1989. The novel opens in London, on the eve of the narrators 22nd birthday. Ripley
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Ripley Bogle, p. 239. P, 147. 5 Ripley Bogle, p. 37.

is set in the 1980s and is currently homeless in London. He describes the world of London streets as he recollects events from his own life up until the present. The images of a gloomy, rainy and dark London alternate with the main episodes from Ripleys life. There are four chapters, and each one begins with a depiction of a different location in London, and then continues with a memory or a tramp anecdote (the episode with the charity meal, or the one with the fight). For this book, the author was awarded the Rooney Prize and the Irish Book Award, and has been shortlisted for the Whitbread Award. Ripley Bogle has autobiographical elements: the writer, just like the narrator, was born and schooled in Belfast. He proceeded to Cambridge, but left before taking a degree.6 He was also homeless for some time. The book reminded me of Knut Hamsuns Hunger, because this is also an autobiographical novel, and moreover hunger can be seen as a character in the book. Ripley also talks about hunger like it is a person, and in both novels the sensation of cold and other sufferings are depicted in detail. Moreover, both main characters are walking almost all the time, they are intelligent and seem to possess a strong ego. But in Ripley Bogle, not only the hunger is personified, but also the city. As a boy, the narrator witnessed episodes of extreme violence (like the tar-and-feathering of Mary or other executions and punishment beatings). Ripley says: For me, the beginning was Internment Night7. The violence is somehow reflected in the vulgarity of his language. Ripley alternates a pretentious tone with profanity (vulgaritate) and irony. The narrative mode is mainly in first-person, but we can also detect third-person narrative fragments. Ripley doesnt stop here. Throughout the novel we find an imaginary dialogue with Orwell and Dickens, some dark humored songs and even a dramatic text. Its like the narrator couldnt d ecide what to use. He plays with the language and with the narrative. Sometimes he addresses directly to the reader, asking him/her for a favour or even mentioning the pages that are left for him/her to read.* The book challenges the very notion of Irishness itself and is a direct assault on nationalism and cultural nostalgia in general. Even though the city is seen as a dark or labyrinthine place dominated by conflicts, there is no wish to present the rural life as a better alternative. Maybe as readers we expect from the Irish main character to be good-hearted, folksy, to love Ireland and his family, to appreciate the countryside more than the city, and to be a reliable source of information. Ripley does none of these things. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator says: I am twenty-one years old, my name is Ripley Bogle and my occupations are starving, freezing and weeping histerically(p. 8). Despite this, he sees himself as an intelligent and handsome young man. He compares himself with the Queen, Dickens and Orwell and feels that he doesnt belong to the tramp community. He has always been the outsider, even as a child. He has done some horrible things, and we cant say that he is very friendly with other people. He despises his parents (he often uses the words my deranged mother), and is not a patriot. Moreover, he is unreliable. He lies. This is hard to accept for me as a reader. At the end of the book, when he confessed that he lied about three things, I started to question the whole
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Norman Vance, Irish Literature Since 1800, Pearson Education Limited, 2002, p. 286. Ripley Bogle, p.32.

book. Are all the episodes true, especially the ones linked with the Troubles? Even though the book is allowing us to peek into the Troubles of the Northern Ireland, Ripley doesnt seem interested in politics. He focuses more on the effects of the Troubles.

Bibliography (and other sources) Herr, Cheryl; The Erotics of Irishness , Critical Inquiry, Vol. 17, No. 1, 1990, pp. 1-34. Hughes, Eamonn; Town of Shadows: Representations of Belfast in Recent Fiction, Religion & Literature, Vol. 28, No. 2/3, 1996, pp. 141-160. Massie, Sonja; The Complete Idiots Guide toIrish History and Culture, New York: Pearson Education Company, 1999. McEvoy, Joanne; The Politics of Northern Ireland, Edinburgh: Edingurgh University Press, 2008. Vance, Norman; Irish Literature Since 1800, Pearson Education Limited, 2002. http://thelitpub.com/featured-books/ripley-bogle/ (11.12.2013) http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides_R/ripley_bogle2.asp (11.12.2013)