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What Is Conroy's Treatment Of Informers

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The Ethics of Touting and Retaliation in Northern Ireland Using Deane’s novel Reading in the Dark a story of Northern Ireland set from 1920 to 1960 and, Conroy’s social history Belfast Diary, for the history of Northern Ireland as told in the 1980’s, this essay discusses the treatment of informers by the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Starting with Reading in the Dark, Which tells the tale of a young man growing up while discovering his dysfunctional families’ history involving an uncle framed for informing and being murdered by his own people. Comparing the novel with the social history Belfast Diary, about the author’s time spent in Belfast in 1980 and all the social problems four hundred years of oppression and war create. Conroy and Deane …show more content…

We were haunted! We had a ghost, even in the middle of the afternoon” (Deane, 4). The ghost matches the start of Belfast Diary the quote on page two “The ghost of an informer, shot almost fifty years ago, is believed to walk Clonard’s back streets” demonstrates the power of the emotions generated by informing on your friends, as well as killing that informer in retaliation. In the novel, this revelation concerning Uncle Eddie explains why his mother and father stop talking to each other “Only your mother knows it all. I had to tell someone, especially her, but now I’m sorry. She can’t understand, she can’t forgive … Eddie was dead, he told me … He had been executed as an informer. …. But my father knew … That his brother was an informer.”(Deane, 131). The narrator now understands the dysfunction, in his family. He also understands this information in rumor form, ruined all of their credibility in the …show more content…

Towards the end of Belfast Diary Conroy tells how the IRA took over the place he lived at twice for an ambush that did not work. The quote is about how he feels afterward “The aftermath was as nerve-wracking as the visits. Too many people knew what had happened---the people I had told, the people Mrs. Barbour had told, the people George had told, and all of the people who had heard it second and third hand. I was worried about the gossip, the explosives and the possibility that the Provos might pay us a third visit.” Conroy’s visit from that period ended badly, with a description of his terror and paranoia from this

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