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Chih Tsen Liu
Professor William A. Johnsen
IAH 221C
18 June 2013
Dermot Bolger: The Ballymun Trilogy
The Ballymun Trilogy by Dermot Bolger depicts the lives of three different families in
the Ballymun Towers. The Ballymun Towers were actually built in the 1960s after a housing
crisis in Dublin, Ireland and these new buildings were seen as hope at first by many people.
However, things started to change when people living in the Ballymun Towers got some bad
experience and finally got notified that the buildings would be torn down sooner or later. The
Ballymun Trilogy includes three plays, “From These Green Heights”, “The Townlands of
Brazils”, and “The Consequences of Lightning” and each of them presents different lifestyle and
experience while interacting with household families but is related to the similar theme like
immigration issue at the same time.
In the first play “From These Green Heights”, there are two acts in total and the readers
are at first introduced to the leading character Dessie and his family that includes his father
Christy, his mother Carmel, his daughter Tara and his wife Marie. The play switches very often
from different time frames. At the beginning of this play, it focuses on the childhood of Dessie
when he and his family were actually the first movers into the Ballymun Towers and Dessie and
his mother were so excited about this. Dessie even said, ‘We weren’t just moving up in the
world- we were moving skyward’ (Bolger, p4). The description used by Dessie indicates his
belief that his whole family could have a new life in this new community. Also, Carmel
expressed her excitement by saying, ‘…but they’ll all be lovely when it’s finished.’ (Bolger, p7)
After this, the scene switches to the conversation between Dessie and his daughter Tara while
they were packing to move out of the Ballymun towers. The interaction among different time
frames allows Bolger to get more audience’s attention because the audience is less likely to get
bored when they can not predict what will happen next. However, it might be a little bit hard for
some audience to understand the whole story if they are not able to put those fragments together
properly. Unfortunately, the Ballymun flats did not turn out to be what Dessie’s family
expected. Dessie’s family planned to have a Ballymun baby but it turned out that Dessie’s
mother Carmel lost her first baby and Dessie lost her sister. Later on, Carmel experienced many
more times of miscarriages and Christy started to wonder if it was a good choice to move to the
Ballymun flats. Christy started to recall what happened after they moved in and he even asked
himself, ‘…Would Ballymun ever feel like home?’ (Bolger, p15) Later on, Christy lost his job
and became very depressed all the time. When Christy could not find any job after a while, his
depression became more severe and this seriously affected the relationship between he and his
wife. On the other side, Dessie and Marie deeply fell in love with each other.
At the beginning of act 2, Carmel finally got a baby and Christy found a job as well.
Moreover, Dessie and Marie got married. Things seemed to be getting better, however, later on
Marie left Dessie for Australia and even found another husband who was abusive but could
provide everything for Marie. In the end of this play, Marie left his husband Charlie and ended
up being with Dessie again and having a daughter Tara. This play indirectly demonstrates the
stereotypes of men and women in Irish culture. For men, they are supposed to work hard to keep
their family and they put the whole family as their own responsibility. The best example in thie
play is that Christy got serious depression after he lost his job. On the other hand, women might
possess a little power in the family and this can be displayed by Marie’s second marriage. Marie
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told her mother that her husband was abusive like her dad. From here, the audience can have a
clear picture and understanding of an Irish family and culture.
In the second play “The Townlands of Brazil”, the audience were introduced to two
different girls who lived in Ballymun at different times. In act one, Eileen was trying to escape
Ballymun because she got pregnant when she was unmarried and this was completely
unacceptable in their society. However, Eileen’s parents would not want her to leave because all
of other eight children already left. The father of Eileen’s child was Michael and he promised to
marry Eileen after he got back from work but Eileen just realized he died at work already. Eileen
finally told their parents the truth that she was having a baby and she was scared to be seen as a
slut by others. Eileen’s father came up with an idea that he will send Eileen to England to be a
maid until the child comes out but the child protection agency will take the child away after that.
However, Eileen chose to keep the child in the end. This story is quite interesting and shows
what has been formed as Irish culture. First of all, this act clearly tells the audience that a
pregnant girl without getting married is strongly unacceptable and is considered as sin in the
society and people would even force the girl to leave the town. The most interesting part is that
in the end Eileen wants to keep her child who she wanted to abandon at first because of social
stigmatism. This actually depicts that a girl finally realizes what she wants despite she will never
be accepted by the society.
The second story in “The Townlands of Brazil” depicts a girl Monika who came to the
Ballymun towers for getting a new life. She said, ‘… a wondrous chance to wash away the sins
of the past, a new start for Ballymun.’(Bolger, p108) Monika came from Poland where she lost
her husband and had a child. Monika believed that she could start her new life when no body
knew about her past here in the Ballymun towers. However, home is still the first place that
every person stays. After Monika came to the Ballymun, she had hard time to blend into the new
community and she even said, ‘We leave home to seek work or sanctuary and the farther we go
the more home becomes frozen in our minds.’ (Bolger p108) From that quote, the audience can
see that Monika thinks no matter where she goes for starting a new life; home will always be
deep inside everyone’s mind. The first act and second act are actually closely related because the
boy Monika met at the Ballymun was actually Eileen’s child, Matthew. After Monika saw
Matthew and all the things that she had been through in the Ballymun towers, she believed that
she is nothing without her family. In the end, she called her baby and wanted to stay with her
child but not to leave her past behind. There are some similarities between Eileen and Monika.
Both girls finally know what family means and they choose to stay with their children in the end
to hold up the family.
The third story in Bolger’s trilogy “The Consequences of Lightning” centers on the main
character Sam who has been old and sick for a while. Sam was actually the first tenant to move
into the old Ballymun towers and he is now dying with the old heir of Ballymun. Frank is Sam’s
son who suffered from Sam’s actions after drinking so he left Ballymun. Frank also left his
former love Katie who still lived in Ballymun as a single mother. Frank wanted to erase his past
and run away from Ballymun and everything related to Ballymun. Frank even wanted to get a
new identity, find a new job and have a bright future outside Ballymun. Sam felt really sorry for
causing his son to become like this. In the end, Frank also felt guilty that he left everything
behind. He finally came back to the Ballymun towers and forgave his father. On the other hand,
Martin was the one who had been taking care of Sam and persuaded Frank to come back. There
was an interesting conversation between Frank and Martin. Frank said, ‘I’ve spent my life trying
to get away from Ballymun and you’ve spent your life trying to stay.’ (Bolger, p231) These
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different opinions happened in different characters in the previous plays as well. As a final play
of Ballymun Trilogy, the loss of Sam cleverly represents the loss of a community where many
people had different dreams.
Dermot Bolger’s “Ballymun Trilogy” depicts the lives of three different families at the
Ballymun towers by going through three plays “From These Green Heights”, “The Townlands of
Brazil” and “The Consequences of Lightning”. Each of plays demonstrates the different reason
for staying or leaving Ballymun. Some comes to Ballymun for starting a new life with
excitement. Some wants to get away from it and leave everything related to it behind. There is no
correct answer for that whether Ballymun is a good place or not and I believe it all depends on
different people. Some people like Monika and Frank learned something about this place and get
to know who they truly want to become. On the other hand, Carmel has many times of
miscarriages at this place, which for sure is a bad experience. These three plays not only show
the audience different experiences of three families living in Ballymun towers but also indirectly
display Irish society and culture. The play was depicted carefully and the audiences are able to
have a clear picture of exactly what happen in their head by looking through those details world
following by each person’s name. Readers can pay attention on each person’s tone, gesture and
behavior and predict the reason for certain behaviors and conversations. I like how Bolger uses
simple words to convey deep meanings. In addition, the interaction among different time frames
also makes stories more interesting to the readers. Overall, I can understand what Bolger wants
to express and what is in there with the interaction among different characters. I think Bolger has
made Ballymun Trilogy successful and attractive to all the audience.
Citation
Bolger, Dermot. The Ballymun Trilogy. 2010. New Island Publishing. Dublin: Ireland.