Narrative Strategies in Behan’s Borstal Boy
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| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | While waiting in a courtroom cell to be tried in Borstal Boy, Brendan Behan adds his name and IRA rank to those of other detainees on the cell wall: Breandán Ó Beachaín, Óglach, 2adh Cath, Briogaíd Atha Chliath, IRA. An Phoblacht abu! [sic] Having added a translation for his Anglophone reader, he further notes, ‘I wrote “IRA” in English so as they would understand it that read it.’ Writing the self, for Behan, was never simply a matter of recording facts: throughout his account of being held in an English borstal for possessing explosives, he repeatedly highlights the constructed nature of his narrative. So what can a text whose narrator admits that the stories he tells his fellow inmates are ‘ninety percent lies’ tell us about representations of Irish confinement? More broadly, how do literary works contribute to our perspective on Ireland’s ‘network of containment’? The work of Irish writers has been central to the critique of Ireland’s network of institutions of coercive confinement since it was regularised in the nineteenth century. This paper will analyse the narrative techniques through which Behan reshapes his experience as a republican inmate in England, challenging cultural hegemonies on both sides of the Irish Sea. This will involve an examination of his creative use of the memoir genre, achieved largely through his appropriation of the tradition of republican prison writing. Paying attention to Behan’s engagement with canon, form and style, as well as the context of the work’s composition, will shed important light on the writing strategies available to Behan in narrating his time as a borstal inmate. |
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