Creativity, Masculinity, and Destruction in Eiriceachtaí agus Scéalta Eile by Alan Titley

The narrator in Alan Titley’s short story “Brollach” (Introduction) from the collection Leabhar Nóra Ní Anluain (The Book of Nóra Ní Anluain) describes how the protagonist, “an Toitlaoch,” wreaked havoc: “ag dó agus ag loscadh agus ag scrios agus ag cur tithe agus foirgneamh agus áitreabh trí thine” (burning and scorching and destroying, and setting houses and buildings and residences alight). Borrowing from George Orwell’s concept of the thought police from Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), the “gardaí machnaimh” (thought police) and the “péas sibhialta” (guardians of the peace) finally cap?ture the Toitlaoch. When asked to explain his rampage, the Toitlaoch responds that it was necessary to highlight what once existed: “‘Bím ag dul thart ag dó agus ag loscadh agus ag scrios agus ag cur tithe le tóirse agus foirgneamh le foirnéis,’ ar seisean, ‘mar ní bheadh a fhios ag aon duine go raibh struchtúir ann mura mbeadh an toit agus an tine agus na lasracha.’” (“I burn and I scorch and I set houses alight with torches and make a furnace out of buildings,” he said, “because if it wasn’t for the smoke and the fire and the flames, nobody would ever know that these structures existed.”) Only through absence and loss, the narrative appears to imply, do we feel the significance of what has been, and do we understand what has previously existed in our world. The narrative relies heavily on irony through images of the opacity of smoke; it emphasizes that it is with our intellectual rather than visual faculty—with the benefit of hindsight and through applied clarity of thought—that we can comprehend the significance of the past. Perceiving that which we once valued, we now better understand that which is forever lost.