A Star Called Henry

As a “result of hundreds of years of colonialism,” the Irish people treated their British colonizers with “fear and respect” (218). Meanwhile, the job of the revolution was to “convince” Irish citizens both “that they have no betters” and to take ownership of the land that was rightfully theirs (218). By the end of the novel, when Ireland is “free in some shape or form” (315), men such as Ivan who trained to be freedom fighters have muscled in and taken control of the land, in the exploitative style of the old British colonizers. Under these circumstances, the quest for Irish freedom has been futile; power is, once more, concentrated in the hands of the few.

Doyle shows how the consolidation of hierarchies has always relied upon the cult of an individual. Henry first notices this as a young boy, when he walks into a carriage-drawn parade of Edward VII, a “fat man” with a “mustache and beard that were better groomed than the horses” (52). Henry, who “didn’t know what a king was” (52), cannot understand what is special about this “fat foreigner.” It is only later that he learns how this foreign ruler and his descendants, with their old-fashioned paraphernalia of horse-drawn carriages, are delivering a mandate that affects the people of Ireland from afar.