Reading in the Dark

Aspects of the supernatural suffuse daily life in Derry, and this is emblematic of the fear and suppression that is present in Irish culture. Though Ireland is mostly Christian in the novel, it has pagan roots, which still filter into the culture. The Irish believe that there is a certain permeability between the spirit world and the human world and that this barrier can be crossed. For example, the Irish believe that fairies can enter the human world to steal children. The narrator notes, “If we ever met anyone with one green and one brown eye we were to cross ourselves, for that was a human child that had been taken over by the fairies” (5). Similarly, the Irish also believe in ghosts. When the narrator is on holiday in Donegal, he encounters the Field of the Disappeared, which hosts ghosts. He says, “any who heard their cries on those days would cross themselves and pray out loud to drown out the sounds” (54). Here, these supernatural beings have power over humans, so humans must always be on guard and make sure that they do not deviate from their religious beliefs and practices.  

This supernatural aspect of Irish culture is even present in Ireland’s Catholicism.