Essay Questions

Inishmore is an island of lawlessness. How do we know this?

When a sixteen year old girl proclaims herself the Lieutenant of Inishmore, it is clearly a place where the law of the land and the power of the police have absolutely no jurisdiction anymore. Inishmore is run by the INLA who do not recognize British rule and therefore do not recognize any of its laws either. They use mass bombing and one-to-one shooting to kill anyone who stands in their way. This makes the town lawless, but the fact that a sixteen year old girl is running the show locally emphasizes this even more.

By law, Mairead should still be attending school, but she doesn't. She clearly thinks it is beneath her. She owns a firearm which is illegal in Ireland. She has killed animals and in the context of the play mortally wounds three men and murders another. There is clearly no parental involvement in her life, and everyone seems to be completely afraid of her (with good reason.) Mairead is the poster child for a town where laws are largely redundant because of the violence that takes place there, and it is a place where the person who kills the most other people end up on top.

Why is Christy angry with Padraic?

On a personal level, Christy is angry with Padraic because he shot him in the fact, and caused him to lose an eye. He is reminded of this every day because he has to wear a patch over the socket. This makes his task of assassinating Padraic more appealing and more personal.

On a broader note, he is angry with him for being a liability to the INLA. He is determined to start a splinter organization which is offensive to the INLA because they themselves are a splinter organization, so his intention is seen as a direct threat to their hierarchy. It is also seen as an insult as it implies that they are somehow not radical enough. He is also angry because the INLA offers protection to drug dealers in return for protection money. By independently taking these dealers off the street and torturing them, Padraic is a threat to this process.