Characters In Freedom Of The City

The Freedom if the City - Characters
Characters:
Function of Character
The function of these four characters is to show how others can use and appropriate an event for their own benefit. All of these characters version of the events are shown to be untrue.
Key Quotes for this character

Balladeer

Shows how stories can be twisted positively by those on the side of the victims
‘100 Irish heroes’

‘the lads inside the Guildhall shouted back “come on and fight”’

The balladeers song is carefully juxtaposed with Michael’s realisation that the three are in the Mayor’s parlour showing just how wrong the balladeers statements of the three ‘Irish heroes’ actually are

‘They took a stand against oppression, they wanted Mother Ireland free’

‘gave their lives for their ideal’

Priest

The priest’s version of events is also shown to be untrue. He uses the deaths of the three as a way to pacify and uplift these who are mourning by making them out to be martyrs who sacrificed themselves.

‘They died for their beliefs. They died because they could endure no longer the injuries and injustices and indignities that have been their lot for too many years’

‘They sacrificed their lives so that you and I and thousands like us might be rid of the iniquitous yoke and might inherit a decent way of life’

Dodds

A sociologist.

Comments in a removed way on the killings. Unemotional.

Looks at everything through an ‘academic’ lens that is also proved to be narrow-minded and incorrect e.g. he claims that the poor will revolt because they are oppressed, but none of the three are actually ‘revolting’

‘my field of study is inherited poverty or the culture of poverty’

Revolting is ‘the method they have devised to cope with the hopelessness and despair they experience because they know they’ll never be successful’

His generalisations and judgements we find out are all wrong
‘people with a culture of poverty have little sense of history’

‘they know only their troubles’

‘they don’t have the knowledge or the vision to see that their problems are also the problems of the poor […] all over the western world’

They also have ‘a cynicism to the church’

The Judge

Shows how the justice system functions only to serve the government and the powerful

‘We are not conducting a social survey’ –not there to actually analyse these people and why the riot occurred, just there to serve the government

‘’this tribunal of inquiry […] is in no sense of court of justice’

‘the facts we garner over the coming days may indicate that the deceased were callous terrorists who planned to seize the Guildhall weeks before the events of February the 10th or that the misguided scheme accorded to the one that very day while they were listening to the revolutionary speeches’

Only refers to the three as ‘terrorists’

‘in other words that their action was a carefully convicted act against defiance against, and an incitement to other to defy, the legitimate forced of law and order’ – juxtaposed to actual version of how they died

The Freedom of the City – Michael, Lily and Skinner

Michael

Michael is in denial. He has a misplaced hope in a system that doesn’t support or look after him. Through his character Friel is encourages the reader to be more aware and critical of the systems and communities people find themselves in. Michael’s belief in Catholicism ultimately acts as a criticism of religion because it doesn’t save him.

‘I knew they weren’t going to shoot. Shooting belonged to a totally different order of things. And then the Guildhall Square exploded and I knew a terrible mistake had been made’

Lilly

Lily shows how the poor are controlled and used by the powerful. Lily’s character also shows that justice often isn’t achievable for those without money. The reader feels immensely sorry for her with her large family, responsibilities and her innocence. We may feel sorrier for her because she is extremely humble as opposed to Michael and Skinner. Because she is poor it means she has never had the chance to live life fully.

‘I thought I glimpsed a tiny truth: that life had eluded me because never once in my forty-three years had an experience, an event, even a small unimportant happening had been isolated, and assessed and articulated’

‘In a way I died of grief’

Skinner

Skinner is a passionate civil rights protester - the opposite of Michael - and they act as juxtapositions to each other. Whilst Michael is not aware of being oppressed by those in power, Skinner is acutely aware of how he is oppressed. Skinner’s character shows that even if you’re aware of how you’re being oppressed by those in power it doesn’t meant you’ll be able to change it. Despite his political activism, Skinner is still rendered powerless.

‘The poor are always overcharged’

‘How seriously they took us and how unpardonable casual we were about them; and that to match their seriousness would demand a total dedication, a solemnity as formal as theirs.’