The Black Prophet Chapter Summary

In his novel The Black Prophet, William Carleton describes the horrors of the Great Famine at its height in 1847. Although the potato blight was a natural disaster, much of the Irish population believed that the British government caused the famine. Some extremists even claimed that the Great Famine was a British-promoted mass genocide. Carleton’s tone throughout the extract conveys the resentment that many felt towards the British, ultimately leading to a rapid increase in anti-government sentiment. In particular, he questions the morality of their response to the famine when he writes: “Day after day vessels laden with Irish provisions, drawn from a population perishing with actual hunger, as well as with the pestilence which it occasioned,