65 pages • 2 hours read
Paul MurraySkippy Dies
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: Early and Modern Irish Literature
Irish literary tradition can be traced as far back as the fourth century with the recording of folklore tales on wood and stone carvings. The first of the four epic cycles of early Irish literature is the Mythological Cycle, also called the Cycle of the Gods, which explains the pagan pantheon that dominated pre-Christian Irish religion. This pantheon, the Tuatha Dé Danann, inhabited a realm called the Otherworld. It was also believed to house the dead since many of the island’s burial mounds were identified as spirit gateways, such as the Brú na Bóinne. Skippy Dies makes numerous references to traditional Irish folklore. For example, it points to English writer Robert Graves’s interpretation of Irish mythology, contained in his 1948 book The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, to build ideas about desire and the mystical quality of the world.
Skippy Dies also resonates, however, with much later movements in Irish literature, most notably the Modernist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Best known for the novelist James Joyce, Irish Modernists embarked on experimental forms of writing, reacting in parallel to the wide social changes brought about by industrialization and the push for independence from the British Empire. Joyce’s writing made monumental contributions to the Irish literary canon. His impact is clear on Murray’s writing, especially with the use of the stream-of-consciousness technique that appears in several chapters of Skippy Dies. This technique, which mimics the real-time thought processes of characters, provides the reader with a deep immersion into a character’s experience. Joyce’s seminal 1922 novel, Ulysses, for instance, is well-known for the character Molly Bloom’s stream of consciousness at the end, recounting her past relationships and her marriage to her husband, Leopold, without regard for punctuation. Similarly, many characters in Skippy Dies, such as Daniel “Skippy” Juster and Lorelei Wakeham, have their thoughts rendered through a similar approach. In these ways, Murray’s work affirms the tradition of Irish literature.
Cultural and Historical Context: Catholic Education in Ireland
One of the cornerstones of Irish culture and identity is its tense relationship with the Catholic Church. Christianity arrived on the island in the fifth century, with much of the early conversions being tied to the work of Saint Patrick, a former prisoner of the Gaels who successfully Christianized many of the royal leaders around the island. During the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, practicing the Catholic faith was seen as a form of resistance against the Anglican Church and thus English cultural colonization (Brennan, Paul. “The Catholic School and Secularization in Ireland.” Études Irlandaises, 2004, pp. 85-94). Three centuries later, Ireland welcomed the creation of several Catholic schools, all established by teaching congregations. The Catholic Church in Ireland bolstered developmental support for denominational schools that would ensure their dominance over the island’s educational system throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.
When the Republic of Ireland was formed in 1922, Catholic schools continued to receive support from Irish Parliament. From this point onward, the Catholic Church in Ireland could develop schools that catered to all three levels of education. Many attempts to secularize education in the country, including the training of Catholic teachers among the laity, were initially rejected. However, in the latter half of the century, as Ireland became culturally and socially secular, the Catholic Church found challenges to its control over the Irish educational system. The decline of the Church’s influence was exacerbated by a large number of sex abuse scandals associated with Irish Catholic priests beginning in the 1980s.
Because Skippy Dies is set in a Catholic boarding school, these cultural and historical developments teem at the edges of the narrative. Throughout the novel, ongoing tension leads some characters to speculate that sexual abuse is occurring at the hands of the school’s Catholic priests. However, the shift of the school’s administration into more secular leadership also reflects the shift in Ireland’s culture. This is complicated when the school’s lay acting principal begins to demonstrate behavior that leans in favor of further institutional abuse.
