Henry Burby
2/6/16
HNRS 10201
Journal entry for Quinn’s “The Search for the Banished Children”
Quinn lumps memory together with heritage, the multi-sourced framework of real and imagined history on which a culture rests. We are born into one or more of these, and we keep them in our lives because, while our true memories make up who we are, the rest makes up what we are. It can be comforting to be able to say “I am Catholic. I am Irish.” These categories allow us to connect with others who share them. The closest of these groups have had more hardship, which forced them to close ranks. Irish Americans are bound together both former poverty and the trauma of starvation. As distance from the pain grows, so does romanticism. Quinn’s mother avoids her history because it is too painful. His father loves the old stories, but they are at least tempered by half-truths and exaggerations. Poverty is like war. Looking on from the sidelines, or back across time, it can seem heroic or romantic, but it is very different for those who actually experience it. it is only because we can look back at suffering that we can see fun in it. As in the Eugene O’Neil quote, actual day to day suffering is just sad.
