39 pages • 1 hour read
Roddy DoyleA Star Called Henry
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1999A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaChapters 11-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4
Chapter 11 Summary
Henry wakes up after being captured and tortured by the British guards. He tells them that he was visiting his grandmother and refuses to reveal his real name. One Welsh soldier, Ned Kellet, identifies him as Henry Smart. When they tie Henry to the steel bar that runs across the top of a lorry, he realizes that he has been in Dublin Castle. They are taking him to Kilmainham Gaol and mention Stonebreaker’s Yard, where the Easter Rising rebels were executed.
At Kilmainham, he gets a message from Miss O’Shea, eats the griddle cake she has made him, and accepts a tram fare. Henry then escapes through an unlocked door. Miss O’Shea gets on the tram after a few stops. Her hair has been shorn by men from an overzealous faction of the IRA, run by Ivan, the cousin that Henry trained up. Ivan decided that Miss O’Shea’s adventures with her rifle were “getting in his way” (308). She informs Henry that it has been four months since he was captured. They get off the tram to go home.
Chapter 12 Summary
Although a truce is impending, with the English surrendering control of Ireland, life is fraught for Henry. Under suspicion for being disloyal to the IRA, he lives life on the run. Ivan warns Henry that both he and his wife are on dangerous ground; whereas Ivan was content for Miss O’Shea to be part of Cumann na mBan and serve up stew and sandwiches to the men, her politically motivated violence disturbs him. Ivan hoped that the Black and Tans’ burning of Missis O’Shea’s house would have been enough to stop Miss O’Shea’s guerrilla war. He asks Henry to control his wife and promises that in return, he will secure Henry’s family safe passage to America. Henry replies that he is unwilling to control his wife, which continues to be the case when Miss O’Shea is determined to keep fighting during her pregnancy.
Henry feels remorseful about shooting whoever’s name appeared on a “piece of paper” delivered by someone higher in command (318). He challenges Jack about why Mr. Climanis, a Latvian Jew, appeared on a kill list. Jack testily insists that Climanis was spy and so had to be eliminated, before letting slip that after the ordeal of the English, the Irish needed “no more strangers in our house” (325). When Henry protests, Jack pronounces him a “troublemaker” who, although once useful, will have to be gotten rid of in the new post-Truce Republic. After the Truce, still on the run, Henry finally manages to visit his new daughter on the day Michael Collins is killed. Miss O’Shea is absent, “out there somewhere, hanging on for the Republic, fighting Ivan and the new National Army” (329).
When Henry visits Granny Nash, she tells him that his wife is in Kilmainham Gaol and mentions Alfie Gandon’s name. Henry visits Dolly Oblong’s brothel to inquire after Gandon; following an encounter with one of the prostitutes there, Henry realizes that they were all given the name Maria (the name of murdered Climanis’s wife). Afterward, Dolly tells Henry that Gandon, who raped her at 13 and owns her brothel, is now a national politician who will kill her in order to “kill the past” (336). Dolly orders Henry to kill Gandon. Henry confronts Gandon about all the disappearances, including Climanis and his father, beating him with his father’s wooden leg all the while. When Gandon reveals that he was in charge of the kill list of spies Henry dispatched while he was in the IRA, Henry finally clubs Gandon to death.
At Kilmainham, Henry has a shouted conversation with Miss O’Shea before the guards drag her away. Meanwhile, Henry decides that he cannot stay in Ireland. He will use the money he has to get to Liverpool and embark on an uncertain future.
Chapter 11-12 Analysis
The last chapters of the novel reveal the darker side of the Irish independence movement, which became as hierarchical and full of intrigue as the British colonialist regime. Both Henry and Miss O’Shea’s fortunes decline when they try to act according to their own interests and beliefs, as opposed to the dictates of those more powerful than they.
Henry comes to the realization that “everything I’d done, every bullet and assassination, all the blood and brains, the prison, the torture, the last four years” had merely enabled arrogant youths like Ivan to run the country like warlords (318). The revolution had also empowered underground ringleaders like Gandon to control who lived and died. When Henry questions the names on the list and no longer wants to fight, he also becomes someone to be eliminated. When Henry kills Gandon, the man who sent both him and his father on murderous errands, he attempts to go against the current and take control of his own destiny.
Those in charge of the new Irish Republic, including Ivan and Jack, want to keep power in the hands of Irish-born, Catholic males. They oppose the idea that either women or religious minorities should hold any sway, an attitude that foreshadows the real-life Irish Republic’s social conservatism. Jewish Mr. Climanis is executed because his ethnicity makes him suspicious, and Miss O’Shea is sent to jail for her disruptive shooting missions and her opposition to Ivan. Her treatment foretells the Irish Republic’s future tendency to incarcerate errant, independent-minded women, both in traditional jails and Catholic institutions, such as Magdalene laundries.
Ending with Miss O’Shea in jail and Henry planning to start again overseas, the novel eschews a tidy resolution and sets up the second title in the trilogy, Oh, Play That Thing. The ending leaves unclear what the new phase in Henry’s life will be and whether he will ever see his daughter and wife again.
Related Titles
By Roddy Doyle
