33 pages • 1 hour read
Colum McCannLet the Great World Spin
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book One
Chapter 1 Summary: All Respects to Heaven, I Like It Here
John Andrew and Ciaran Corrigan live in Dublin, Ireland, with their mother. John, known to everyone as Corrigan, starts drinking and spending time with street people. When Ciaran is 19 and Corrigan 17, their mother dies. Later, Corrigan begins studying for the priesthood, eventually joins an order of monks, and goes to New York on a missionary assignment.
Ciaran joins his brother in America after Dublin is besieged with IRA bombings. Corrigan’s spiritual mission involves helping the local prostitutes and the elderly in a nursing home. At the home, he meets and falls in love with Adelita, who is a nurse there.
The police arrest the hookers who are Corrigan’s friends and neighbors. Corrigan goes to court to help get them out of jail. It turns out that Tillie and Jazzlyn, mother and daughter prostitutes, are wanted for robbing a client. Tillie takes the rap to keep her daughter free.
On the way home, the van with Corrigan and Jazzlyn inside is hit by a car and then a truck. Jazzlyn is thrown through the windshield and dies instantly. Corrigan’s chest is crushed, but he lives until he gets to the hospital and Ciaran and Adelita come to his bedside. He dies whispering to Adelita that “he saw something beautiful” (72).
Chapter 2 Summary: Miró, Miró, on the Wall
Claire Soderberg hosts a breakfast gather for a group of five women, all of whom have lost sons in the Vietnam War. Marcia tells the group about seeing the tightrope walker at the World Trade Center. Marcia is triggered by seeing the news helicopter since her son died in a helicopter crash.
Claire shares her experiences receiving letters from her son about his work as a computer analyst examining casualty data. She is disturbed by all the talk about the tightrope walker and the “puppetry of it all.” She thinks, “His little Charlie Chaplin walk, coming in like a hack in her morning. How dare he do that with his own body? Throwing his life in everyone’s face? Making her own son’s life so cheap?” (113).
Chapter 3 Summary: A Fear of Love
Chapter 3 follows Blaine, the driver who hit Corrigan’s van and caused two deaths and Lara, his wife and fellow passenger in the car that day. Blaine blames Corrigan for the accident and is ready to move on. Lara feels more responsible. She goes to the hospital and claims Corrigan’s effects and takes them to his brother.
Lara attends the graveside ceremony for Jazzlyn and later goes to a bar with Ciaran. Lara is attracted to Ciaran but is afraid to show her feelings. “Quickly I turned away. There are rocks deep enough in this earth that no matter what rupture, they never see the surface. There is, I think, a fear of love. There is a fear of love” (156).
Chapter 1 – Chapter 3 Analysis
There is tension and excitement since the crowds do not know what is happening. Is the figure on top of the tall building about to jump to his death? Might he (or she) accidentally fall? Eventually, the observers figure out what is happening. They see the wire and the balancing pole the walker has in his hands. There is still fear, but then amazement and awe as the tightrope walker performs his act, including hopping and lying down on the wire.
The author captures the mob psychology of the event with some in the crowd hoping to see a spectacular fall and tragic death and others hoping to see the magic of a seemingly impossible performance. Thus, McCann establishes his mission for the novel: the reader will experience both the grief and the joy that are part of life.
Chapter 1 appears to focus mostly on the suffering and grief of life. The two brothers lose their mother to an early death. Corrigan attempts to please God by serving the “least of his brothers,” first on the streets of Dublin and later on the streets of the South Bronx. He appears to be doing much good with his kindness and generosity. It begins to look like his good works will be rewarded by God: he finds a beautiful woman and falls in love. However, he is soon killed in the car wreck.
The young prostitute Jazzlyn is also killed and leaves behind two young girls. The girls’ grandmother, Tillie, is sent to prison. It is a bleak picture of how painful life can be.
Chapter 2 presents the grieving mothers’ group. They are crushed by their losses, too. One of Chapter 3’s focal points is Tillie’s separation from her granddaughters. If life can be said to be a series of ups and downs, McCann has written mostly about downs in Part1.
Yet, there is hope in the love that is also depicted, including the love of Mrs. Corrigan for her two sons, the love of the two brothers for each other, the love between Corrigan and Adelita, the love Adelita has for her son and daughter, the love the community feels for Corrigan, the love of Tillie and Jazzlyn for the girls, and the love each of the mothers has for her dead son or sons.
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