The Lieutenant of Inishmore

“Keeping our youngsters in a drugged-up and idle haze, when it’s out on the streets pegging bottles at coppers they should be.”

Padraic demonstrates his skewed sense of morality in which selling drugs is punishable by torture, but violence is encouraged. Paramilitary groups were notorious for enacting vigilante justice on petty criminals for stealing cars or dealing drugs, but they were only concerned with drug dealers who encroached on their territory since the INLA was profiting from drug sales, functioning much like organized crime syndicates.

“Sure, drug pushers are the same as anybody underneath.”

James sees a chance to appeal to Padraic’s elusive sense of humanity when he recognizes that Padraic has a soft spot for his cat. James claims that he has a cat that he loves. Padraic is genuinely surprised to learn that James is a person who might also love his pets, which shows the absurdity of the dehumanization required to torture someone.

“It was on no news, and when do you ever watch the news unless there’s been a bomb in England gone off you can laugh o’er?”

Davey’s banter with Mairead highlights her fixation on joining the INLA, and how she has trained herself to not only shoot but to be cruel and unsympathetic about the victims of terrorism. Like Padraic and the others, she doesn’t simply view terrorism as the only means to a necessary end. She finds pleasure in their killing, and she wants to kill too.

“Sure, every cat has its own separate personality, sure, not to mention its eyes and its miaow. Look at my Sir Roger. Sir Roger has a different personality to any cat.”

Mairead is pointing out that any cat owner can recognize their own cat, so replacing Wee Thomas will be useless. This provides an ironic contrast to Padraic’s conversation with his torture victim when he is surprised to realize that James is an individual. Conversely, every cat is unique, a sentiment that Padraic later echoes.

“DONNY: What do you think, Davey? Will we get away with it?

Davey considers for a few moments.

DAVEY: He’ll put a gun to our heads and blow out what brains we have.

DONNY (laughing): He will!”

Although Davey and Donny will show more terror when Padraic ties them up to kill them, they demonstrate the same detachment and ability to joke darkly about their own deaths as they do about other acts of violence. This frames their potential deaths as a joke that audiences are allowed to laugh at.

“We none of us enjoyed today’s business, Joey-o, but hasn’t the plan worked? And like the fella said, ‘Don’t the ends justify the means?’ Wasn’t it Marx that said that, now? I think it was.”

Joey is bothered by the earlier killing of the cat. Christy invokes Marx’s name to justify it, erroneously and haphazardly attributing the most convenient sentiment to the situation. The INLA had a socialist vision of Ireland, so the name Marx carries weight. Christy expects that Joey and Brandon won’t know what Marx said or didn’t say any more than he does, and when Brandon points out that Marx didn’t say that, Christy argues and changes the subject.

“I’d’ve never joined the INLA in the first place if I’d known the battering of cats was to be on the agenda. The INLA has gone down in my estimation today. Same as when we blew up Airey Neave. You can’t blow up a fella just because he has a funny name. It wasn’t his fault.”

Joey lamenting the dead cat is absurd and ironic because he joined a terrorist organization that kills and tortures people, but killing a cat is what makes him think less of the INLA. He also shows that he has little understanding of how the organization functions or why they are killing in the first place. Airey Neave was targeted and assassinated by the INLA in 1979 as a Member of the British Parliament who was a direct threat to the republican cause in Northern Ireland. But Joey has no idea why Neave was killed, and this statement shows the contrast between a targeted killing and murdering a cat, or the random bombing of civilians that the characters mention throughout the play.

“CHRISTY: Why don’t you form a splinter group, so, like oul Mad Padraic?

BRENDAN: Aye. The National Being Nice to Cats Army.

JOEY: I would. Only I know you two’d blow me away for it, after probably killing me goldfish first!”

Christy brings up the idea of a splinter group as a way of threatening Joey for daring to challenge him. Joey knows that they are there to kill Padraic for trying to start a splinter group. Brendan mocks him by suggesting he call it the National Being Nice to Cats Army, but it foreshadows the ending, as that turns out to be exactly the basis for the splinter group that Padraic decides to form.

“You want to get your priorities right, boy. Is it happy cats or is it an Ireland free we’re after?”

Christy has been trying to bully Joey into agreeing with him, but this is a final threat, delivered with both Christy and Brendan pointing their guns at Joey. They are unconsciously mimicking the double-gun overkill at close range that Padraic uses as his signature. Christy gives a false dichotomy, as killing cats isn’t actually going to free Ireland. Similarly, killing innocent civilians isn’t productive. It’s possible to have both happy cats (innocent people) and a free Ireland.

“I do not prefer boys! There’s no boy-preferers involved in Irish terrorism, I’ll tell you that! They stipulate when you join.”

Padraic is defensive when Mairead questions whether he might “prefer boys” and even avoids using the word “gay.” He uses his membership in the INLA as proof, as if the group imposes heterosexuality on its members rather than simply trying to keep gay people out. As a child, Padraic’s developing sexuality was regulated by heteronormative bullying when he was teased for wearing a scarf that was deemed feminine. The violence he returned to his bully evolved into the violence he inflicts as a terrorist. Later, Padraic imposes regulation on Davey’s sexuality, or what he presumes about Davey, by cutting his hair.

“Everybody slings me cow blinding at me, no matter how many years go by! What nobody ever mentions is it was from sixty yards I hit them cows’ eyes, which is bloody good shooting in anybody’s books. If I’d walked bang up to them I could understand it, but I didn’t, I gave them every chance.”

Mairead is teased for shooting cows because no matter how she tries to justify it, it was an unnecessary act of cruelty against animals. They had no chance, as she claims, because they’re cows who have no understanding of danger. She attempts to call it a political act against the meat market, comparing it to the acts of terrorism committed against the innocent by the INLA, but the other characters recognize that her logic is absurd. Her skill is impressive, and she unknowingly insults Padraic’s style of shooting, but it was still a pointless act of cruelty.

“I supposed he’s changed since last you saw him, Padraic. Oh, cats do change quick.”

Donny’s attempt to pass an orange cat off as a black one is ridiculous since cats don’t change once they’re fully grown. Ironically, it turns out that Padraic doesn’t know his own cat as well as he thought. Wee Thomas has “changed” into two different cats at this point, and the cat’s “identity” is contingent on the way it is constructed and recognized by humans. Padraic is ready to start an army to honor the wrong dead cat.

“These guns are only circumstantial, so, and so too your brains’ll be only circumstantial as they leave your heads and go skidding up the wall.”

Davey attempts to plead his case, which is reasonable and would hold up in a real court: The evidence against him is circumstantial. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and there’s no evidence that he killed anything. Padraic’s retort is nonsensical, as Davey points out, suggesting that he doesn’t know what it means for evidence to be circumstantial. Padraic demonstrates that he wants to kill the real culprit who murdered his cat when Christy confesses, and he tortures and kills him instead. But he is acting as judge, jury, and executioner when he is not at all qualified to do the first two jobs effectively.

“I will plod on, I know, but no sense to it will there be Thomas gone. No longer will his smiling eyes be there in the back of me head, egging me on, saying, ‘This is for me and for Ireland, Padraic. Remember that,’ as I’d lob a bomb at a pub, or be shooting a builder. Me whole world’s gone, and he’ll never be coming back to me. (Pause) What I want ye to remember, as the bullets come out through yere foreheads, is that this is all a fella can be expecting for being so bad to an innocent Irish cat.”

Padraic’s lament about his cat is almost pitiable, but it’s absurd because he anthropomorphizes his cat. He speaks about Wee Thomas almost as if he were a spouse, as if the loss of his cat wouldn’t have happened naturally in a few more years. Since the cat is repeatedly defined—by Padraic and others—as innocent, his imagined endorsement of Padraic’s terrorist activities lends his actions the same innocence and righteousness. Padraic doesn’t have to think critically about the people he kills or why because his imagined Wee Thomas is assuring him that he’s right. Innocent civilians gathered in the many pubs bombed by Irish terrorists, and the builder incident refers to the 1992 murder of eight innocent Protestant builders who were executed because they happened to be working on a military base.

“You never let bygones be bygones, you.”

Padraic is criticizing Christy for continuing to hold a grudge against Padraic for accidentally shooting his eye out while playing with a crossbow. This is ironic from Padraic, who was ready to murder his own father for the death of his cat despite having no reason to believe that Donny did anything on purpose. Padraic maims and murders instead of letting bygones be bygones, but he recognizes the negative trait in Christy when it’s aimed at him.

“Kill me so, aye, and cut the rest of me hair off while you’re at it, ya bully!”

Throughout the play, Davey is a pacifist, unable to even steal a cat if kids are playing with it. He is teased and bullied for his long hair by those who insinuate that he is feminine or gay. But when he loses something he cares about—his hair—he demonstrates that he is braver and more traditionally masculine than the other characters who are facing a gun barrel. He tells Padraic what he thinks of him, and he doesn’t back down.

“Oh, don’t let me be killed by a girl, Sweet Jesus! I’ll never live it down.”

Blinded by Mairead, Brendan and Joey are concerned about the sex of the person who shot out their eyes. This moment is mocking the idea of compulsory masculinity in the INLA, as if the recipient of a bullet is going to know the difference (or be any less dead) being shot by a man or a woman. Mairead proves her skill in this moment, but Brendan panics, because if men are supposed to be superior, being killed by a woman is shameful. Ironically, he worries that he’ll “never live it down” if he’s killed by a girl, instead of worrying about the fact that he’ll no longer live at all.

“Still, I suppose it isn’t the travel that attracts people to the IRA.”

Donny hints at and nearly articulates that many people join the IRA because want to kill people. The paramilitary characters, especially Padraic and Christy, have referenced and committed sadistic acts of violence, taking obvious pleasure even in the killing of the cats they both murder. But they repeat the refrain of Irish republican rhetoric as a shield against criticism.

“MAIREAD: She said good luck and try not to go blowing up kids.

DAVEY: And what did you say?

MAIREAD: I said I’d try but I’d be making no promises.”

This conversation is a prime example of the way McDonagh uses absurdity to elicit laughter while referring to real violence to urge audiences to think about the innocent victims who were killed. In this case, two young boys were killed in an IRA bombing in 1993, a recent and horrendous enough event that informed audiences would recognize Mairead’s vague reference. The nonchalance with which Mairead and her mother talk about committing a potential atrocity is comic for its surprising juxtaposition. Upon deeper reflection, laughter is a disturbing reaction to a reference to a real crime.

“Ah, Mairead. Y’know, all I ever wanted was an Ireland free. Free for kids to run and play. Free for fellas and lasses to dance and sing. Free for cats to roam about without being clanked in the brains with a handgun. Was that too much to ask, now? Was it?”

Padraic is mimicking the romanticization of nationalistic rhetoric, but there is a note of truth in his statement. He wants kids to be free to run and play as opposed to the social regulation of expression that was imposed on him. He wants “fellas and lasses” to be free to dance and sing, suggesting freedom from divided gender expectations. Ironically, he doesn’t want random violence imposed on innocent (cats) who are just trying to live their lives.

“That’ll be a long fecking engagement!”

When Padraic and Mairead decide that they’ll only marry when Ireland is free, Donny jokes that they’re going to be engaged for a long time. Once more, he is acknowledging a sentiment that isn’t acceptable to say—that Ireland isn’t close to “freedom,” and it may never be free. They make their engagement symbolic, giving it a higher meaning but also tacitly agreeing that they may never actually get married.

“Worse and worse and worse this story gets.”

Davey, who is in a daze as he beholds the gruesome and enormous labor of dismembering three bodies, articulates what the audience is likely thinking. What began with a dead cat has progressed to three murders and the realistic sawing apart of their corpses. And yet, the play isn’t over. It gets worse and worse, and it will get worse still.

“No, David. I think I’ll be staying around here for a biteen. I thought shooting fellas would be fun, but it’s not. It’s dull.”

Mairead has been shooting people with her air rifle throughout the play, but that isn’t the same as killing Padraic directly at close range. Mairead is motivated by a desire for agency and the same social power that is granted to men. She finds that power for a moment when Padraic does what she tells him to do and kisses her. She exacts immediate revenge for the murder of her cat, even using Padraic’s method of shooting. But it isn’t enough, and she discovers that killing doesn’t give her the power she imagined. She does, however, have new authority over Donny and Davey.