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Chapter 6
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Long Long Way, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Youth, Naivety, and Growing Up
The Horrors of War
Family, Camaraderie, and Love
Political Conflict and Divided Loyalties
Resilience and Shared Humanity
Summary
Analysis
Willie awakes the next morning in the soldiers’ barracks in Dublin. As he urinates into a chamber pot, the soldier in the next bed wakes up and accidentally knocks his Bible into Willie’s chamber pot. Embarrassed, Willie offers his own Bible to him. At first, the soldier—a short man with a Cork accent—agreeably waves Willie’s offer away. However, when he sees his ruined Bible, he starts to strangle Willie angrily. Suddenly, he stops and turns friendly, introducing himself as Jesse Kirwan.
Willie is bewildered by his first interaction with Jesse Kirwan. Compared to Jesse, who has a strong personality and highly variable moods, Willie seems meek, constant, and agreeable. Nevertheless, Jesse turns out to be a likeable person, and his friendliness leads to a new, positive relationship between himself and Willie.
Themes
Cheering crowds gather in the streets of Dublin to give the soldiers a happy send-off before they depart for the war. Willie and Jesse Kirwan are together in the same transport. Gretta is in the crowd, and she and Willie wave to each other excitedly when they see each other. Over the noise of laughing and shouting, Willie asks Jesse what his father does. Willie says his own father is a policeman. Jesse responds that his father, a lithographer, doesn’t think much of policemen. The two young men laugh together when Willie admits he doesn’t know what a lithographer is.
Civilians and new army recruits alike display naïve optimism about the war, which Willie used to share when he first left Dublin for the Western Front. The festive atmosphere helps Willie and Jesse continue to bond. Notably, Jesse’s comment about his father’s dislike of policemen hints that Jesse comes from a family with different beliefs and values from those of Willie’s family. This difference, however, doesn’t keep Jesse and Willie from becoming friends.
Themes
Suddenly, Willie pities and fears for Jesse Kirwan, who doesn’t yet know what the war is like. Even to himself, Willie doesn’t want to admit what they’ll be facing soon. Yet, as he watches the activity of the army loading the ship and embarking, his mood shifts again. He feels confident and ready to leave.
Now that Willie has become disillusioned about the reality of war, he dreads returning to the danger, terror, and sorrow that await him on the Western Front. Out of concern for his fellow soldier, he also wishes he could protect Jesse from losing his current innocence and discovering these horrors for himself. However, despite his fears, the celebratory mood of the send-off is still able to lift Willie’s spirits.
Themes
An army messenger on horseback arrives at the docks with a sense of urgency. To many men’s confusion, officers send the soldiers marching back into the city, where the streets are now nearly empty. Jesse Kirwan asks Willie what’s going on. He wonders if the soldiers are being demobilized. If so, he says, he wants to leave the army because he “only came in as a Volunteer”—one of Redmond’s men. Willie simply replies that all the soldiers are volunteers.
Jesse is a follower of John Redmond (the real-life leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party) and a member of the National Volunteers, a historical paramilitary group that supported Home Rule (Ireland’s self-governance). Like other National Volunteers, Jesse signed up for the war out of a desire to secure greater independence for Ireland, not out of duty to England. Therefore, Jesse—an Irish nationalist—doesn’t really want to be part of the British Army. Willie’s confusion about the Volunteers points to his ignorance about recent political developments in Ireland.
Themes
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The soldiers come to a halt on Sackville Street near the O’Connell Monument. Willie is astonished to see a cavalry force charging up the street. The scene becomes even more bizarre when rifle shots ring out from the direction of the General Post Office, bringing down horses and their riders. Jesse and Willie think that Germans must have invaded Dublin. Looking around, Willie calls out to a policeman he knows and asks what’s happening. A citizen hands Willie a sheet of paper, but the captain of Willie’s column orders Willie not to “parley with the enemy.” Willie doesn’t understand but steps back in line when the captain threatens to kill the civilian.
The armed conflict depicted here is the Easter Rising, a rebellion against British rule that took place in April 1916. The uprising was staged by Irish republicans, who wanted to create a wholly independent Irish Republic separate from the United Kingdom. In the novel’s fictional account of this historical event, the outbreak of violence in Dublin catches Willie completely off guard because he has little understanding of the political conflict that has led to this moment. Willie observes the start of the fighting as if he’s trapped in a bewildering, horrifying dream.
Themes
Willie’s column is marched across the city. On Mount Street, the soldiers build a makeshift barricade out of ordinary furniture they take from the surrounding homes, and they take shelter from bullets being fired on them from a nearby building. Huddling behind the barricade beside Jesse Kirwan, Willie realizes that Jesse is reading a sheet of paper and weeping. Distraught, Jesse exclaims, “It’s our fellas.” Another confused soldier takes the paper from Jesse’s hands and reads aloud the words, “Our gallant allies in Europe.” Willie doesn’t understand what’s going on, and he fears for his sisters.
The streets of Dublin, which are so familiar and ordinary to Willie, have transformed into a strange battleground. Willie never expected violent conflict to erupt at home, so he’s dazed and terrified for his family’s safety. Meanwhile, Jesse is upset because he’s now being forced to fight against fellow Irishmen whom he considers allies in the struggle for Ireland’s independence. His commitment to the British Army now conflicts strongly with his loyalty to Ireland.
Themes
The soldiers are ordered to charge. Willie takes cover in a doorway halfway up the street. Suddenly, a young man holds an old revolver against Willie’s chest and shakily declares Willie his prisoner. Willie is dumbfounded, but an army officer shoots the young man in the neck before moving on. Willie kneels next to the dying young man and asks if he’s German. The young man, who thinks Willie is Scottish, protests, “We’re all Irishmen in here, fighting for Ireland.” He says an act of contrition before he dies, his blood splattering Willie’s face and clothes.
Willie follows orders obediently, but he can’t bring himself to kill or hurt the young rebel. Just as Willie mistakenly believes the enemy must be invading German soldiers, the young rebel misunderstands the tragic reality that Willie is Irish too, meaning that many Irishmen are being made to fight against their own countrymen. The rebel’s slow, painful death illustrates the terrible cost of violence.
Themes
The soldiers are rushed back to the ship to embark. Everyone is shocked and confused. Willie finds Jesse Kirwan sitting alone and asks him if the same Volunteers to which Jesse belongs are the same people who were firing at the soldiers in the city. Exasperated, Jesse explains the difference between all the “volunteers.” The Ulster Volunteers are men who joined the war to prevent Home Rule. The Irish Volunteers formed to oppose the Ulster Volunteers. Most of the Irish Volunteers signed up in the army to fight for Home Rule, but some refused and instead led the rebellion that Willie just witnessed. Willie wonders where he stands in all of this.
Jesse, who is more informed and politically conscious than Willie, teaches Willie about the tensions between Irish unionists, nationalists, and republicans regarding Ireland’s independence from British rule. Willie feels like he doesn’t have a place in these convoluted political conflicts because he’s been ignorant about them all his life. Willie doesn’t have his own stance about Home Rule, nor does he know how to form his own opinion about the rebellion.
Themes
Willie then asks Jesse what it means that the rebels claimed to have allies in Europe. Jesse answers with the saying, “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.” Willie grows angry and argues that hundreds of Irishmen have died fighting Germans. After a silence, Jesse gently says that he knows.
Willie is offended by Jesse’s implication that the Irish rebels see the war only as a hardship for England, which they could take advantage of, without recognizing that the war is harming Irishmen, too. Willie feels hurt that some of his own countrymen might not care about the Irish soldiers’ suffering at war.
Themes
Later, Willie notices that his uniform is still stained with the blood of the young man who died on Mount Street. He tries to wash the blood out, but he can’t.
Just as Willie can’t remove the bloodstains from his uniform, he also can’t forget the young Irish rebel’s death. Willie will carry with him the impactful memory of violence in Dublin, tragedy, and confusion about an Irish soldier’s duty back to the Western Front.
Themes
