Your blog comments will
be due on Thursday, June 13th by 10:00 am. Blog comments should be roughly
250-500 words in length and contain at least one quote from the text. You
may use the questions below for inspiration or develop your own response to the readings if you
wish.
1) On page 39 of From
These Green Heights, Christy says, “This isn’t how Ballymun was meant to
be,” to which Dessie replies, “But it’s the way it is.” In what ways is this exchange, and others
like it in the play, reflective of Tafuri’s critique of modernism? How would Jameson respond to the sense of
hopelessness that pervades the play?
2) What are the effects of space, particularly the kinds
of spaces that Ballymun creates, on these characters? How does this space produce particular
demarcations of class? How does the idea
of the “neighborhood” change for these characters? In what alternative forms is it
reproduced?
3) In many ways, Ballymun reflects the Irish government’s
desire to “modernize” Irish citizens in the wake of British colonial rule. In spite of this modernization, Bolger’s play
is full of ghosts and references to ghosts.
In what ways do these spectres disrupt Le Corbusier’s ideology of order
and the total rejection of the “chaos” of urban life?
Ballymun is a new suburban development built by the Irish government for low-income tenants in order to clear out the urban slums of Dublin. The set of high-rises that lie within the development are referred to by locals as the “Green Heights.” So much hope is vested by the new tenants in this building. It serves as a new beginning for their lives. The character Dessie remarks as his family first moves into the flats: “We weren’t just moving up in the world-we were moving skyward” (Bolger 2). The building was newly built with the latest amenities. On the surface, everything looks brilliant and promising. However, these earlier visions of a new life are soon dismantled.
ReplyDeleteNot only were promised amenities never constructed, but the poor craftsmanship affected the residents’. Lifts become vandalized; flats condemned, the once eager-eyed tenants are replaced by squatters. The physical representation of the building affects the mental state and aspirations of the residents’. The “Ballymun is a mistake…such towers would never be built again” (Bolger 21) Christy states after his wife, Carmel, has a miscarriage. Christy is soon laid off from the factory. He cannot find work like he could in his old neighborhood.
These towers had no basis for community interaction. Carmel cannot converse with any neighbors about her then fragile condition as she could in her previous neighborhood on Bolton Street. The idea of neighborhood for the families becomes radically transformed into a state of seclusion. Nostalgia for their previous life serves as a central theme for the tenants of the building. Carmel notes “Maybe it was being so high up…but I felt so isolated and tired. I was tired of waiting for Ballymun to be finished.” (Bolger 31). Despite all the despair exuded by their parents, the characters Dessie and Marie were able to find love and see the suburban wasteland of Ballyum as home. The place of home is no longer an shared by an external community, but is confined to the space of the individual and whom they choose to share that space with.
The effects of space and kinds of spaces in Ballymun have a wide range of effects on the characters. “Not that you were scared of your neighbours but as the 1970’s wore on you didn’t know who your neighbours were any more” (Bolger 34). This quote describes the ideals present among the following character analyses. Dessie’s is an optimistic man that lives day to day studying and being faithful to his family. He is not only faithful to his family, but to Ballymun as well. With the few amount of residents in this space, he makes the best of the situation. He meets a woman named, Marie, who is drastically affected by the space. Over the course of the text, he falls for this woman and they make love as a parting gift for Dessie. Marie leaves and Dessie keeps positive. He especially loves the view from the city he has from his patio. Marie on the other hand seems to think the grass is always greener. Marie is Dessie’s lover and Jane’s daughter. Marie is positive about her current living situation in the beginning when the promise to beautify the area is still believable. Once Dessie and Marie begin to see each other, she decides to move to Australia with hope that life will be better there. She meets and marries an Australian man for his looks, and it turn out that she is physically abused. She hides this information as she returns for sad reasons. In the end Marie realizes, with the aid of Dessie, that Ballymun is a just a place. The company one keeps is a means to a happy life, not the change of venue. Jane and Sharon are an interesting group. Sharon is Jane’s youngest daughter. This relationship changes as a pair for Jane’s happiness is dependent upon Sharon’s interactions. Sharon begins to do drugs and hang out with the “junkies.” Sharon shares the obvious fate of most junkies, death. This is brought on by the spaces outside of the home, the places beneath the bridge and illegal dealings that undeveloped cities tend to have. Jane becomes proactive for a while and tries to learn how to read and joins committees. She is doing well until she aids a junkie attempting suicide. She attempts to call him off the ledge, but accidentally gets pushed off instead. Carmel and Christy are Dessie's mother and father. Carmel is a very optimistic man, but grows to despise Ballymun. He describes those who live in Ballymun as, “…a God-forsaken kip and wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else” (Bolger 79). This couple struggles very much so with depression from the abundance of miscarriages. They finally produce a little boy, Charlie, which brings them out of the shadows and into the light.
ReplyDeleteAs a result of the space and changes or lack thereof produce greater demarcations between the people of Ballymun and the wealthier parts. More importantly it creates a feeling of demarcation among each character. The local bank decides to transfer their money to a more populated, wealthier part of town, despite the blockaded streets and picketers. The idea of neighborhood is also an entirely different feeling for these characters from the promised life. “I was somebody in Bolton Street. Neighbours came to me to write letters for them. Here I’m nobody, not even a proper father” (Bolger 39). A sense of community had not developed in this part of town, and this caused an immense amount of stress on the occupants of this tenement. The demarcations among the characters arise from a sense of snootiness. Jane goes to visit homes for sale that are out of her price range, but lies to the realtor about her current address.
ReplyDeleteDaniel A. KNox
From The Green Heights is a play describing how life was changing in Dublin, Ireland in the twentieth century. The Irish government was trying hard to modernize its country. The play started with Dessie, his father Christie, and his mother Carmel discussing their new home. This new home was a long and unfinished building that they were just moving in. They were excited and had a lot of hope for this new experience. The building was supposed to have the lasted technology. (Pge10) The first days were hard to adjust, especially for the young kids. Dessie, for instance, remembered that “ it felt strange knowing not one, when (he) was used to playing in a protective shoal of older boys.” (Pge4)
ReplyDeleteIn the first days, the parents were not feeling confortable enough to let their kids play in this new environment. The main cause was that most of the spaces around Ballymun were still under construction. For instance, there was no playground, no shops, and no school. Dessie and his parents had to move to Ballymun because they did not have any choice. They were depending on the government help; otherwise, they would have been homeless. Besides, Ballymun was a modern building where one could dream for a better future.
However, Christie and his family became quickly disappointed. The construction stopped. People left Ballymum and even the buses did not want to come over by their building; it was too dangerous and too muddy. (Pge12) Carmel, the wife, miscarried multiple times and Christie lost his job. The conditions were so bad that people thought of moving out the country to either to Australia or America for a better life. Even tough people were tired and unhappy of living at the Ballymum; the kids managed to adjust better than their parents. For instance, when Christie complained that their life at the Ballymun was different from what he expected; Dessie, comforted his dad and told him to face the reality. (Pge39) In one word, the young people were the source of hope in the community at Ballymum.
This play is a good example for Tafuri’s critic of modernity. In fact, it appears that the government and the builder sold false dreams to the people. In my opinion, Ireland, at the time, was going through economic crisis, which meant that it was not necessary, the fault of neither the builder nor the government. Economic crisis are unpredictable in some cases. At the end of play, when the economy was better, Dessie and his family had a better a life in the same area. (Pge102) In other words, life is made of ups and downs. In order to survive, People need to keep going with their lives and hope for the best.
Thank You!
Edgar Irakiza
In a powerful and heart throbbing conversation between Jane and her daughter Marie, the effects of space and conditions are illustrated. After Sharon died, Marie returned to Ballymun for the funeral and extended an invitation to her mother to move to Australia:
ReplyDeleteJane What would I do there?
Marie Live. Something you haven’t done for years.
Jane I’ve lived all right, through emotions I never had names for. I’ve hunted for my child in dark places with other mothers, been threatened by knives, had my last possessions stolen by my own daughter. Yet I never stopped loving Sharon in a way that I have never loved you.
Marie(upset) Mum ...
Jane It’s true. Because you never needed me like she did. We went through things more intense than childbirth... journeying through hell together, not caring what screams the neighbours heard. (Pg 85)
I believe this interaction illuminates the core and depth of adversity. The adversity of space which is experienced in this trodden and withering set of towers results in serious social issues. Sharon, a drug addict, fell into a lifestyle of irrational and uncontrollable behavior. That is the curse of addiction: choice disintegrates and becomes obsolete. This is mirrored to the lives of the families that have moved into Ballymun, they moved to the idealistic city with as much optimism as Tara expresses in the play’s final and closing monolog.
Throughout the play, an underlying continual connection and sense of relation to place is represented; Jane and her prior more respectable neighborhood, Christy’s second thoughts of leaving Ballymun, Marie’s memory of the tower on the beaches of Perth, and Dessie’s devotion to his home and dreams of remaining there.
What does space mean? How can it hold such power over memory? How much is space a part of its inhabiter?
Even with ravaging heat, restless neighboring tenants, lifts that do not lift, and any other imperfection or adverse characteristic of space, one grows accustom to, and finds appreciation for their home.
Jane expresses this phenomenon in her words to Marie. Simply being exposed to Sharon forced their relationship to form and grow. Sharon’s secrets and unattractive attributes were exposed. The trials are the price but they left the scars that reenforced the memories and became love. Love is acceptance. There is an understanding and when love is present, the ability to just be exudes. How can one love a lie? Honesty hurts but it is an element or pure, unconditional love. This is translated into the character’s undesirable love for the space. It seems rather ironic that people strive for and are attracted to perfection, when the idea of perfection abandons its pursuer and informs them of their imperfection.
I think several of the comments for this week direct toward some intriguing questions that revolve around issues of modernity, postmodernity, and space. Mark-Thomas introduces us to the ways in which both builders and the inhabitants of their constructions infuse the towers with a sense of “hope.” We might see this as an extension of the “hope” that pervaded Ireland in the 1960s when a new more cosmopolitan government attempted to revitalize Ireland’s postcolonial economy, an economy that tended toward backwardness and isolationism. It was by no accident that at the same time Ireland’s economy became “global” that its architecture began to show signs of the “international style.” Rather than reflective of a nationalist, “home-grown” or mythological “Gaelic” style, architecture in Ireland took on the clean lines and efficiency of modernist architecture. With increasing “troubles” and sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, nationalism was seen as a threat to economic progress and the order and “space” of Le Corbusier’s “City of To-Morrow” seemed a fresh respite from the political chaos and economic aimlessness of mid-century Ireland. Yet, as Edgar points out, the new life promised within Ballymun were very much “false dreams.” Edgar suggests that “the economy” is to blame, but I wonder if the source of blame is rather a much more complex web of a lack of political and social will. Once the inner-city poor were displaced into the margins of Dublin, perhaps it was easy to forget about these individuals “abandoned” in Ballymun. Connor brings up an important question, though, about the relation of adversity to “space.” Le Corbusier and Wright seem to invest a great deal of time to produce “ideal” spaces (“ideal” for what and for whom, we might ask?), but as Connor points out, much of our personal growth involves facing strife and adversity. While no architect wakes up and says they want to build a crackhouse (maybe???), we might wonder what sort of individuals are produced by social marginalization and if the “margins,” as Jameson vis-à-vis Gramsci might suggest, can actually produce alternative visions and experiences. This alternative view might create, then, enclaves—“small yet strategic pockets or beachheads within the older system” (Jameson 70). This question of “enclaves” within the system leads me to the questions Mark-Thomas and Connor suggest in their posts. Enclaves are produced by marginalization, but their impetus is informed by ideas of “nostalgia” and “memory.” What we might want to explore in the next couple of weeks is what and more importantly how do ideas of nostalgia, memory, and I would add social identity, produce these enclaves? How was it produced in the play? What were the end results? How were those results translated into architecture?
ReplyDeleteI found some resonation between the life these characters live in Ballymun with nonworking lifts, boarded windows, waiting for orchards to be planted, and the life we live in Taliesin and TWest. We also give up what some refer to as "comforts" to go live in a place where we will either discover a new side of ourselves and get out of our comfort zone to grow as individuals, or we will not be able to tolerate it and will forever long for the "good old ways" that were comfortable to us at some point. The biggest difference between both though, and it is a big one, is that the characters in the play moved to those towers in search of hope and of a brighter future, Dessie "We weren't just moving up in the world - we were moving skyward." (Page 2)
ReplyDeleteI found it fascinating how the character's description of the spaces they inhabit, walk by, see constructed and then abandoned half way, and how each of them are moving and using the very simple stage the playwright has imagined, not only gives an idea of what theses spaces look like, but also about how each of the characters feels and behaves in them. They all start with the promise that things will get better, banks will be completed, there will be shopping center, there will be buses coming through. How Dessie, Marie, and Jane face these spaces were the most fascinating to me. Commitment, longing, and regret. Dessie has an idea of how things could be like, imagining that one day the trees will grow and he will be able to touch the leaves from his window; Marie is committed to the belief that nothing will ever change, or that if it does, it will be for worse with more junkies finally taking over Ballymun completely; and Jane will never truly let go of the past and will hold on to the regret of not being able to remain in the life she once knew. There is no doubt in my mind that the Ballymun towers shaped the lives and ideas of these characters, and that their own individual personalities helped to shape the spaces they lived in -the famous concept of Form follows Function and viceversa.
If there was ever any doubt of whether a space influences, and even determines, the way we live and act, one has only to read this play to see how true this is. And I believe that for the past number of decades architects have forgotten about the people who will inhabit the space, and have focused more on what that space will look like. Architects provide 1 of the 3 basic needs all human beings need to survive: shelter, and we have forgotten that this concept involves a great deal more than a pretty box with lifts that may stop working at any given moment.
“The tiredness each night when you realized that you faced the exact same struggle tomorrow and every tomorrow to come”, Carmel (Page 32).