In A Skull in Connemara, Mairtin and Mick’s conversation regarding death by alcohol poisoning reveals the power of language to dictate human fate.
Throughout their conversation, Mairtin and Mick use the word “sick” to describe vomit, with the phrase “drowned on sick” becoming a stand-in for death by asphyxiation on vomit (McDonagh 39). At first glance, these euphemisms seem to be simple ways of avoiding having to address death by its name. Their conversation, however, reveals deeper fears about the looming presence of death in their community. Whereas Mairtin dismisses death by alcohol poisoning as “ten-a-penny,” Mick constantly returns to the image of his dead “three uncles” who died due to intoxication (McDonagh 39). Mick seems to key in to an endemic issue plaguing the men in the community—an issue which Mairtin considers less fascinating than the …show more content…
The syntactical structure transfigures sickness into a physical being that is “there” and waiting. He goes on to say that sickness is “in your gob already,” positioning death directly inside humans and underlying the ironic tension of the existence of death inside a living human. (McDonagh 39). The use of “already” also hints at a lack of human control; death has been and always will be inside of us, awaiting to be released by the power of the spoken word. Activating death through language is evident in the “suspicions” and the gossip surrounding his wife’s death that plague Mick (McDonagh 38). The more the townspeople question the circumstances regarding his wife’s death, the truer these speculations become. Spoken word transforms fictitious deaths into tangible ones, with the sheriff going as far as to “carve a hole” in her skull to make her apparent murder a reality (McDonagh 49). If the mouth, then, serves as the producer of language in humans, then the word itself wields the power to dictate life and death within this
Throughout their conversation, Mairtin and Mick use the word “sick” to describe vomit, with the phrase “drowned on sick” becoming a stand-in for death by asphyxiation on vomit (McDonagh 39). At first glance, these euphemisms seem to be simple ways of avoiding having to address death by its name. Their conversation, however, reveals deeper fears about the looming presence of death in their community. Whereas Mairtin dismisses death by alcohol poisoning as “ten-a-penny,” Mick constantly returns to the image of his dead “three uncles” who died due to intoxication (McDonagh 39). Mick seems to key in to an endemic issue plaguing the men in the community—an issue which Mairtin considers less fascinating than the …show more content…
The syntactical structure transfigures sickness into a physical being that is “there” and waiting. He goes on to say that sickness is “in your gob already,” positioning death directly inside humans and underlying the ironic tension of the existence of death inside a living human. (McDonagh 39). The use of “already” also hints at a lack of human control; death has been and always will be inside of us, awaiting to be released by the power of the spoken word. Activating death through language is evident in the “suspicions” and the gossip surrounding his wife’s death that plague Mick (McDonagh 38). The more the townspeople question the circumstances regarding his wife’s death, the truer these speculations become. Spoken word transforms fictitious deaths into tangible ones, with the sheriff going as far as to “carve a hole” in her skull to make her apparent murder a reality (McDonagh 49). If the mouth, then, serves as the producer of language in humans, then the word itself wields the power to dictate life and death within this