ENCW 101 Spring 2019

The story “Everything in this Country Must” is set in Nothern Ireland during the English occupation. We follow the story through Katie’s point of view, who is in the river with her father trying to save their horse from drowning. Then the soldiers arrive and we understand that they are patrolling and decide to help them save the horse. The first-person reflective — the story is told after the events by Katie when she realizes that her father killed the horse — gives an interesting insight. Indeed, the two main characters or at least the ones who are related are Irish, and yet we have a pretty positive feeling towards the English soldiers — first, because they help and it gives an epic scene, and then because Katie seems to be quite admiring of the soldiers, and especially Stevie. It is interesting to note that he is the only character who is named by his first name except Katie’s dead brother, which suggests that she feels a sort of intimacy. Also, the story is told by Katie not a long time after it happened, and we can see that she doesn’t understand what is going on clearly because she is young and doesn’t contextualize everything and is probably not involved in politics. For example, the author makes an unexplicit link between the death of her mother and brother and the soldiers, but she is not able to see this link and to realize that the British killed her loved ones. Finally, during the scene of the river but also during the scene at Katie’s house, we don’t hear the soldiers screaming and their conversations or the way they talk to her father. The perception is blurry because she is shocked and not able to analyze everything, which prevents us from having hard feelings towards the soldiers and makes the father appear as the “bad person.” We only realize at the end of the story the defiance from the father towards the soldiers when it becomes clearer that they are not here to do good things and when the father, in a last act of resistance, decides to kill the horse the soldiers saved even if it is his favorite one and it breaks his heart. This story shows one of the dark sides of English history in a very subtle way.