A Star Called Henry

“He was a survivor; his stories kept him going. Stories were the only things the poor owned. A poor man, he gave himself a life. He filled the hole with many lives.” 

Henry’s father, also named Henry Smart, makes sense of his standing in the world through the stories he tells about himself. The stories also sustain him, filling the “hole” of both an empty stomach and a dwelling of scant possessions with substance. 

“He was stooped, carrying the heavy ghosts of his children. He could still feel them in his arms. He could smell them. Little Henry, little Lil. His love for them was an unending fight in his chest. He was always on the verge of seeing them. He didn’t sleep anymore.” 

Henry Smart is wracked by guilt for the murders he commits in Alfie Gandon’s name and superstitiously believes that these sins have caused his children’s deaths. Each of his senses is haunted by their absence; their bodies threaten to appear and reproach him. Unlike Melody, who sees a sentimental version of her dead children in the stars, the ghosts Henry sees look corporeal and terrifying.

“I was Henry but they never called me that. She wouldn’t; he couldn’t. But I was still Henry, too late for any other name. So they called me nothing. I was the boy. The lad. Himself. He. The child.” 

While Henry is initially given his dead brother’s name, neither parent can bring themselves to call him Henry. Instead, they refer to him by pronouns and anonymous terms, such as “the lad” and “child.” This tendency contributes both to Henry’s ability to change names and identities in later life and to his continuous hunger to make a name for himself. 

“I grew and stretched and raged around the room, filled the place with my fists and feet. I got my knees off the floor and walked. I hit the walls and clawed them. I broke through the clothes that were put on me. I wailed and cursed, hard words that came through the open window to me. I only stopped to swallow snot and any food that got in my way.” 

Henry’s physical growth and frantic wish to burst out of the spaces allotted to him show his desire for more than the tiny room and meager circumstances he was born into. He learns the curses of the street so that he can someday live on the street, and his growth has a ruthless element, which comes at the expense of his poor family, whose food and energy he swallows.

“He looked like an eejit, yet thousands and thousands of people were cheering and waving for him. I was angry. He didn’t belong […] And I remembered women, face after face, looking down at me in my zinc crib, smiling faces, all the smiles and love, and my mammy and daddy safely behind them. This picture lit up for a second, less than a second, then was gone. And they were still cheering and smiling for the fat foreigner. So I told him to fuck off.” 

When Henry sees the procession for Edward VII, he cannot help comparing the king’s reception with his own reception as a glowing infant. Although the neighborhood’s appreciation for him ended, cheers continue for this imposter king. Henry’s first taste of British rule is a bitter one; the sense of hierarchy makes him angry. 

“The streets were ours. No one could touch us. We knew every sound and warning, every escape route. We grabbed what we needed and ran. No looking back, no need to look left or right, we knew and expected everything. And we could escape without moving. Our dirt merged with the streets. We were made of Dublin muck.”  

This passage shows how Henry and his younger brother Victor camouflage themselves within the dirty, chaotic streets of Dublin, profiting from them and owning them.

“Ireland was something in songs that drunken old men wept about as they held onto the railings at three in the morning and we homed in to rob them.” 

This passage reflects Henry’s unsentimental attitude toward Ireland; as a street boy fighting for survival, he finds the idea of nationhood too lofty a concept. Given that the men who sing about Ireland are drunken and old, he sees patriotism as a whimsical subject that little concerns him at that time. 

“I’d had two days of schooling. But it was enough. I knew it was in me. I could learn anything I wanted. I was probably a genius.” 

The praise Henry obtains from Miss O’Shea after two days of schooling gives him enough confidence to feel that he can master any lesson. The ability to learn on the job accompanies him throughout his multifaceted career. 

“He was dead. I wouldn’t let myself be fooled into thinking anything softer. I wasn’t going to see him up there with the other stars, with the first Henry—burning gas, a celestial fart—and all his brothers and sisters, twinkling up there in a happier place. He was dead. I wasn’t even going to look at the sky.” 

In contrast to his mother, Melody, who positions her dead children as the ethereal stars in the sky, Henry faces up to the grim, empirical presence of Victor’s corpse. The term “celestial fart” denotes his contempt for his mother’s sentimental vision.

“My trigger finger was aching, my calves, the elbow that anchored the arm propping up my rifle; every muscle and sinew I owned was hardening, screaming. A hint, the slightest thing or sound would save them and release all the anger and rage I’d been storing for today.” 

Henry has ample reserves of stored anger, and the fight for Ireland gives him an outlet. Suddenly, the qualities that have made him a law-breaking societal bane can also make him a noble hero.  

“I was a sparkling young man; I fought every day for my cleanliness. My eyes were blue and fascinating whirlpools; they could suck in women while warning them to stay well away, a fighting combination that had them running at me. And I knew exactly what my eyes could do.” 

Henry’s is conscious of his sexual attractiveness to women and wishes to capitalize on it. In circumstances that would dictate otherwise, he strives to keep himself clean, and he feels confident that natural attributes, such as his eyes, make him magnetic to the opposite sex. In a reverse on traditional gender norms, Henry is the object rather than the subject of desire. He is someone women chase rather than someone who chases them. 

“We’re going to change the course of history, man. There’s only one future. The Republic. All others are going to be impossible by the time we’re finished. Fate, Henry, is my arse. We’re the gods here, man.” 

Jack Dalton posits that toppling the British will make “gods” of the Republicans responsible for it. He claims that he, Henry, and the other Fenians will decide the fate of the new nation. This pronouncement proves ironic by the end of the novel, when Jack turns against Henry, whom he considers a liability to his high position in the new Republic. 

“Three years on a stolen bike. Through wind, rain and bullets. Me and the Arseless Horse. No lamp in front of me for fear that the fine fat men of the R.I.C., and later the Black and Tans, would be hiding behind a wall or a hedge waiting with guns for rebels on bicycles.” 

This passage summarizes Henry’s activities over a long period of time, when he cycles over Ireland on a bike without headlights for fear of lurking predators. Whether they be the Royal Irish Constabulary or the Black and Tans, the danger to his life is as continuous as the wet, windy Irish weather. 

“Sinn Féin had very quickly become respectable, the party of the parish priests and those middle-class men cute enough to know when the wind was changing. It was the party of money and faith, and thrilling with it because of its links to the buried martyrs; it was outlawed by the British, but cozy.” 

Sinn Féin, which originated as a rebel party, gains its familiar Catholic credentials. The martyrs, shot during the 1916 Easter Rising, become the equivalent of Catholic saints martyred for their belief. The coziness and middle-class appeal of Sinn Féin marks a middle-class hierarchical turn in the rebellion. 

“Dublin was too close to England; it was where the orders and cruelty came from […] Ireland was everywhere west of Dublin, the real people were west, west, west, as far west as possible, on the islands, the rocks off the islands, speaking Irish and eating wool; the Leaguers lived in Dublin but they went west for their holliers, to the real people.”  

Henry contrasts the capital, Dublin, which is the part of Ireland most shaped by British rule, with the uncontrollable western countryside. Country dwellers, “west, west, west” of where the British could fully impose their culture, are viewed as more “real” than the Dubliners who live in the British shadow. Ironically, the Dubliners give commands about how to stand up and fight for the nation.  

“I called myself Captain for the lads. It made me important in their eyes and it was the rank that a lot of old land agents had had back in the days when they’d had the power to evict and destroy. Here was I, one of their own, carrying the agents’ old label.” 

Henry adopts the label “Captain” to assert power over the country boys he is training. The irony of adopting the old British landowners’ title is not lost on him, and it reflects his increasing discomfort with the hierarchy of the Republican effort. 

“They never wanted us there in the first place. All we were good for was cooking stew and sewing haversacks. I’m a better shot than the lot of them.” 

Miss O’Shea voices her frustration with being a member of Cumman na mBan during the 1916 rising, where the men only wanted her to perform domestic duties and not join in with the fighting. This predicament expresses how the initially radical revolutionary movement still retained the British and Catholic notions of gender hierarchy. 

“Their uniforms were a mix of constabulary black and military khaki; they refused to be policemen or soldiers. They were a new thing, a new, desperate animal.” 

The Black and Tans, the English and Scottish force sent by the British government to deal with Ireland, is a motley mix of old colonial authority (symbolized by the black RIC uniforms) and post-armistice discontent (symbolized by the khaki military uniforms). Their fury and bestial brutality toward Ireland unites them. 

“For the first time, I donned my daddy’s wooden leg […] My leg was doubled, bent at the knee, two sets of folded bone, flesh and muscle. Yet the harness fit snugly, no adjustments needed.” 

When an injured Henry dons his father’s leg, the fit is exact, a symbol that he has come of age and assumed his massive father’s stature. Whereas the leg has previously been a weapon used to batter the English, and will be again later, it now serves crutch that aids him in his daily movements. 

“A wall. I was standing in front of a wall. Very close, right up to it. I could think: They are going to shoot me against this wall, they are going to execute me. Now. A word on the wall. Fuck. Scratched. Other words. Dates. Names. Too many. I didn’t want them.” 

This passage reflects the loss of control that Henry feels when he regains consciousness after being captured and sent to Dublin Castle. The wall is a barrier to his actual visibility and to the perspective he needs to assess his situation and escape. On the wall, he sees marks of other prisoners’ desperation: Some have cursed while others have written dates, trying to come to terms with what happened to them. 

“I was sitting in Kilmainham Gaol and I was eating a griddle cake that had been cooked very recently by my wife. It was her best yet, the best and only thing I’d ever tasted. But I didn’t cry.” 

Sitting in jail, eating Miss O’Shea’s griddle cake, Henry is almost moved to tears. The nourishment feeds both his physical hunger and his desire for connection with his wife while he is separated from her by the authorities. His human needs have been taken over by a political cause with which he no longer identifies. 

“Henry Smart recovered as he ran. He ran, even though his war was over and he’d take no further part in the killing.” 

The narrative switches to the third person as it relates how Henry convalesces from his injuries in jail and how he lives on the run from both the remaining British authorities and the Irish, who now consider him a rebel. The third person narration styles Henry as a hero rather than as a lackey who has had enough of being commanded to kill on behalf of others. 

“All the best soldiers are businessmen. There had to be a reason for the killing and late nights, and it wasn’t Ireland. Ireland’s an island, Captain, a dollop of muck. It’s about control of the island, that’s what the soldiering’s about, not the harps, and martyrs and the freedom to swing a hurley.” 

Ivan’s pronouncement that the real war is not about national and cultural freedom, but about who controls Ireland, reveals how the revolutionary movement has become monopolized by money, control and power. For Ivan, usurping the British and taking their power for himself is the true incentive. His version of the Republic alienates both Henry and Miss O’Shea.