The Barracks: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Barracks: Analysis of Major Characters" delves into the lives of key figures in a narrative centered around themes of isolation, existential despair, and the search for meaning in life. The protagonist, Elizabeth Reegan, is a former nurse grappling with her terminal cancer diagnosis while reflecting on her past choices, including a failed love affair in London and a marriage to Sergeant Reegan, a police officer in post-independence Ireland. Elizabeth’s struggle with the concept of life’s inherent meaninglessness is a focal point of the story, as she navigates her deteriorating health and the routine of daily life that offers her some solace.
Sergeant Reegan is portrayed as a complex character who, despite the burdens of his job and the weight of unfulfilled dreams of returning to farming, shows kindness to Elizabeth during her illness. In contrast, Michael Halliday, a London doctor and Elizabeth's former lover, embodies cynicism and disillusionment, ultimately revealing a transactional nature in their relationship that leaves Elizabeth questioning her own worth. The narrative is further enriched by supporting characters like John James Quirke, the authoritarian police superintendent, and Teresa Casey, who finds purpose in caring for others, echoing Elizabeth’s own struggles. The interactions among these characters create a microcosm of societal challenges, highlighting how routine and relationships can both illuminate and obscure the search for meaning amidst life's chaos.
The Barracks: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: John McGahern
First published: 1963
Genre: Novel
Locale: Western Ireland; Dublin, Ireland; and London, England
Plot: Social realism
Time: Late 1940's
Elizabeth Reegan, a former nurse, forty years old, now married to a sergeant in the Irish police force. She is stepmother to his three children. After a nursing career in London during World War II and a passionate love affair that does not work out, Elizabeth returns to western Ireland and marries against her family's advice. the novel covers the year during which she suspects, confirms, and fails to live through cancer. The real issue, however, is not Elizabeth's physical cancer but the cancer of her growing conviction that life is essentially without meaning. Her confrontation with death merely confirms and emphasizes her conviction that the human condition is inherently one of isolation. Although she continues to rejoice in natural beauty and human kindness, she is sustained only by the endless routine of repetitive tasks that make up her life, repetitions echoed by the police rounds her husband makes and by the rounds of the seasons. The barracks within which the Reegans make their home is a microcosm of the world, for both barracks and world would fall into chaos without the cycles of duty and year to impose a hint of order.
Sergeant Reegan, Elizabeth's husband, who is fifty years old. A member of the freedom forces that achieved Irish independence in 1921, Reegan was rewarded with a position in the newly formed police force. After thirty years as a sergeant, however, he tastes the increasing bitterness of his position. Independence has made no real change in Ireland, but it has changed his life. Without it, he would have either stayed on the farm, which he loved, or immigrated to the United States. Constantly at odds with his superintendent, he dreams and plans for the day when he can buy a farm and work only for himself. He is moody and occasionally irascible, but he is also kind to Elizabeth, generous, and even sensitive. He does not begrudge the expense of her illness, though it puts off achievement of his dream. He is aware that he does not really know his wife (who never calls him by his first name, or by any name for that matter) and that they will end their days caring for each other but still essentially alone.
Michael Halliday, a London doctor, about thirty-five years old, with whom Elizabeth has an affair. Michael introduces Elizabeth (who is deeply in love with him) to an unfamiliar world of books, concerts, fancy restaurants, and ideas. Eventually, however, he confesses that he no longer loves her and that all along he has been using her to stave off his growing sense of the meaninglessness of life and his growing tendency toward suicide. He still wants her to marry him, but Elizabeth refuses. It is his cynicism that affects and infects her the most, and increasingly during the course of the novel she finds herself echoing ideas he formulated for her years before. She ends by wondering whether Reegan has not been to her what she was to Halliday, a device to postpone the suicide that is the ultimate result of such cynicism.
John James Quirke, a police superintendent about fifty years old, Reegan's supervisor. A small-minded authoritarian, he spends much of his time sneaking around and spying on the guards to be sure that they are fulfilling the exact letter of their responsibilities (which they frequently are not). He is a capricious, often vicious man whose lack of reason in the use of authority echoes the apparent lack of reason in whatever authority governs the world.
Teresa Casey, the childless wife of Ned Casey. A bit at loose ends without the routine responsibilities that sustain Elizabeth, she delightedly takes over care of the children when Elizabeth falls ill. They give her life structure, meaning, and focus; her experience thus echoes Elizabeth's and Michael's, for only routine and activity can ward off despair.
Willie, Una, and Sheila, Reegan's children by his first wife; they are ages twelve, eleven, and nine. They like Elizabeth, and she likes them. They are good to her, and she cares for them, yet there is no close emotional bond or genuine understanding. Indications that they can do without her threaten her sense of purpose and coherence.