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The novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha has no authorial presence at all, yet the
reader gains a richer understanding of the situation than Paddy – or any other
10-year old – could ever have. With regard to the parent’s break up, how does
Doyle achieve this? There are many factors which suggest how Doyle has succeeded
in creating a 'triangular relationship' between himself the reader and the
narrator – Paddy Clarke – so that the reader has a greater awareness of the
predicament that Paddy is in. Doyle’s achievement is how he alternates the
poetic and realistic without once lapsing into stream-of-self-consciousness; the
only way we - as readers can tell it's written by an adult, is by the spelling.
We see the violence in Paddy's life peripherally; Doyle tells us nothing more
than what the child sees and comprehends. One of the reasons for Roddy Doyle’s
success lies in creating a realistic and convincing character for a 10-year old
child. He does this by his clever use of language, and also in how he arranges
his sentences to convey deep emotion and feeling than any emotive language
could: “He’d hit her. Across the face; smack. I tried to imagine it. It didn’t
make sense. I’d heard it; he’d hit her. She’d come out of the kitchen, straight
up to their bedroom. Across the face.” – P190 In this instance, Doyle has used
short and evident sentences, to invoke a feeling of awe and confusion.
The short
sentences represent how Paddy is dumbstruck and lost for words, shocked by what
he’s heard – this is also highlighted when he says here; “I tried to imagine it.
It didn’t make sense.” Here, he also emphatically uses onomatopoeia – “smack,” –
which adds to the sense of fearful respect and also Paddy’s child-like
interpretation of events. Repetition is used here – “Across the face” – heading
his oft-repeated amazement. Another example of how Doyle uses repetition can be
seen on pages 153 and 154: “I waited for them to say something different,
wanting it - ……Only now, all I could do was listen and wish. I didn’t pray;
there were no prayers for this…. But I rocked the same way as I did when I was
saying prayers….I rocked - Stop stop stop stop – .” Doyle uses repetition to
show Paddy’s anxiety, when he repeats ‘stop’. Here, Paddy is mentally commanding
his parents to stop in desperation, as he thought he had done on page 42: “ -
Stop. There was a gap. It had worked; I’d forced them to stop.” He believes that
he has the power to make his parents stop arguing, as shown on page 42, but realisation dawns when he repeatedly tells them to stop on page 154, and it
doesn’t work. This reflects on the fact that Paddy Clarke is a child, and his
inability to restrain his emotions is a facet of his youth showing through.
Another childish aspect throughout the book is how Paddy – like other children
at that age would – spouts offhand irrelevant knowledge that’s he’s picked up
from class or elsewhere: “Snails and slugs were gastropods; they had stomach
feet…. The real name for soccer was association football.
Association football
was played with a round ball on a rectangular pitch by two sides of eleven
people…... Geronimo was the last of the renegade Apaches…… I learned this by
heart. I liked it.” Readers can relate to this, as we can all remember when we’d
learnt something that we’d found particularly fascinating at school or the
library, and recited it all the time, thinking we were clever. Another reason
why the reader of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha has a higher understanding than is
simply because the adult audience has more experience in family issues – from
our own experiences. We can see the violence in his life superficially; we are
told nothing more than what the child sees and comprehends. A good example of
this can be found on page 95: “Ma said something to Da. I didn’t hear it…. I
looked at ma again. She was still looking at Da. Catherine had one of Ma’s
fingers in her mouth and she was biting real hard – she had a few teeth – but Ma
didn’t do anything about it.” Here, Paddy has given us an insight to the
emotional turmoil that exists in the family, but Doyle – again – has not used
any emotional adjectives to show this. We can interpret what is happening from
his parent’s actions, which justifiably speak louder than words. Paddy’s mother
is staring at Da, waiting from him to answer, and the baby is biting into her
finger, hard as Paddy says.
We can tell that Ma is angry as her husband is not
speaking to her, not by Doyle describing her anger but by the fact that she pays
no heed to the pain that the baby is calling her – such is the animosity that
exists between the couple. Paddy cannot see this, and is wracked by confusion.
This is shown a few paragraphs later: “Ma was getting out of the car. It was
awkward because of Catherine. I thought we were all getting out, that it had
stopped raining. But it hadn’t. It was lashing.” We can see that Ma patience has
been tested and, in her ire, she leaves the car. Conformation that Paddy does
not understand is sealed when he asks “ – Has she gone for 99s?” His father
doesn’t reply, the silence filling the void between him and Ma – unbeknown to
Paddy, whose innocent question remains unanswered. We are able to read between
the lines, and by doing this we can detect the silent turbulence, unlike Paddy
whom is the story’s narrator. Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is written in the first
person, and is therefore devoid of the authorial omniscience and intrusiveness
that would allow Doyle to relate to the reader. The fact that the story is set
in a first-person narrative - with a bewildered 10-year old as the narrator -
allows us to fill the gaps in Paddy’s mind, and we can connect with Doyle’s
imagination - and in doing this he has effectively succeeded in creating a
realistic world through the eyes of an imaginary child.
When reading, the reader
and Paddy develop a symbiotic existence, where Paddy is necessary to allow us to
see, and hear and act as a viewpoint into his world, and our superior
comprehension can observe the underlying tension that ultimately culminates in
the parent’s divorce. Roddy Doyle writes potent novels, rooted in working-class
experience. His first three novels, known as the Barrytown trilogy, focused on
the Rabbittes, a family of eight whose lives are a mixture of high comedy,
depressing poverty and domestic chaos. The novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha explores
with remarkable subtlety the development of a small boy's empathy, as he
simultaneously masters language and discovers a new understanding of pain.
Written almost entirely in dialogue, his books are full of slang,
colloquialisms, and vulgarisms. In the past, Doyle's raw portrayal of working
class Ireland has received as much censure as praise in his native country. I've
been criticised for the bad language in my books--that I've given a bad image of
the country, said Doyle. The author's own view is that his job is simply to
describe things and people as they really are. In Doyle's world, the lives are
tough, and the language is rough, but beauty and tenderness survive amid the
void of bleakness. All quotes are taken directly from the Minerva publication of
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. Tom Newton
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