Flann OBrien, Dickens and Joyce Form, Identity and...

Flann OBrien, Dickens and Joyce: Form, Identity and Colonial Influences All quotations from The Third Policeman are taken from the 1993 Flamingo Modern Classic edition. In this essay I intend to examine Flann OBriens The Third Policeman in the context of the time of its writing, 1940, its relation to certain English novelistic traditions and also the broader Irish literary tradition in which it belongs. Seamus Deane refers to Ireland as a Strange Country and indeed OBriens own narrator recalls the words of his father: . . . he would mention Parnell with the customers and say that Ireland was a queer country. (7) Such a concurrence indicates to a degree the peculiar nature of the Irish situation with regard to†¦show more content†¦The publication of Ulysses with what Declan Kiberd has called its . . . cathedral-like structure . . . (Interview), left an anxiety of influence for many Irish writers. Where could one go fictionally after Ulysses? Ulysses, seen as an attempt at an all encompassing, encyclopaedic form is more indicative of a post-colonial mimic anxiety than the work of OBrien. Post-colonial is used here in the sense of the beginning of resistance rather than as a chronological marker. The cathedral-like structure while splendid, and the pointed satire of parody of English form suggests a literary materialism and an overwhelming desire to beat them at their own game. To install oneself and ones work in the epic tradition may well place one on the European literary map but it may also betray an anxiety which legitimates such hegemony. OBriens subversion of bildungsroman and flight into a non-realist surrealistic mode is suggestive also of a more pressing discontent with the Irish Free State and its intolerance of difference. The balloon episode functions as an allegory of a tendency to prohibit freedom and intrude upon the privacy of the individual. (163-65) Sergeant Pluck concludes: That is a nice piece of law and order for you, a terrific indictment of democratic self-government, a beautiful commentary on Home Rule. (165) A certain