Babliku 1

Antonio Babliku

Marianna Gula

01. 12. 2021

THE TROUBLES AND REMEMBERING TRAUMA IN

ANNA BURNS’S MILKMAN

Milkman is the third novel of Northern Irish writer Anna Burns. The novel earned her the

2018 Man Booker Prize, making her the first Northern Irish writer to win this prize. Northern

Ireland figures in Milkman during the seventies, the time it was enveloped in the Troubles. The

Troubles were a conflict that lasted for three decades between the Catholics and Protestants in

Northern Ireland: the religious groups mainly distinguish, respectively, the nationalist and loyalist

stance towards the aim to separate from the United Kingdom (the nationalists sought to split while

the loyalists wanted to be part of the UK). The Troubles feature in Milkman as part of the novel’s

setting, but are indirectly referenced throughout.

“In those days, in that place, violence was everybody’s main gauge for

judging those around them… “

“Every weekday, rain or shine, gunplay or bombs, stand-off or

riots, I preferred to walk home reading my latest book.”

“… at present the state forces were hiding in it [the park] to photograph

renouncers-of-the-state. They also photographed renouncers’ known and

unknown associates, which was what then happened just at this point.”
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The main character, an eighteen-year-old girl, also lacks a name. She refers to herself as

“middle sister” and lives in a Catholic household with her widowed “ma” and her three “wee

sisters”, after all her older siblings have either died or moved out of the house. Middle sister works

and attends a night school. One night, as she is walking, a middle-aged man of the paramilitary in

a white van approaches her and offers her a ride. He is referred to as milkman, although as the

narrator, middle sister points out, no one knew whose milkman he was. Although she expresses a

lack of interest, the milkman keeps pursing her and stalking her, even making it clear that he knows

her daily habits and routine, and goes as far as to threaten her with the life of maybe-boyfriend

(who, as the term suggests, is a boy she’s been seeing but they haven’t made things official yet).

One day maybe-boyfriend, who works as a mechanic, brings home a part of a car, which had the

British flag on. This causes some doubt to arise in the community and it is precisely this fact that

the milkman will use to destroy or kill maybe-boyfriend. She tries to evade his stalking and endless

pursuing, but in the meantime, rumors have started across the town that she and the milkman are

having an affair. Although no one knows exactly who the milkman is, and only refer to him as

such by force of habit, they have no judgement for him and spare no judgement against the girl.

She pretends she knows nothing: feigning ignorance is the best choice at this point, as refuting the

affair would mean further implicating herself. After the milkman stalks middle-sister and threatens

her with maybe-boyfriend’s life, she is somewhat comforted by the appearance of the real milkman,

who suggests she ask for help and direction at the local feminist coalition; middle sister refuses

this, as the feminists are persecuted by most of the community. As the stalking continues, middle

sister’s emotional and mental wellbeing start deteriorating, as she starts to regret the faking of

ignorance over the matter as she is unable to ask for help from the authorities, and the community

still circulates rumors on her without pity. At a meeting with her oldest friend, the latter tells her
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that she has put herself in that position, blaming her for her predicament. While she’s out, middle

sister unknowingly consumes a drink which had been mixed with an overdose of drugs by tablets

girl, a local mentally ill woman who constantly does this to many in town. Middle sister is ill but

luckily survives. After the recovery, she finds out that tablets girl has been murdered. What the

town believes is that milkman killed her on behalf of middle sister. The police, trying to chase him

down, have shot the real milkman, who later recovers and ma tells her daughters she was in love

with him when they were young. After an argument with maybe-boyfriend, middle sister regrets

it and wants to make things right, so she goes to his house but finds out he has started a relationship

with his friend, chef. On the walk back home, the milkman once again approaches her and she now

admits she has no choice but to get into the van with him. Numb, she listens as he tells her the

plans for a date the next night. The next day comes: Middle sister and her eldest sister encourage

am to go on a date with real milkman, and around that same time, the milkman is found dead,

killed by the state at the park. Around the same time, middle sister is ambushed by an armed

Somebody McSomebody at a bathroom club, who has been stalking her for over a year. Luckily,

a group of women barge into the bathroom at the right time, disarm McSomebody and beat him

up. As middle sister’s life begins to regain some of the previous normality and she goes for a run

in the park full of little girls, the shadow of the Troubles still lies there, enveloping the re-found

normalcy, the re-found calmness, as the political unrest guarantees that calmness for the

community is yet far away.

A narrative choice that strikes the reader after a few pages, but that is presented since the

opening sentence, is the lack of names. Characters are referenced as Somebody McSomebody,

milkman, first brother-in-law, eldest sister, wee sisters, ma, maybe-boyfriend, etc. When it comes

to address the factions of the political and ethnic conflict, the “titles” or terms by which they are
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referenced are “renouncers”, “over the water”, etc. The city where the novel takes place also

remains unnamed, although it is probably Belfast. This choice is not accidental, nor a choice for

the sake of it. It illustrates the fear of betraying one’s belief and allegiance. Throughout the novel,

there is constant fear of naming the wrong thing, naming something with an “enemy” word. It isn’t

just about names of people, but also about targets and brand names. As middle sister puts it, there

is right butter and wrong butter, names that sound too English (English for us, but in the novel they

are referred to as over-the-water sounding names), etc. The only true and proper names that are

encountered in the novel are those of Barbra Streisand, Freddie Mercury, etc., and that happens

because there is no political allegiance, because they are mentioned for the sake of describing the

pop culture reality of the decade the novel is set in.

The situation of not naming characters, places, brands, etc., can also be generalized in the

statement from the novel:

“By unspoken agreement – which outsiders couldn’t

grasp unless it should come to their own private expediencies – it was

unanimously understood that when everybody here used the tribal

identifiers of ‘us’ or ‘them’, of ‘their religion’ or ‘our religion’, not all

of us and not all of them was, it goes without saying, to be taken as

read. That summed it up.”

This unspoken-ness of names testifies the effect of the Troubles on communities. It shows

how deep the cuts run, how caught up in the conflict the civilians are, and it shows how trauma

starts to build up slowly: the renouncement of certain names that sound too over-the-water-ish, for
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example, can’t be seen as only nationalistic, or fearful of betraying allegiance. It can also indicate

a complete detachment from these names, from the reality and belonging that they bring, because

of the hurt and unbearable remembrance of violence, and as an act of condemnation for what “they”

(meaning the loyalists and the English) are doing to “us” (meaning, the Catholic community in the

matter at hand presented in the novel). So, the over-the-water names are not only a betrayal, but

also a way of keeping the violence and the trauma it causes very close: obviously, the ones who

have been victims of this violence, want to erase any connection. This erasure and this straying

from even innocuous names, however, create a clotted and paranoid atmosphere that leaves the

members of a community numb. This numbness and the wanted detachment from the trauma that

is brought up merely by a name, causes the sense of a waning, fading trauma, up to the point of

losing the trauma altogether. But trauma is not something you lose; it’s something you address and

try to heal. Like a stab wound, it closes and heals, but there are still flesh remnants in the form of

scars that will always remind you of that one wound. This coping mechanism, this mode of survival,

only pushes back the emergence of trauma, but doesn’t nullify the chances of it happening. One

can try to erase triggers, but it is impossible to erase trauma. The latter is the essence of the criticism

towards the Belfast Agreement. The Agreement is a façade of ethical reconciliation, but in truth

its scope is a political and economical reconciliation. The “request” to move on, which is basically

the message conveyed by the Agreement, seems to be employed by the main character, middle

sister, whose voice narrates the events of the novel after more than twenty years of them happening.

It is as if we’re sitting with her in a meeting, long after the Troubles are turned into history, and

we listen to her as she is trying to work through the events, work through the violence she

witnessed and survived, work through the trauma. The silence that has a deafening echo throughout
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the narration, is broken in the second that the narrator starts turning the memories into a novel, or,

to put it in a less metaphysical way, starts turning the memories into narration, into voice.

Now that the lack of names situation (and the silence that in a way derives from it) is

presented and made clear, Burns, through her main character and narrative voice, springs a new

bit of information:

“As for girl names, those from ‘over the water’ were tolerated

because the name of a girl – unless it should be Pomp and

Circumstance – wasn’t politically contentious, therefore it had leeway

with no decrees or edicts being drawn up on it at all. Wrong girl names

did not connote the same taunting, long-memory, backdated, we-shall-not-forget,

historical-distaste reaction as was the case with wrong boy

names, but if you were of the opposite persuasion and from ‘over the

road’ you would entirely allow yourself all of our banned names.”

This seems to remark an underlying sexist stance even when it comes to matters such as

loyalty and trauma. Girls are allowed to have any name, because girls’ names don’t have the same

political and historical weight as boys’ names. Girls have no involvement with politics and national

affairs; they are simply there to be judged over rumored affairs with unrecognizable milkmen.

Though the community has a case of internalized misogyny and sexism, which is made clear on

the stance on names in the above quote, there is no such thing in the portrayal of middle sister and

in her pushing of the violence and troubles to the periphery of her thoughts and narration of events

(although they keep moving from the peripheral zones to take center stage at times).
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“I wasn’t physically frightened of him. In those days, in that place,

violence was everybody’s main gauge for judging those around

them and I could see at once he didn’t have it, that he didn’t come

from that perspective.”

The distance between political occurrences and girls’ everyday lives seems to be exactly

what middle sister enforces. She walks while reading a book, what’s more, her books are always

nineteenth century books, because she doesn’t like the twentieth century. This behavior seems like

a coping mechanism, with the middle sister enveloping herself away from the reality around her

through the act or sticking her nose in books.

“Every weekday, rain or shine, gunplay or bombs, stand-off or

riots, I preferred to walk home reading my latest book. This would be

a nineteenth-century book because I did not like twentieth-century

books because I did not like the twentieth century.”

This act of reading-while-walking is middle sister’s way of removing herself from the

political and sectarian divide. It is also an act condemned by her family, her sisters, her brothers-

in-law, and her longest friend, because through this act, and through its implied removal from the

sectarian division, she is becoming a case of the “other”, or as her community refers to, “beyond-

the-pales”.
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“It’s disturbing. It’s deviant. It’s optical illusional. Not public-spirited. Not self-

preservation. Calls attention to itself and why . . . would anyone

want to call attention to themselves here?”

Her being “beyond-the-pales” makes her a more endangered target than the rest of the

community; it is not a coincidence, then, that when she is first approached by the milkman she is

walking and reading alone on her way home. However, it is precisely this act that allows her to

refuse getting in the van with him. This otherness that middle sister presents, this being “beyond

the pales”, while making her a more vulnerable target, paradoxically also grants her some level of

protection. The alienation she employs as a coping mechanism or mode of survival works both

ways as the removal from the divisiveness, while putting a very easy target on her very exposed

back, also makes her an outsider to this conflict. Through the names she doesn’t speak throughout

the novel, and throughout the narration of the novel, she further removes herself from the conflict.

The silence here is one of the few compliances with her community, and it is also something she

employs to further remove herself from the sectarian community.

Burns herself was a girl who would walk around town reading during the Troubles in

Belfast, and she decided to adopt this autobiographical fact into the novel. Middle sister’s introvert

behavior aims to put her on the periphery of her community’s thoughts, as she tries to put the

violence and unrest in the periphery of her own thoughts, but on the contrary, the community is

only more interested in her and her silence, her encapsulation into her own world, her being “a law

unto herself”.

The binary systems and paradoxes that emerged in this analysis clearly represent the

complexity of trauma generally and the complexity of the aftermath of the Troubles specifically,
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the complexity of Northern Irish identity and the complexity of a tumultuous time period for

Northern Ireland and the Northern Irish, the complexity of lived experiences that through the

employment of memory and the act of remembering, can be understood and worked through.
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WORKS CITED

Burns, Anna. Milkman. London: Faber & Faber, 2018. Print.

Brigida, Marcela Santos; Pinho, Davi. “Mourning the Troubles: Anna Burns’s Milkman as a

gendered response to the Belfast Agreement.” Ilha do Desterro, vol. 74, no. 1,

Florianópolis, 2021, pp. 436-449.

Quinn, Annalisa. “Brutally Intelligent Milkman Depicts Lives Cramped By Fear.” NPR. 4 Dec.

2018. www.npr.org/2018/12/04/672956730/brutally-intelligent-milkman-depicts-lives-

cramped-by-fear?t=1638016306460

Schwartz, Erin. “Nowhere to run. The claustrophobic world of Anna Burns’ Milkman.” The Nation.

21 Feb. 2019. www.thenation.com/article/archive/anna-burns-man-booker-novel-

milkman-review/