redraft specialist study: Danielle Locke

Specialist Study

A Critical Review of
“Butcher Boy”
By Patrick McCabe

The novel “Butcher Boy” by Patrick McCabe is a novel which revolves around the central character Fancie Brady. The study will discuss the importance of the flaw in Francie’s character in our understanding of Francie. We will be looking closely at the text and at least two of the key incidents. His story is one of a series of unfortunate events which lead to the complete and utter break down of the character Francie Brady and eventually to his insanity. We will look at whether there was already a flaw in his character waiting to surface or whether he only became mad because of these events. The key events that we will be looking at are; the suicide of his mother, being sent to a borstal and subsequently being sexually abused there and his best friend disowning him.

Firstly, we will look at his life before the events. He lived in a small town in Ireland at the beginning of the Second World War. He had an alcoholic father “ …what else would you expect from a house where the father’s never in, lying about the pubs from morning to night…”said Mrs Nugent when talking to Francie’s mother. This bought shame to the whole family as the whole town knew it. His mother was very depressed “Francie you would never let me down would you?... that was all there was in this world people who let you down.” She puts a lot of responsibility onto a little boy who should never be given that kind of responsibility. His mother blames his father for the way she feels “she meant you wouldn’t let me down like da did” and Francie’s father blames his own Father for leaving him and his brother “he was off into the speech about his father leaving them when he was seven and how nobody understood him…” His family was already troubled and Francie was already showing signs of being mentally ill by obsessing over what Mrs Nugent (a school mate’s mother) had called them, “Pigs”. He is always fantasising or imagining what Mrs Nugent is saying about him and his family or what she said to him “Please Francie, I’ll give you anything! She’d say.” He longs to have some sort of power over her. In his family he feels powerless, he has no order he can’t even protect his mother from his father this is essentially why he longs for the power.

When Francie is first told about his mother’s death he doesn’t even take it in. He is to busy looking at Mrs Nugent’s appearance he doesn’t even listen to what she is saying and when he did, he didn’t want to believe it.
she was so close I could see the wiry hairs on her chin and the pink make-up and powder on her cheeks. The smell of it turned my stomach .I could barely hear what she said she dropped her voice so low.
She was staring at me to see what I would do. I did nothing. I tried not to look at the stringy mouth or smell the powder. I said to myself; do nothing Francie…It’s ok. Everything’s ok now.
He did not believe his mum was dead as he reassures himself its ok. However he did hear Mrs Nugent tell him as he says he could “barely” hear her but didn’t say he couldn’t. It also says “She was staring at me to see what I would do.” He felt paranoid that it was maybe a cruel joke to see his reaction, earlier on it said “to see was there anyone else with her some trick she was playing” this show he was paranoid at the beginning of the situation. When he is told the second time from his father there’s no avoiding her death.
O didn’t you hear? He says with a bitter smile. Then he told me they had dredged the lake near the garage and found her at the bottom of it,”
Francie was now in contact with feelings of blame from his father. His father cruelly enjoyed telling his son that his mother was dead because his father wanted to hurt Francie because his father was in so much pain and blamed it all on Francie. Francie was never consoled or comforted for the death of his mother. In fact his only source of love that he had ever had was from his mother and now she was gone and he was blaming himself for it. Instead of grieving for his mother he began to become obsessed and terrorised the Nugents family. The first thing he did when he had the news of his mother’s death was go round to the Nugents house. He attempted his first murder the day after with Philip Nugent (his school mate) it seemed like it was premeditated. He stayed very calm and chatted away nicely to Philip before hand. He becomes extremely jealous of Mrs Nugent and Philip’s mother son relationship. We know he feels guilty for leaving his mum as while he had ran a way he imagined talking to her
“I don’t know what made me do it ma, I said. An old fellow stop and says to me are you alright your shaking all over. Then ma smiled and said she understood, she knew it wasn’t my fault. Come home Francie she said. I’m sorry ma, I said again then she said it again ,come on home, I’m waiting for you.”
He wanted to tell his mother he was sorry. He relates his mum to being understanding, warm and loving. This also shows Francie’s state of mind was unstable at the time before his mother’s had died. He was hallucinating and he believed he could talk to his mother when he was in a different town. This is proof that there is already signs of madness before his mother had died.

He is sent to a borstal, to begin with he feels guilty towards Joe his, old best friend, as he had promised before to Joe that he would leave the Nugents alone and the reason he was at the borstal was for breaking into their house and vandalising their property. “There was a gapping hole in my stomach for I knew Joe would have heard all about the Nugents by now. I had let him down.” He also says “I had nobody now that was for sure and it was all my own fault.” This could be Francie admitting that the death of his mother was also his fault. He begins to feel completely powerless again and so tries to commit suicide because at least he will have that power yet that doesn’t even work, he can regain no power. “I tried to get at my wrist with the jaggy bit of the statue.” When he receives a letter from Joe so he decides he will be good. He begins to fantasise about the saints and instead of the priests seeing this as a sign of him being delusional they encourage him to believe he can see the saints and treated like he had some sort of special gift. One priest in particular takes a big liking to Francie. This is when the “Tiddly Show” started to happen. He called the Priest ‘Tiddly’ and he would make Francie play parts in Tiddly’s sick fantasies. Tiddly claimed he loved Francie. Eventually Tiddly was found out, nobody talked to Francie about it and so Francie became more and more in his own head. “…all I could see was ma smiling and saying to me over and over again saying don’t worry Francie no matter what she says about you I’ll never believe it I’ll never disown you ever…” he hallucinates. This also shows how the death of his mother is still affecting Francie and he feels that he still needs to feel that his mother has forgiven him and still loves him.

When he is released from the borstal he returns home to his father, who was slowly drinking himself to death. He drops out of school because he does not want to have to do school with a whole year group younger than him. His best friend Joe was very close with Philip Nugent when Francie returned. Francie tried to talk to Joe about what happened in the borstal he changed it into a joke “I fairly fooled you there Joe. Tiddly! Imagine someone doing the like of that. Tiddly!” he felt embarrassed, alone and he had noone to confide in. Joe was also a metaphor for his childhood and when Francie started loosing Joe he was saying goodbye to his childhood. It was never going to be the same as it had been.
“I wanted to talk about the hide and the old days…” Francie feels Joe has moved on and completely left him behind. He wishes he was back in those days when he was completely innocent and he still has his mother and before he was ever a “pig”. He relates Joe to when everything was as good as his life gets. He does everything to try and be his friend again “I was going to go right in and say hello to Joe and them all sitting there and if they wanted me to sit beside them then all the better…” he imagined what it would be like being able to be friends with Joe again.

I believe that Francie had a flaw in his character waiting to surface and these unfortunate events provoked this flaw to come to surface. Yet each event made Francie more isolated and more in his own head. His mother dying, he blamed himself for the most part, he also hated his father and believed he was also to blame. He lost his only source of love also. Being sent to the borstal and being abused, he lost his innocence, his childhood and he did not talk to people about it. Finally, he lost his best friend, his last sense of sanity. By loosing his friend, he looses the remaining part of his life that was good and that he related his old life with.