The Story of Brooklyn by Toibin Colm - Essay Example

The story of Eilis begins in a small Irish country town, where identity, respectability and social and family bonds are held pivotal and considered essential (Colm 14). The setting is pristine and the social landscape in this small country town appears to be prim pram and all right, at least on the surface.

Family members share close bonds and mutual affections, the social life appears to be well-knit and connected, with people never forgetting to attend the mass in their Sunday best. However, a whole lot of challenges and problems seem to be marring the life in this small Irish town of the 50s, which have as much to do with the anachronistic social values as the economic constraints and rampant unemployment, bent on splitting apart the very domestic and social fabric of this sleepy abode of simple-minded, financially challenged and relatively uninformed Irish folks (Scurr: Online).

Hence, in Brooklyn, the Ireland of the 1950s is presented as an isolated and neutral place that at a micro level, is the abode of internecine gossip, malicious betrayals, deep-seated hypocrisies, petty social and economic tyrannies and apathetically calculated approach towards most of the aspects of life, be it the jobs or the marriages. At the same time Ireland is shown as being unaware of the things happening in the outside world, too seeped in its own problems and concerns. From such a locale, Eilis immigrates to America.

However, the irony is that she sometimes wonders as to when the home with all its inherent prejudices and economic problems ends, and from where her newfound destination with its own prejudices and gender discriminations begins. New York turned out to be Eilis’ encounter with organized discrimination for the first time and her response to the clerk at the law bookstore in Manhattan is a projection of this encounter. In New York in 1950, Eilis comes across discrimination in varied forms as discrimination against women, prejudices against blacks and Italians, and discrimination against lower-class Irish immigrants (Bradley & Valiulis 127).

In New York, Eilis for the first time comes face to face with a multi-cultural, urban environment with its innate prejudices and discriminations. New York comes across to Eilis as a place that is the hub of a spirit of reconciliation based on the recognition of organized discrimination and racial persecution, while at the same time being a seat of ethnic and racial friction. In that context, the Brooklyn of 1950 turns out for a simple country girl like Eilis, more intimidating than reassuring.

It is in Brooklyn that Eilis becomes cognizant of its existential dilemma sparked by a quest for home and the doubt as to figuring out whether it really exists, and if yes, where it actually is (Langan: Online)? In the bustling, well informed, yet discrimination infested Brooklyn or her isolated, uninformed and deprived country home in Ireland.