SOURCE: Maxwell, D. E. S. “Background and Themes: The Short Stories.” In Brian Friel, pp. 15-47. Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell University Press, 1973.

In the following essay, Maxwell provides a sociopolitical and historical context to Friel's short fiction and delineates the major thematic concerns in his stories.

I

Brian Friel's “Johnny and Mick” (SL [The Saucer of Larks]) is a story about two boys wandering the streets of a Northern Irish town. They roam from the central Diamond, “where black soldiers of the War Memorial towered in taut menace above them,” along “the brown stagnant water” of the quays, past “a mountain of scrap metal,” by empty, echoing sheds, and “the rusted track” of the railway to the complacent suburbs. A suburban street is a challenge to them. It slopes down, “as wide as three ordinary streets,” with its vivid gardens, soft lawns, and “careful curtains,” to the river—which...