Defending Billy Ryan Themes & Social Concerns

This Study Guide consists of approximately 5 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Defending Billy Ryan.

Defending Billy Ryan Themes & Social Concerns

This Study Guide consists of approximately 5 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Defending Billy Ryan.
This section contains 215 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Buy the Defending Billy Ryan Short Guide

Defending Billy Ryan Summary & Study Guide Description

Defending Billy Ryan Summary & Study Guide includes comprehensive information and analysis to help you understand the book. This study guide contains the following sections:

This detailed literature summary also contains Related Titles on Defending Billy Ryan by George V. Higgins.

Preview of Defending Billy Ryan Summary:

The social concerns of Defending Billy Ryan are familiar ones for readers of Higgins's fiction: Ambitious prosecutors pursue a case against Billy Ryan, the good-old-boy Commissioner of Public Works for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The realpolitik of the American legal system, good-old-boy networks, political peculations, Massachusetts, and Irish-American families — these are Higgins's perenniel concerns. He handles them here with accustomed ease and expertise.

The central theme of Defending Billy Ryan, again as in most of Higgins's fiction, is power. He is fascinated by the ways men (and sometimes women) jostle and maneuver for advantage in their relations with other people. The struggle may occur in the local competition of politics or the formal arena of the courtroom, or in the intimate spaces of a marriage or even a conversation. But Higgins's characters seem always in pursuit of some step up on their fellows...

This section contains 215 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page)
Buy the Defending Billy Ryan Short Guide
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Defending Billy Ryan from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.