Interrogating the myth of the Irish republican hero: a syntactic analysis of hunger (2008) and the wind that shakes the barley (2006)

ABSTRACT This essay seeks to understand how since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, marking the end of The Troubles in Northern Ireland, filmic depictions of the conflict reinterpret and interrogate the traditional role of the ‘hero’ in the Irish republican cause. In an analysis of two films released after the Good Friday Agreement, Hunger (2008) and The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006), this essay argues that both films feature a hero-type Irish republican waging a brave-but-futile campaign against British oppression, but critique the myth of the Irish republican hero by severing the cycle of mythical violence by sowing doubt in the hero myth that serves as its base. This essay suggests that film is a low-stakes arena for the interrogation of volatile narratives that plays an important role in the reconceptualization of a conflict and, maybe even, its resolution.