Abstract
At the conclusion of Patrick McCabe’s 1992 novel The Butcher Boy, the young Francie Brady torches the debris of his family home in a pyre including clothes, books, a broken television, iconic pictures of John F. Kennedy and Pope John XXIII, and dog feces. As he awaits his own immolation to the plaintive tune of “The Butcher Boy,” he fantasizes the presence of his dead mother before collapsing into unconsciousness and nearly burning to death. Later, recuperating in the hospital, Francie relates his story with characteristic bravado and poetic license, unconsciously revealing his symbolic role in the dysfunctional family— and by extension, the national—tragedy:
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