The Speckled People
Hugo Hamilton's book, The Speckled People is a memoir, detailing his childhood in 1950s Dublin, Ireland. As a child with parents from two differing cultural backgrounds and as a Irish-German boy growing up in a rapidly changing world, The Speckled People is Hamilton's account of, not only his struggle to find his identity, but the struggles of his German mother, Imgrad Kaiser, and his Irish father, Jack Hamilton.
Hugo is trapped between his father's demands that he be the 'weapon' for the Irish people, his mother's gentle advice to survive and be a good person, and the rising influence of England and America. In The Speckled People, Hugo faces hatred for his German blood from his peers and anger from his own frustrated, culturally vulnerable father. He grows up in the aftermath of two nations, Ireland and Germany, struggling to find themselves, and feels the effects of the First World War, the Holocaust, and Southern Ireland's recent gained independence.
Hugo is affected by his links to both Germany and Ireland as the two countries have dealt with their own cultural identity crisis. Ireland, the land of his father, had long been dominated by the English empire since the twelfth century (Gale 2007). Hugo's home town of Dublin was once the city where the English army was kept as they battled against opponents of the English control.
Events such as the Potato famine and the continued oppression from the English led those who supported Home Rule, nationalists, to continue to revolt against those who favored colonialism, Unionists, often in a violent manner.
There was still a sharp divide between Protestant North Ireland and Roman Catholic Southern
The impact of German bombing and the overall toll of the Second World War on England gave the separatists a winning advantage (Gale 2007).
Hugo's father, Jack Hamilton, comes from the Southern Ireland city of County Cork (Hamilton 111) and is the product of the culture war between the English and Irish. He retaliates against the growing influence of the English and American culture by forbidding; television, comic books, and, most importantly, the use of the English language, even from American and English music, from the house.
Jack instance on being called Sean Ó hUrmoltaigh and forbidding English from his family is more than a simple preference. Jack is on a mission to make Ireland a strong, unified nation, and, himself, the perfect Irishman, using his children as weapons, “He said we were the new Irish children and soon the whole country would be speaking Irish in the shops” (Hamilton 133).
His refusal to accept an English name and the greater assimilation process occurring in Ireland reflects his desire and the desires of Irish nationalists in general, to preserve the Gaelic language and culture from becoming extinct (Miller 206).
Germany, the land of Hugo's mother, was also faced with a long battle to discover its own identity. After the First World War, Germany was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, according to which, the nation lost territory, was forced to put limits on its military, forbidden to join Austria, and endure occupation by Allied forces, including military from England and America (Keylor 2006).
The rise of the Nationalist Socialist German Workers' party, or the Nazi’s, was in part, due to many in Germany wanting to feel a sense of pride, safety, and unification in Germany once again (Gale 1988). Hitler took advantage of a hurting country and began writing and making speeches promising success and a strong nation once more.
Scapegoats were made of the Jewish people, homosexuals, the Roma, and numerous other groups who were killed by men such as Adolf Eichmann in the Holocaust, the 'solution' given by the Nazi's to Germany's problems.
During the extreme nationalistic policies of Hitler, the people of Germany were divided between members of the Nazi party, some joining only to survive, and the targets of the Nazis. Those who fought back openly were typically killed or sent to the camps.
Resistance against the controlling Nazi party did occur, including Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg, who, in 1944, attempted to, but failed, to kill Hitler using a bomb (Gale 1994).
Following the Nazi's defeat in 1945, Germany was faced with the horrifying reality of the crimes of the Holocaust and the stigma placed on all Germans which resulted from the actions of a few. Further, Germany was divided into occupation zones which eventually led to the division between Communist East Germany, controlled by the Soviet Union, and the Democratic West, controlled by American, French, and England, after the war (Gerhard 2006).
Imgrad Kaiser, coming from Kempen, is in a battle to accept her cultural identity which parallels Germany’s desire to enjoy its strong nationalist pride but to face the horrors of the Holocaust. In sharp contrast to Jack’s message of fighting back against assimilation, Imgrad tells her children, “…you can’t be still trying to stop things after they’ve happened” (Hamilton 153). She listens to American music when her husband is at work, including, ‘Roses Are Red, My Love, Violets Are Blue’ (Hamilton 78).
Imgrad also encourages her children to be positive and to use of the ‘silent negative’ of Hugo’s Onkel Gerd against injustice, “Nobody can force you to smile” (Hamilton 145). From seeing and living in the results of extreme nationalism and intolerance to different cultures, Imgrad is far more accepting of the English and American culture as well as more adapted to coping with difficult challenges in life.
Though she is homesick for her home in Germany and proud of her German culture,she still has the painful memories of her time under the Nazi regime. While in Nazi Germany, Imgrad, like many Germans, were controlled by the fear of being killed, however, Imgrad and many of her family members learned to resist.
Imgrad and her sisters were raised by, following the death of her parents,their uncle Gerd and his wife taught her and her four sisters how to fight back by seeming agreeable on the surface but, underneath, be really finding other ways of resisting. Imgrad's uncle resisted by refusing to join the Nazi party (Hamilton 67) and Imgrad's sister, Marianne followed suit, by hiding Jewish people in her guest house (Hamilton 265).
Imgrad resists silently, even after being raped by her employer, Herr Steigler, until she is able to flee Germany to go to Ireland, only to be trapped again by her nationalist husband (Hamilton 289).
Finally, Hugo himself is the center of his own identity crisis, as those with multicultural roots can often experience. Being taught the two different lessons of his German mother and Irish father, Hugo feels torn between the two cultures and isolated.
He is comforted by the caring, gentle ways of her mother, however, he is stigmatized by the crimes of the Nazi's by other people, including other children, “But the boys outside the shops can see us wearing lederhosen, so they call us Nazis” (Hamilton 135).
Hugo sometimes wishes he was Irish to avoid being made fun of yet, he does not want to match the extreme ideal his father wishes to have as this also distances him from his peers, “You couldn't be cowboys in Irish” (Hamilton 190). It is only when Hugo's parents take him two different extremes of his culture, one in An Cheathru Rua, a rural Irish town, and the other in Kempen, his mother's home town, that he is able to feel at peace.
Hugo, however, lives in Dublin, a large city where there is diversity and advancement, and, as a result, must learn to cope with the transforming multicultural changes occurring. To face this conflict of identity and the scorn of his peers, Hugo could be as his father taught, a violent man similar to the Nazi's, “I laughed like the Nazi's in the films and would not let him up...”(Hamilton 281), or he could be a silent resistor as his mother and her Onkel adivsed, “He was doing what my mother always told said we should do, to pretend they didn't exist” (Hamilton 140).
Eventually, Hugo comes to his own method of dealing with both bullies and his identity crisis, “I'm walking on the wall and nobody can stop me” (Hamilton 295), he resists living up to a cultural ideal. After Jack is killed by his own bees, Hugo and his mother go on a small journey to find themselves, however, in the end, they find that they “were lost” but that, “...it didn't matter” (Hamilton 298).
Hamilton, Hugo. (2004). The Speckled People. New York: HarperCollins.
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