ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the tools of metaphor analysis are employed to explore how Jo and Pat speak of the consequences of Pat’s decision to join the provisional IRA and commit to the use of violence.
The most signifi cant way in which Jo explained the impact of the violence on her and her family was through two bare narratives, prefaced and concluded with metaphor-rich episodes. In the fi rst of these, she tells of her daughter’s reaction to her meeting with Pat Magee, using the child’s voice to confront him with the human reality of his actions. This recounting affects Pat deeply, at the time, and afterwards, and we examine how Jo’s use of language might have produced that effect. In a further extended narrative with hardly any use of metaphor, Jo tells of how it felt when she went to tell her brother and sister that their father had been killed. These direct explanations and narratives force Pat to engage with the personal and human consequences of the violence.
