“No/every man is an island: Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)”


Dirim Kiliç H.

4th Literature and Cultural Studies Conference: Nautical Narratives”, İzmir, Turkey, 3 - 05 May 2023, pp.12-13

  • Publication Type: Conference Paper / Summary Text
  • City: İzmir
  • Country: Turkey
  • Page Numbers: pp.12-13
  • Kocaeli University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

No/every man is an island: Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)” 

 

In his most recent film, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022), Martin McDonagh chooses one of the

oldest and most attractive settings of world literature as the location: an island. Situating his story

on an island, McDonagh on the one hand uses the island as a realistic and practical backdrop for

an Irish story; on the other hand, as a strong metaphor for the relationships between the

characters. By doing so, McDonagh revisits one of the oldest philosophical questionings that

occupied the works of many writers and thinkers from John Donne to Carl Jung: whether

humans are separate from one another like islands or inevitably interconnected like the parts of

the same continent. The life of the characters in The Banshees of Inisherin revolves around this

question. This paper aims to analyse the use of island allegory in the film and to elaborate on the

image of water in that allegory. It will be argued that the body of water surrounding the islands is

an element that both unites them and separates them. In the context of The Banshees of Inisherin,

kindness, hostility, suffering, love, art, ideology, faith, fate will be analysed as the components of

this mysterious body of water that both divides and connects the characters.