Themes

(This thread may be more appropriate in a different forum. If that's the case, I'll try to get it moved.)

I'm posting it here because of its historical context, and because I'm considering using this as a theme for my historical fiction which I'm planning.

During the Irish Rebellion of 1798 (the likely starting point for my novel) a rallying cry or war cry was: Death or Liberty!

I know it's been used in many parts of the world, and the first recorded use I can find was just after the Boston tea-party. However, these findings are irrelevant to my story.

I'm considering changing this to: Liberty or Death! and using it as the theme for my novel. This phrase encapsulates the driving force behind my MC.

I've reversed the order of the words because I feel that placing liberty first makes my theme more positive, and I feel much happier using the modified phrase.

Does anyone have any comments, please?

Well, you know the Irish. They often do things the other way round.

cooeedownunder said:

It might be just me, but if this MC is Irish - If you're going to use that phrase in context with battles or plots against those in power

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Have no plans to use the phrase anywhere in the text.

I plan to use it as my theme.

Will edit the OP to make this cleared.

cooeedownunder said:

Now I'm going to contradict myself and say, you certainly have a challenge to make readers see your theme as that phrase turned back to front, if that phrase is never mentioned.

That said, that phrase captures so much, regardless of which way it is worded, and if you can somehow capture the men and the heart behind the meaning of the words in text without using the words your theme could certainly live.

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I like a challenge, Where's the fun if there's no challenge? I fully accept that what I hope to achieve won't be easy, and may well involve an incredible amount of re-writing.


My copy of Vinegar Hill arrive this afternoon. So more reading. It, and Tony Moore's Death or Liberty will probably be my mainstays.

I did a lot of research over the weekend, and I'm coming closer to the opinion that I might not be able to cover my initial time period in one book. But that will become clearer next month when I get down to the outlining. I'd hoped to cover 1798-182o; now I'm thinking 1798-1804-ish, and see how that goes.

cooeedownunder said:

I sincerely wish you luck with this.

The Macquarie years has been my interest for many years. I find it fascinating, but spent the last two years very interested in the years prior. There is a wealth of information and a million storys that could emerge that have never been told to wider audiances, let alone to many Australians.

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Thanks for your wishes of good luck. Much appreciated. Unfortunately, we all know that luck plays only a small part.

At school, Australian was the only history that interested me. In exams I'd get something like 49/50, and 6/50 for British, followed by comments like "Works only when interested.

About 40 years ago I started researching my family history (took about 20 years, what with my other activities) and with ancestors on the 2nd Fleet; the Irish Rebellion 0f 1798; one ancestor assigned to the NSW Corps, but was himself actually a convict because at the age of 17 he'd deserted from the English army; others who landed in NSW prior to 1820; and 2 who finished up in Tasmania, my interest in history was again stimulated because I wanted to surround the family history with the causes and effects of the societies of the time. Fortunately, I kept copies of most of the research -- not documented well enough to cite, but not necessary for what I'm now planning write.

So as well as the Hunter, King, Bligh and Macquarie governorships being interesting, I have a personal interest in those periods.

When I wrote the family history I had to leave out most of the interesting "stuff" so as not to unnecessarily upset my Mother and relatives of a similar age. That's always gnawed at me.

Several years after completing the research for the family history, I undertook a LL.B degree at the Australian National University. That course had a heavy emphasis on British and Australian legal history, so that again took me back to history. (Seems like I'm not meant to get away from it.)

After dumping my last WIP, I was looking for ideas, when my wife suggested I re-write the family history.

Like you've said, there's a wealth of material in that time period. I've never tried historical fiction before; always written mainstream blood, guts and sex novels. So, I'm not yet totally comfortable with the idea of writing historical fiction -- that's why I post so much on AW -- but I'll give it a go. If writing historical fails for me, I guess I can always try converting the mss to mainstream.

I just thought you might like some background as to why I'm wanting to write this. Hope it hasn't bored others too much.

pdr said:

doesn't Death or Liberty mean something quite different from Liberty or Death?

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Very definitely!

IMHO, however, I feel "Liberty or Death" is more appropriate to use as a theme. Now, using it as a theme where it sort of exists below the surface of the structure of the novel, I believe I have more scope to make my characters more positive by giving them something other than death as their objective. I have no plans to announce to the readers that the theme of this book is "Liberty or Death" .

As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I probably won't have any character shouting "Liberty or Death", although I could foresee it happening in a calmer setting; whereas, there's nothing to stop me from having one or more characters challenging the authorities by shouting "Death or Liberty".

To me, in the societies in England, Ireland and Australia at the time of my story, Death or Liberty rarely resulted in liberty. The great majority of the people (mostly rebels of some sort) finished up dead.