Towards the end of Moon and the Mars, I began to notice Grammy Cahill increasingly making comparisons between Irish peasants and minority groups in the United States. This was particularly prevalent when Theo found Grammy Cahill outside of their house at night, lamenting the horrors she endured in Ireland and recounting the trials that she faced. When referring to corn and other crops that were successful in Ireland during the potato blight, she says “Well [the landowners] sure couldn’t line their pockets by handin it over to the starvin paupers they made to sow and harvest it! Us, the original inhabitants, the Indians of Ireland!” (Corthron 430). In making this comparison between the Irish and the Native Americans, Grammy is expressing the empathy that she feels for them, and claiming that they might be more alike than they appear. Considering the way that the Irish were also forced off of their land due to British greed, they really do seem to have common histories.
As tensions grow between the Irish and the Black Americans in New York, it may seem that Grammy Cahill also has a motive to express her sympathy to her Black granddaughter, and to show that she stands in solidarity with her. This is once again apparent when Grammy takes Theo on a walk and describes the time that she met Frederick Douglass. She tells Theo how Douglass was astonished to find the lack of prejudice he felt as a Black man in Ireland, and his shock at how Irish peasants fared somewhat similarly to slaves in America based on the poverty and starvation he witnessed. Grammy says, “No one would say the sufferin was equal to slavery. Irish weren’t stolen and sold, whipped and raped. But our misery was vast. Even a former slave astonished” (Corthron 493). At the time that she brings this up, tensions had risen even more between the Irish and Black Americans, and Theo seems to recognize the pointedness with which she says this.
While it is, of course, a good thing that Grammy Cahill stands with her granddaughter and the Black people of New York, one cannot help but wonder if the only reason for her alliance is the fact that she might lose Theo if she stands with her fellow Irish New Yorkers. It is clear from the beginning of the war that her Uncle Fergus does not care about abolishing slavery, and it often seems that Grammy Cahill has to have deep discussions with Theo to prove her loyalty and lack of prejudice. It is evident that Theo’s Irish family deeply cares about Theo and her father’s side of the family; they do not participate in the riots near the end of the novel and they stop working for companies that perpetuate slavery once they realize the issue. It makes me wonder, however, where they would stand if they didn’t have Theo, and if Brigid had never married into the Brook family at all. If they have changed their values and mindsets for the sake of one little girl that they all love, is it really enough? Is it enough that they abhor slavery because of their own ties to Theo, and not because of the horrors of slavery in and of itself?