In class we talked a good amount about how marriage is portrayed in Mojo Mickybo and concluded that it is depicted in a flimsy way. We see this particularly with Mojo’s parents. We learn of how they used to go dancing and love one another but eventually it detoriated with Owen McCafferty alluding to Mojo’s Da having an affair and eventually his Ma takes him to go and live with his aunt. There are a couple of other portrayals in the play such as with the box office lady, but one depiction that we did not talk about is the boys’ “marriage” with their situation.
Throughout the play the two boys seemed to live in a fantasy world, set away from the grim situation they faced daily. They didn’t have a choice as to the environment they’d be born into and seem to try their best to ignore it by constantly embarking on fantasy adventures. I think that a relationship between a Catholic and a Protestant at the time would be labeled unhealthy because of the high tensions between the two. While the boys acknowledge that they are different, it does not affect their relationship. This all changed once Mickybo’s Da was killed. No longer could Mickybo escape to the wild west because the situation was brought to him. He quickly distances himself from Mojo because he is a protestant. It’s reasonable to assume that the boys knew more about the situation than was alluded to. At the end of the day the boys were stuck in an unhealthy relationship and tried their best to improve it but couldn’t run from the reality of it.
I agree with you when you say that it is reasonable to assume that the boys knew more about the situation than was alluded to. During our discussion in class on Monday we hovered around this idea that during tragedy our youth are mostly ignorant to what is occurring. I felt that while this may have seemed to be the case with Mojo and Mickybo—due to them acting as if they are simply in their own world— it is far from reality. Rather, I think young people are able to recognize much more than we give them credit for; they might be oblivious to the finer details of war, politics and tragedy, but they certainly recognize when something is not right. We mentioned how they were able to get on a bus and go across Ireland. I do not believe that children would fail to recognize this as abnormal. Even children who had grown up in a world during wartime—those that never knew any different— feel the lack of guidance and support from authority. This is because peers of these children will have adults in their lives that have not been absent; there will have been those who were able to, for lack of a better word, escape from the tragedy that is occurring. Perhaps they are moneyed to the point where the tragedy does not weigh on them as it does their poorer counterparts. The existence of these families that have not been broken like Mojo and Mickybo’s will effectively serve as reminders to the boys that the times that they grow up in are at the least atypical. In addition, I do not feel that one can become accustomed to tragedy. These boys will recognize that the war is tragic and be afflicted by it for years to come. And this is a large reason why violence is so tragic; the young people born and raised in these times suffer a loss of innocence far too early as they are forced to undertake further responsibilities and cope with the grim world that surrounds them.
This post made me think – what’s more important to a successful marriage/relationship: compatibility between two people’s ideals and background, or a surrounding environment that allows them to flourish. Before reading Mojo Mickybo, I probably would have argued that the far more important thing is the two individuals, how they trust one another and work through differences. However, after reading the play and your post about the “marriage” between Mojo and Mickybo, I’ve come to believe that surroundings may be just as, if not more, important. Mojo and Mickybo had everything they needed on a personal level to be best friends, which we see throughout most of the story. They had the same desires and propensity to fantasize. However, because one was Protestant and the other Catholic, during a time in which these two sides had no trust in one another, their relationship was doomed from the start. While it may be shocking to see their friendship completely fall apart at the end, I believe because of the impossibilities the boy’s environment created, we shouldn’t be surprised to see this marriage fall apart.