The Lieutenant of Inishmore

The Lieutenant of Inishmore is one of McDonagh’s most violent political plays and paradoxically takes an antiviolence stance. McDonagh wrote the play from a place of “pacifist rage,” responding to paramilitary acts of terrorism that were continuing to take innocent lives in Northern Ireland. The word “terrorism” refers to acts of violence or intimidation, often carried out against civilians, that are not sanctioned by the laws or the state with the goal of inspiring fear. During the 1990s, when McDonagh wrote the play and attempted to have it produced, formal peace negotiations had just begun after decades of violence. But terrorist attacks continued throughout the 1990s, and the play takes the stance that this seemingly endless production of terror through the violent murder of civilians is absurd. The philosophy of absurdism, based on the ideas of Albert Camus, is founded on the notion that the universe is irrational, and existence is meaningless. Absurdity arises from the conflict between a meaningless universe and the human desire to impose order on irrationality. McDonagh satirizes the terrorist violence of Northern Irish paramilitaries as chaotic and irrational, and absurdity results from the imposition of a unified political goal—a free and united Ireland—on the actions of multiple paramilitary groups with varying objectives and violent disagreements between (and even within) them.