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Cal's relationship to Crilly and Skeffington

 

Crilly and Skeffington are really militant members of the IRA. They want to fight against everything that's part of the government, the 'Brits" or the Protestants. That shows that they don't accept the whole system in Northern Ireland. They don't have any sort of guilty conscience about using violence.

 

Cal knows Crilly from school. One year they were together in class. Crilly is a person everyone is afraid of. He can be very nasty if he wants to. In school he had a number of boys whom he had picked to borrow money from. Crilly said that they would get their money back but they never got it back. If they asked for it he would beat the pupils up. Cal would never do things like these. He thinks that Crilly hasn't the right to hurt people. No one has the right to hurt somebody. Cal has to be careful all the time because he and his father are the only Catholics left in their neighbourhood and their neighbours want them to go away. Because of this Crilly and Skeffington are able to convince him to drive the car for them when they commit a crime. They are threatening Cal so that he is afraid of what can happen to him if he won't obey.

by Ilka Bussmann & Nicole Gröger

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