"I am very proud of this work because it is more about the meaning of the Easter Rising and its relationship to what this whole century has been about, people liberating themselves, freeing themselves"
About this Quote
Uris is doing something savvy here: he’s laundering a fiercely local uprising through the moral currency of the 20th century. By framing the Easter Rising as “more about the meaning” than the event itself, he preemptively defends against the charge that historical fiction is just costume drama. He’s staking a claim for his book as interpretation, not reenactment - a narrative meant to explain why people risk everything, not merely how they did it.
The phrase “this whole century” is the tell. It’s an ambitious shortcut that folds Ireland into the era’s dominant storyline: anti-imperial liberation, nationalism, decolonization, civil rights. Uris isn’t just proud of research or craft; he’s proud of ideological alignment. That’s also the subtext: the Rising becomes legible, even inevitable, when placed inside a grand march toward self-determination. It’s persuasive because it offers a clean moral arc in a century that rarely supplies one.
But the repetition - “liberating themselves, freeing themselves” - hints at what’s being smoothed over. Those words can sanctify almost any armed struggle, sidestepping the messy questions of tactics, sectarian aftermath, and who gets to speak for “the people.” Context matters: writing in a Cold War environment that loved freedom rhetoric, Uris taps a widely exportable vocabulary of emancipation. He isn’t neutral; he’s recruiting the reader into a lineage of righteous revolt, making Irish history feel like a chapter in a global, ongoing argument about power.
The phrase “this whole century” is the tell. It’s an ambitious shortcut that folds Ireland into the era’s dominant storyline: anti-imperial liberation, nationalism, decolonization, civil rights. Uris isn’t just proud of research or craft; he’s proud of ideological alignment. That’s also the subtext: the Rising becomes legible, even inevitable, when placed inside a grand march toward self-determination. It’s persuasive because it offers a clean moral arc in a century that rarely supplies one.
But the repetition - “liberating themselves, freeing themselves” - hints at what’s being smoothed over. Those words can sanctify almost any armed struggle, sidestepping the messy questions of tactics, sectarian aftermath, and who gets to speak for “the people.” Context matters: writing in a Cold War environment that loved freedom rhetoric, Uris taps a widely exportable vocabulary of emancipation. He isn’t neutral; he’s recruiting the reader into a lineage of righteous revolt, making Irish history feel like a chapter in a global, ongoing argument about power.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|
More Quotes by Leon
Add to List
