Too Many Movies, Too Many Tropes I: The Heist Movie

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How do you know when you’ve watched too many movies? Some of us know the patterns and themes so well that the joy of discovery in most films is so gone that we probably won’t be able to thoroughly enjoy another movie until dementia kicks in.

The only thing we love more than puzzles and patterns is being able to figure them out. Our favorite classic and mainstream rock songs follow a A,A,B,A,B,C,B, and B verse-chorus song structure where A = verse, B = chorus, C = guitar solo. Steve Martin once said that three beats are funnier than four. Those of us who are not in these industries usually don’t see these patterns and structures for what they are, but we love knowing what will happen next. When it happens the way we predict, we richly reward those who make us feel smart, so they keep following the patterns. When we reach a point where we watch too many movies, however, we know the beats, patterns and structures so well that the joy of discovery diminishes.

We all have past times, and I spent my youth trying to watch every movie ever made, and the VHS movie rental stores in just about every strip mall in my big town/small city came very close to helping me achieve that. In the 80s and 90s, we could grab our groceries on the way home from work, buy a pizza, and rent a movie without walking a block. We did D) all of the above on weekends and some weekdays. It was so convenient that it was a little too convenient. It wasn’t as convenient as clicking a mouse, but you get the point. 

We had cable TV back then, and about forty different channels, but there was “nothing on!” so often that we rented movies to fill the gap. We ended up watching so many movies that we watched too many, and I can now look at the year a movie was made, its genre, and the superficial characteristics of the actors involved to tell you who is going to be the good guy, the most no nonsense, yet incredibly intelligent member of the crew, and who will end up being the bad guy. I can also pretty much tell you what rhetorical devices they’ll use to progress the plot, the tropes (i.e. recurrent themes, literary devices, and cliche) they’ll drop, and its conclusion. When we reach this point of watching too many movies, a genre such as the heist film, becomes so formulaic that our pleasure of discovery evaporates. 

Heist Films

“We don’t do this for the money,” is a trope that the typical, archetype character who masterminds a bank robberies issues to his naive apprentice who doesn’t understand why the money they stole is now a secondary concern.

Heist movies fall under the action genre, so no one expects the complexities inherent in a James Joyce novel, or a plot as rich as Oedipus Rex or The Alchemist. We just want action, a whole lot of fun, and some semblance of contextual logic. And that’s where they lose me, the logic, because if I were to rob a bank, I would do it to grab as much money as I could in the precious few moments I have. The movie bank robbers do that to complete the action sequence, but once the bank robbery scene is over, the money becomes a secondary concern to them for the rest of the film. 

“It’s not about the money,” the Joker said in The Dark Knight (2008) while burning a massive pile of cash. “It’s about sending a message.” Most screenwriters don’t have the characters in their script say this specific line, but they send the message through various scenes.  

Soon after the bank robbers celebrate their successful theft, they abandon the money when one of their fellow crew members is wounded or captured. “Can’t they help their crew member AND keep the money?” I whisper to my fellow movie goers. “It’s not all about the money, Larry,” someone will invariably say. It isn’t, and I get that, but these guys just risked their lives, their livelihood, and their freedom to steal this money. Label me with whatever pejorative you choose, but if one of my crew stubs his toe, I will cater to his needs AFTER placing the money in a very secure place.

If a romantic interest is endangered, or a personal code is tested, all of that money is left behind without reservation. Just about every movie ever made contains a love interest, and what kind of man would worry about their money when their love interest is in danger? If the filmmaker doesn’t have the mastermind do something, like throw all of his money off a bridge to save her, they’ll lose about 75% of the audience. I get that too, but again, can’t he find a way to save her AND the money?  

The money is a literary device, a MacGuffin, that filmmakers employ to define the character of their characters, and virtuousness thereof, but the paradox is that real life bank robbers only resort to robbing banks as a desperate effort to get money. The movie depicts these characters as clean cut, intellectual types who have a lot going on in life, and they just happened to choose bank robbery as a profession rather than becoming an electrician, a plumber, or a bus driver. Yet, even though they’re not as desperate as the typical bank robber, we’re talking about a lot of money, and my guess is most crews would experience a lot of dissent when the mastermind instructs them to give it all up.   

The primary reason movies about bank robbers are not about money is because we’re not about the money, and we find the pursuit of money icky. Movie bank robberies are about loyalty to our fellow man, the excitement of the plan to defeat a federal bank’s high tech security system, and the chase that follows. The money they make is nice of course, but heist movie filmmakers depict those who seek to quietly enjoy it, or use it to secure a comfortable retirement as suckers, squares, and rubes who believe in the power of the almighty dollar.  

The greater sentiment that is that these nuanced and virtuous fellas are not about living materialistic lives, and they find the thought of living like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg abhorrent, because Capitalism is soulless. This is made abundantly clear throughout the movie, but the crew could used some of the money they successfully stole to afford themselves a decent lifestyle while planning their next heist. “That’s not what this is all about!”  

These movies are about the slick and smooth mastermind, and his ability to research the details of the bank’s security system and locate its primary weakness. They’re about the mastermind and his crew executing that plan, but it’s mostly about the crew members, and how he assembled them for this one, last big hit. One of the crew members, the getaway driver, knows how to drive cars fast, and when I write fast, I mean fast. Another crew member knows how to handle himself in stressful situations, but he can be a little trigger happy, and the mastermind takes a moment out of the planning stage to virtue signal to those in the audience that he doesn’t want anyone hurt. He does this by cautioning his trigger-happy friend about controlling his violent impulses during this heist. The final, missing piece is Schmitty the long-since retired safe cracker who is the only one who knows how to crack the otherwise uncrackable safe that this bank has.  

The mastermind and Schmitty sit in an abandoned warehouse smoking cigars, drinking whiskey, and talking and laughing about old times, when the mastermind turns to him, “Do you think you can do Minneapolis again?” the mastermind asks. 

“That was a lifetime ago, MacDavid,” Schmitty confesses. “I’m retired, and I have grandkids. I’m old is what I’m saying, and the ears ain’t what they used to be.” 

 “We could really use you here, Schmitty!” the mastermind replies. “If you have one more in you, we could really use you.” The scene closes with no definitive answer from Schmitty, but he reappears later, to dramatically announce his decision with a leather-crackling bro hug.   

Depending on the gritty nature of the heist film, no one gets hurt during the robbery, and as all heist movie fans know by now, most of the money the bank holds is FDIC insured (It’s not. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures against various forms of bank failure, not bank robberies.) With that misinformation, those of us in the audience think bank robberies are the perfect crime, and we wonder why we don’t rob banks often. It seems like such a victimless crime.  

As we’re nearing the close of this heist pic, we’ve spent the last eighty minutes trying to keep our mind in the off position, because we know it’s about action and fun, but that contextual logic keeps nipping at our heels like a Chihuaua. They’ve pounded this idea that it’s not about the money so often that we ask, why did they take it? Why didn’t they just live their virtuous lives without the distasteful need for money? That’s just snarky, you say, and I agree. How about the movie makers have their characters run into the bank guns-a-blazing, point their guns at people in a menacing manner, and scream, “Everybody down. Everyone on the floor!” If they don’t have a Schmitty, they can find the vice president of the bank and force him to open the vault, and then once they have all of those piles of money sitting right in front of them, they walk away. They walk away without touching that money! Message achieved! Virtue unlocked! Take that! materialistic, greedhead who thinks it’s all about the money! By filming the scene this way, the filmmakers could provide a a culturally relevant statement against the system and the man who try to convince us that it’s all about the money.

“Why did we go through all that again?” the naive, unsophisticated young lad asks the wily, veteran bank robber who just masterminded a non-monetary robbery. 

“Because it’s not about the money, Chet,” the mastermind says with a squinty-eyed look and a grimace of disdain. “It’s never been about the money, and if you can’t see that at this point, get out of my car!”  

I could see writers and directors creating a character who disabuses the notion that his decision to become an animal husbandman was not about the money. “It’s not about the money, Chet. It’s about them,” he says with a loving gaze sent out to his cattle, “and if you can’t see that, get out of my barn!” I can see movies about individuals in various medical fields, areas of law, and even those involved in selling insurance saying it’s not about the money as much as helping people, but the idea that a bunch of bank robbers are somehow more interested in righting cultural wrongs, civility, and the plight of their fellow man over money just doesn’t square with me. And if you’re going to argue with me about movie makers sending important messages out to the greater culture, I won’t hear it, because I want a contextual alternative delivered by one of the characters in the movie. I don’t want subtext, meaningful omissions, or the slick, cool guy mastermind shaking his head saying, “You just don’t get it, Chet, and you probably never will.” I want an alternative specifically stated, but I know that no movie maker will answer because there is no viable alternative that an audience will buy.  

And that, fellow heist film fans, is the core of the “It’s not about the money” heist film philosophy. We don’t want our heist films to be simplistic, of course, and a dirt bag robbing a bank just for the desperate need for more money would be too simplistic for us to watch and too simplistic for a screenwriter to write. Screenwriters want it complicated, they love twists, complicated, conflicted characters, and a deep, rich plot they consider a reflection of them. The other, less complicated reason is that we don’t want to spend our hard-earned money watching a movie that is all about the money, and the moviemakers want to appeal to our worldview that the simplistic pursuit of money is just plain icky. The final, idealized statement that it’s not about the money is supposed to make us go, “Awww!” with a heartfelt smile. We could call the movie production studio’s writers and directors illogical, ideological, or even pathological for continuing to perpetuate this trope, but we’re the ones who rent, buy, and now click on their movies so often that they continue to create them with this heartfelt premise in it … for the money.       

Killing the Irish II: Oliver Cromwell 

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Oliver Cromwell was ON A MISSION FROM GOD to destroy Ireland. Historians don’t care for that word “destroy”. “He didn’t want to destroy Ireland,” they say. “It was a British colony. Why would he want to destroy a colony that enriched Britain? The word destroy involves hyperbolic, moralizing.” If destroy is an operative term to achieve a desired effect if destroy, what term should we use to describe the effort to deprive a citizenry of their religious practice, political power, farmland, and food? Oliver Cromwell was a bad guy who wanted to destroy a colony, but historians don’t care for such stark characterizations, because they’re oversimplified, icky terms used by nonerudite nonhistorians who lack academic knowledge or scholarly learning. 

If Oliver Cromwell (O.C.) wasn’t a bad man, he was definitely a mad one. The primary driver of his hostility toward Ireland was to avenge the political and religious freedoms and the land gains they made in The 1641 Ulster Rebellion. That Rebellion appears to have begun as an attempt at diplomacy to achieve political and religious freedoms, and to negotiate for Irish land ownership in Ireland, but as history repeatedly shows, every serious quest for freedom eventually involves barrels of one kind or another. The Irish achieved de facto political/religious gains and land reoccupation in this Rebellion, but they were never securely legalized by Charles I. 

Cromwell’s Revenge 

Before King Charles I could codify these Irish gains, Cromwell played an instrumental role in having King Charles I beheaded, and the Irish Royalists further angered him by remaining royal subjects of the crown.

To presumably garner support, Cromwell politically framed The 1641 Ulster Rebellion as a “massacre” of the British Protestants living in Ireland. Cromwell considered reversing the unformalized freedoms gains the Irish made during The Ulster Rebellion a vital part of his mission from God, and he sought to return the unformalized land gains regained by Catholics to the Brits. He labeled Catholicism a security risk and a religious insult to the British empire. To complete his mission from God, Cromwell sought to impose the good, clean Puritan order to try to finally put an end to Irish cries for freedom.  

Cromwell used these directives to invade Ireland (eight years after the Ulster Rebellion), as the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and general (commander) of the Parliamentarian army sent there. The Ulster Rebellion resulted in as many as 12,000 Protestant deaths (soldiers and civilian) in Ulster, be they through direct acts of violence, and the resultant deaths of exposure, starvation, and disease. To avenge those deaths, Cromwell’s invasion wiped out roughly 5,000–7,000 people (mostly soldiers, plus hundreds to low thousands of civilians). So, the vengeful element of his invasion fell somewhat short in pure numbers, when calculating the direct acts of violence alone. Yet, modern scholarly estimates put total population loss, resulting from the long-term consequences of Cromwell’s invasion at roughly 230,000–325,000 deaths, with the great majority being Irish Catholics (a modern estimate puts that number at 200,000 killed, of whom about 137,000 were civilians). Those larger numbers resulted from the long-term consequences of Cromwell’s invasion that include later commanders carrying out Cromwell’s vision by fighting the guerrilla resistance to that which Cromwell imposed on Ireland. Yet, Cromwell’s scorched earth tactics (slaughtering Irish livestock, burning their farm fields, forcing them off family farms, and blocking Irish ports importing food) played a significant role in destroying Ireland.   

As horrific as these Cromwell’s actions were, the idea that he personally enriched himself as a result of the invasion might be more nefarious. After Cromwell seized the land The Ulster Rebellion unofficially secured for Irish Catholics, Cromwell not only took that land back from Irish control, he seized more land from Catholic Irish farmers. He seized the land to pay the soldiers of his New Model Army of which he was a senior commander, and as the senior commander, he was allocated Irish land, one plot of land was 5,225 acres. He also used the allocation of land to repay loans the “Adventurers” made to Parliament to fund the invasion, and of course Oliver Cromwell was one of those “Adventurers”. He was given 1,257 acres to repay his loan. He also drew substantial official pay and allowances as Lord Lieutenant and general (including a daily rate while in England and £2,000 per quarter while in Ireland, plus transport funds). So, not bad for a man purported to be on a mission from God. 

I am not an academic or scholar of Irish history, it’s relationship with Britian, or the inner workings of the United Kingdom, but the limited research I’ve done for this article informs me that Cromwell was a leader who sought to slaughter the Irish for a religious differences, his own enrichment, and for a broader accumulation of his own power, but does that mean he was a bad guy? It might be hyperbolic, moralizing, overly simplistic, and lacking nuance to say so, but if I were to bullet point this all out on a chalkboard, or dry erase board, I would check, check, check my way to yes, and I don’t think I need letters after my name to arrive at that conclusion.

I think Oliver Cromwell cloaked himself in religiosity to convince Parliament, British citizens, and that image in the mirror that he was a righteous warrior as opposed to some simplistic notion of a bad guy. I also think the difference between the terms bad guy and warrior is relative to our respective eras, as the citizens of yesteryear were more apt to adorn a leader of men a warrior irrespective of the messy details that might lead modern men to consider that same leader a bad guy.   

There were numerous bad guys who were declared warriors before Oliver Cromwell and since. What’s the difference, and how have those definitions changed and evolved over time? Norse mythology and historical accounts show that the Vikings and their ancestors valued empathy and sympathy as important virtues, but spiritual motivation of the Norse religion reinforced a mindset of aggression and conquest rather than mercy. The concept of bæðr (honor) meant that a warrior’s reputation and the honor of their kin were paramount, and killing an enemy was part of fulfilling that honor. Did Cromwell follow the same mindset, and does it diminish his bad guy qualities? What’s the difference between a righteous warrior who just happens to slaughter thousands and a bad guy who inflicts suffering with cinematic, maniacal laughter?  

Although it may not stop most bad guys, modern man decided to codify the difference between righteous warriors and evil bad guys through Geneva Convention laws, Hague Regulations, Rome Statute, Protocols I and II, specific weapons treaties, human rights treaties, and customary law. This global legal network criminalizes and prohibits acts of barbarity in both war and peace, and it provides greater definition of good guys who happen to take military action versus the bad guys who act in barbarous ways. These instruments work together to try to provide some accountability for serious violations of international law. Whether or not these treaties and laws successfully deter barbarism is difficult to qualify or quantify, but my guess is a modern Oliver Cromwell would have a more difficult time promoting his mission from God to the Brits or these world bodies.  

He would’ve had his defenders of course, defenders who echoed modern historian’s characterization, that he didn’t want to destroy Ireland, he just wanted to rip its heart out, so it would never make the mistake of thinking it could be a country again. He didn’t want to destroy Irish citizens. He just wanted to end their form of religious worship and any political dissent they may have considered in the future. Do we have any Catholic priests or political scientists in the audience? If we do, could you tell these modern historians that taking away a person’s political power and their religious practice tends to have an effect on their self-esteem? Modern historians say that suggesting Cromwell wanted to destroy Ireland is hyperbolic and moralizing, and he just wanted to end their food supply and steal their land. To do so, he knew he needed to slaughter their livestock, burn their farm fields, and block their ports to prevent food from getting in. I understand that historians prefer to view historical events from a dispassionate viewpoint, but how is that not an attempt to destroy a country? Do we have a biologist in the audience today? If we do, could you inform these historians that causing a famine tends to weaken a country from the inside out to the point of total destruction. 

Killing the Irish: The Great Potato Famine 

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When The Great Potato Famine was over in 1852, one million people in Ireland were dead. Most of them were dead from the long, slow, and torturous death of starvation and the epidemics that followed. Roughly 1.5 million Irish residents watched their loved ones, friends, and fellow countrymen die in this manner, and they left, convinced the course their country was on would be irreversible. In those seven years, 1845-1852, twenty percent of Ireland’s 8.175 million people were simply gone, and famine scholars declare it one of the most severe famines of the modern era when measured by mortality rate. It devastated Ireland to such a degree that some argue it took generations for it to “recover” in a relative sense. And according to my stepdad, I compounded our mother country’s tragedy by missing a question about it on a World History test.

“You didn’t even know it happened?” he asked. “It was the worst thing that ever happened to our people, and we probably wouldn’t be here if our ancestors weren’t one of the lucky few to get out.”  

“I’m sorry, but it was just so boring,” I said. “The whole subject of World History is just one long bore.” This further outraged my stepdad, and the fact that I still bring this exchange up shows that I still feel some shame. I feel better about it now, decades later, because I think about the ‘just the facts’ style of writing that occurs in World History textbooks. I understand that a comprehensive collection of the history of man requires a facts first presentation that complies with standards and curriculum, but the core of the word history is story. I think it would be a great idea for the team that puts History textbooks together to commission some creative writers to take the data and create a compelling narrative. I know my history now, because I’ve read some incredibly talented authors who wrote compelling books on the same material, and I’ve listened to podcasters who know how to bring history alive. We didn’t learn World History in the classes I took in high school. We memorized names and dates.

“What was the question you missed?” my stepdad asked after he cooled off a bit.

“It was something along the lines of, ‘This almost destroyed the country of Ireland.’ I guessed revolution, as in Oliver Cromwell, and all that.”

“It wasn’t Cromwell, it was a damned fungus eating up Ireland’s potatoes.” 

It wasn’t a microscopic fungus that brought Ireland down. It was Phytophthora infestans—an oomycete, a water mold more closely related to algae than to true fungi.

A biology teacher once told us, “All fungal pathogens are fungi, but not all fungi are pathogens.” What did he say? A guy can’t say that once, and we’re all like, “Okay, got it. Interesting.” We need it repeated and broken down. The distinction sounds like one without a difference, like hair-splitting until you learned what it cost. That distinction, as it turned out, could’ve been everything to Irish potato farmers of 1845, but they only knew the first half of my biology teacher’s description, “All fungal pathogens are fungi.” After suffering the initial blight brought forth by this pathogen, Irish farmers turned to 19th century botanists for advice on how to fight fungi. They followed the botanist’s advice by burning their fields, sprinkling lime, and using sulfur compounds to destroy their harvest to prepare for the next, fungi free one. None of it worked, because fungicides do not reliably kill oomycetes, and that was the distinction. 

The Great Potato Famine was caused by the phytophthora infestans, a microscopic organism more closely related to algae than true fungi. This tiny organism is called an oomycete, which is a water-mold. The idea that it was a water-mold played a direct role in prolonging the famine, because the 19th century botanists believed that that which ravaged the fields of Ireland was a dry-loving fungus, and they advised the Irish farmers to follow these measures to deprive the fungi of humidity, because humidity feeds a fungus. Water‑molds, such as the phytophthora infestans thrive in wet conditions, so the botanist’s advice proved worse than useless. Yet, modern investigations state that even if the botanists correctly diagnosed the pathogen, and Irish farmers followed their advice to the letter, this nation-wide blight probably would’ve happened anyway. It probably would’ve happened anyway because Ireland’s cool, wet, and humid climate produced long periods of leaf wetness that didn’t just allow the potato blight to spread; it supercharged it and made the resultant disease almost unstoppable. 

One million deaths is difficult to grasp, and it’s just as difficult to confirm, because Ireland lacked comprehensive civil registration of deaths at the time. The scholarly estimates are anywhere between 800,000 and 1.5 million, with one million being the central consensus figure. One million is also a round number, and round numbers roll off the tongue so easily that they require perspective. The island nation Fiji, Djibouti, Cyprus, and the Soloman Islands all have populations of roughly one million residents. Fort Worth, Texas, the tenth largest population of the United States has a population of roughly one million citizens. Imagine reading that the entire population of Fort Worth, or Fiji or Djibouti suffered the slow, agonizing death of starvation. 

The Great Potato Famine didn’t damage Ireland, it destroyed it, as evidenced by the fact that Ireland’s population was 8.18 million in the 1841 census, 4.2 million in the late 1920s, and 5.35 million in 2026. These more modern numbers include normal migration patterns, and non-famine related issues, but the point is that when a microscopic organism appeared in Ireland, in September 1845, it destroyed a country to the point that it has never fully recovered.  

The Horror Story 

Another reason I think I missed that question about the potato famine on my World History test was that my people, the Irish, love to tell stories. Ireland has produced some of the most influential storytellers in world literature, and I experienced that love of storytelling in my inner circle. One of primary elements a great storyteller needs is a big bad guy to whom we can all focus our anger, and The Great Potato Famine didn’t really have one. At some point in the grapevine storytelling I heard, a big, bad guy of history, named Oliver Cromwell, made his way into the oral history of The Great Potato Famine. Their “based on a true story” tale suggested that Oliver Cromwell somehow commandeered The Great Potato Famine to destroy Ireland. Only problem is Cromwell was born on the cusp of the 17th Century, and he ruled England and destroyed Ireland 200 years prior to The Great Potato Famine. Now, I’m sure the O.C. would’ve shed no tears over the devastation wrought upon my ancestors in the 19th Century, but he had nothing to do with it. 

The Great Potato Famine was the result of an ecological accident amplified by the climate of Ireland and the country’s agricultural reliance on the potato. Yet, with different administrative policies the Brits could’ve prevented that natural disaster from turning into a catastrophe. It is believed that this whole mess began when ships from the Americas brought the phytophthora infestans to the ports of Europe. Some speculate that those ships first landed in Belgium ports, but it soon became irrelevant what exact port introduced the pathogen to Europe as it began reproducing at such a rapid rate that it spread throughout Europe causing some destruction along the way. It wasn’t until phytophthora infestans made its way to the cool, humid weather of Ireland that it experienced what historians call a reproductive explosion. 

When Irish farmers planted their potatoes in their normal course of a day, the phytophthora infestans fed off the potato blackening them, liquefying their insides, and leaving them rotted in the ground within days. This, of course, didn’t just ruin some fields, or some portions of the fields. It resulted in a nationwide agricultural collapse of the potato; a vegetable Ireland was too dependent upon.

The population of Ireland was so reliant on the potato that parts of the Irish population experienced almost immediate mass starvation, disease, and death. It was a famine driven by famine-related epidemics: typhus, cholera, dysentery, and tuberculosis that drove Ireland’s mortality figures higher. As high as the death rate was, historians suggest that there was such a wide range of deaths that could’ve been related to the famine that precise counting of actual deaths due to starvation was nearly impossible. Many deaths also went unrecorded, especially in rural districts where entire families perished. One day those isolated, rural homes housed father, mother, daughter, and son families, and the next day those houses rotted with corpses in them, and no one checked in on them for years.

Saving the Bloodline 

The World History textbook’s summation of why I exist is that my ancestor, we’ll call him Patrick, witnessed the utter devastation occurring in his homeland, and he left. Patrick packed his bags, walked to the nearest port, jumped on a ship, and made his way to America. End of story. That’s why I’m here today. Horray!

Again, I sympathize with the textbook’s writers need to summarize the history of man, but the textbook version leaves out the harrowing details of the story of Patrick’s travel to America, as illustrated by letters Irish emigrants, who made similar journeys. First, Patrick didn’t just wake up one day and say, “I’m outta here!” This was an agonizing decision that impacted everyone Patrick loved and the rest of his life. Patrick grew up on a family farm, and if you know anything about farmers, you know they don’t give up after a bad year, harsh years, or even punishing cycles. Their difficult lives are such that preparing for the worst of the worst is a part of their daily lives, and leaving the family farm isn’t a last resort; it isn’t even a consideration. For someone to leave a family farm, they must receive incontrovertible proof that they are going to die and end the bloodline with him if they stay. 

By the time Patrick finally decided to leave the family farm, starvation and sickness weakened him. Those who were still alive on Patrick’s family farm were ravaged by starvation and disease. His disease-ridden sister, the dying father he revered as a role model, the mother who had sacrificed her own well-being for his happiness, the grandparents he expected to be dead before he reached America were all torn. They urged him to leave so the bloodline might survive, yet they were terrified of what would happen once the last able-bodied member of the family walked away. They all urged him to leave, but that didn’t mean leaving everyone he loved his whole life wasn’t the most difficult decision this young twenty-something had to make.

If Patrick had any money, and most of Irish emigrants didn’t, he probably had just enough to board a ship out of Ireland. He didn’t have enough money for food purchases along the way, so he likely carried some bread and cornmeal for a day or two of some nourishment along the way. He also may have traveled with a change of clothes, but that’s about it.

If he walked the average 3.2 miles an hour, it probably took him nine and a half hours to walk from the parish of Callan in Kilkenny County to Waterford, the nearest major port. Considering all the information of this route, in 1845, we can estimate that it was likely a multi-day journey for Patrick. 

What Patrick witnessed on this perilous journey comes from letters written by Irish emigrants to America, Kilkenny Poor Law Union reports, and Waterford eyewitness accounts. He would’ve walked alongside “Walking skeletons” assuming he wasn’t one himself, children with swollen legs from edema, adults whose clothes hung off them “like rags on a stick” and people too weak to stand, lying in doorways. 

Patrick witnessed so much death and sadness that it broke his heart to turn away from families with small children, desperately crying out for a small portion of whatever money, bread, or cornmeal he carried on his shoulders. Patrick also witnessed the worst of humanity, as starving parents resorted to violence to feed their children. “These people were not villains,” a Kilkenny relief officer later wrote to characterize what he saw. “They were starving.” 

When Patrick survived the walk and managed to avoid the violent thieves and those so desperate that violence and murder were a means of survival, he probably walked up to the port of Waterford with just enough money to board the ship. The sight of the ship must have appeared momentarily glorious, as it stood as a symbol of his ability to survive the walk with the necessary money. That relief was short lived when he saw the dilapidated conditions of the ship before him, one that he knew would take anywhere from six to twelve weeks to complete the transatlantic voyage. Patrick knew that the mortality rates on the worst of these ships was between 20% to 30%, because priests read letters to their parishioners from survivors of those voyages. If he didn’t hear those letters on Sundays, he read them in the Irish newspapers. By the time Patrick spotted his vessel to freedom, he probably heard the “coffin ships” characterization of these ships hundreds of times.

Most of these “coffin ships” were almost criminally overcrowded, almost criminally ill-equipped for long transatlantic crossings, ridden with the famine-related diseases, and worked by inexperienced crews who hated the Irish. As daunting as all that was, Patrick also knew that –depending on the quality of the ship he was lucky to board— the ship might take twelve weeks to complete the transatlantic voyage. 

Once Patrick survived the overwhelming odds of making the travel from Kilkenny County, Ireland to a port in America, likely New York, specifically Castle Garden –the main immigrant receiving station before Ellis Island—Patrick was not greeted with open arms. He was exhausted, malnourished, and confused, but finally seeing Castle Garden filled him with tears of joy and hope. The realization struck him that he not only survived one of the worst famines in human history, but a journey that killed tens of thousands, based on eyewitness accounts, and emigration records, and historians’ estimates on the path from Kilkenny County to New York.

 

When Patrick disembarked, he kissed the ground and almost immediately stepped into a port that in the 1840s–1850s was one of the most dangerous places an Irish immigrant could arrive. Patrick saw luggage stolen right off the dock and other forms of petty theft. He would’ve been shoved and threatened by the throng on the shore and fellow travelers, and he would’ve seen children separated from the parents in the chaos. “They tore my bundle from my hands, and I never saw it again,” one woman wrote home to Ireland.  

Then, once he survived all that, he saw “No Irish Need Apply” signs in windows of factories and other workplaces. He later experienced Anti-Catholic violence, including church burnings, stereotyping that depicted Irish as lazy, drunk, criminal, or inferior in general, and Patrick faced political exclusion, with efforts to block Irish voting rights. And this didn’t just last as long as it took for the one million immigrants from Ireland to settle into their country, as some historical accounts suggest this many Irish immigrants experienced varying degrees of hatred that Irish lasted from Patrick’s arrival in America, in or around 1847, to the early 1900s, depending on the region they eventually called home. So, if Patrick was a twenty-two-year-old when he arrived in New York, he may have experienced intense discrimination in America for the rest of his life. But he did it.

He Did It

Patrick beat the odds by surviving the long perilous journey from Kilkenny County Ireland to America, and whatever joy he felt was surely dispelled by those he left behind, but he had no choice. I’m the reason Patrick, and his immediate family, made those painful sacrifices and tough choices, and they are the reason I’m here today, living in the greatest country in the history of man. How do you repay that? We’re fortunate to be here and alive, no doubt, but how do you appreciate it?

If there is an afterlife, and that afterlife has a screening room where we can view the painful sacrifices, tough choices, death-defying incidents, improbable survival of illnesses, and anything and everything the Patricks of our ancestry had to survive for as long as it took to have a child, I think we would all realize that it’s not just luck, though luck played a huge role, but it’s so far beyond luck that it’s almost an accident. Every person alive today has their ancestors to thank for the unbroken chain of good decisions, narrow escapes, and sheer chance for their life, but most of all they have good luck to thank.

My guess is Patrick’s tale was far more harrowing than I could possibly report. The horror he experienced lay in the details of the death-defying moments he experienced, and everything else he witnessed. We can also guess that when he finally settled down, Patrick probably found it difficult to smile or laugh in the aftermath. All things considered, he probably found the rest of his life unrewarding. Unless, Patrick saw it as his mission to live, survive, and thrive for those who made it possible for him to leave Ireland and pave the way for those of us who existed because of him. It was probably difficult for him to enjoy small talk, going to the beach, or any of the other useless things we do to relax when we’re not working, but if he learned how to use the opportunity they gave him, Patrick could show everyone, including himself, that they made the right choice.

How do we properly appreciate the gift of life? It’s such an overwhelming idea that we’ll never be able to find a fully adequate answer, so why try? Decades after missing that question on that World History test, I’ve found is to use the gift others bestowed upon me by doing what I do best; learning the story, researching it ad nauseum, and writing an article about it. It’s what I do, but in the course of doing it, I found another form of appreciation that might be more affirming to everything Patrick did to make sure I saw life, and that is reversing my decades old characterization of Patrick’s plight and The Great Potato Famine’s blight as boring.