Using Language to Resist Imprisonment
ERH 230, Section 1
Date Due: 13 December 2016
Date Submitted: 13 December 2016
Help Received: Cadet Peer Review from
William Wheeler.
Conference with Maj. Iddings
Signed: Evan McCuaig
Prison constantly reminds people about how their life could be. It allows you to see how good it is outside, but never lets you get a taste of the real world. The pleasures of being free, of doing what you want are powerful. It is inevitable that someone in a prison begin to feel like they are missing out on the world. Prisons function to contain what society doesn’t want, as a waste bin for people. Gerry Adams and Bobby Sands show that British prisons tended to treat its prisoners very roughly. Specifically, they treated Irish political prisoners that refused to be characterized as criminals with complete disregard for their health and wellbeing. However, the Irish had a tool to resist their imprisonment, the Gaelic language. In Cage Eleven, by Gerry Adams and Writings from Prison, by Bobby Sands, we are invited into the world of British prisons through many short stories and how the prisoners used their language to resist imprisonment.
The most important tool prisoners could utilize to resist is their words. Without the means to rally together, the resources to organize a protest and the freedom to do what they want, language is the only method they had of resistance. Having the ability to say anything is fundamental. By creating their own slang and speaking in Gaelic, the Irish could escape the conformity the guards force on them. The words they use creates a different world for the prisoners, it puts them in control and allows them to express the little freedom they have. In Cage Eleven, the prisoners refer to the guards as “screws” (Adams 17). Using this word is important to their resistance because it separates themselves from the guards. By not calling guards “guards”, they are refusing to recognize them for what they are. Instead of being guards that control their lives, they are something different and a lot less threatening and controlling. In this case, they recognize the guards as screws, an arbitrary tool that has no meaning, has no power and is expendable. It turns a scary powerful villain into an insignificant piece of metal.
Denying a person’s identity is only one strategy prisoners use to resist. Another important and effective tool the Irish prisoners had was the Gaelic language. Being in a British prison allows them the advantage of being able to use a language their captors don’t understand. This allows them to talk freely among themselves without the guards knowing what they are saying. The peace and freedom this awards them allows them to feel more comfortable and in control of their situation. The Gaelic word “poitín” is the name of a whiskey the prisoners make (Adams 43). Normally, they wouldn’t be able to talk about making whiskey, where they are hiding it or let each other know about it because the guards would be able to easily find the alcohol and punish them. However, when they speak Gaelic, the prisoners could say whatever they want and could openly talk to each other. This secrecy allowed for open discussion between the prisoners that cannot be understood by the guards. Being able to say whatever they want to each other was important for their resistance because of the advantage it gave them over the guards.
Bobby Sands and his fellow prisoners in Long Kesh Prison found other ways they could use their communication to coordinate with each other and resist. Irish political prisoners, like Sands, were treated very poorly in British prisons. They were considered terrorists and dangerous figures to the public (Sands 7). This gave the guards all the justification they needed to treat the prisoners any way they wanted. The prisoners were constantly subjected to body cavity checks and sprayed the inside of their cells with chemicals that irritated their eyes and made it almost impossible to get a good night sleep (Sands 77). This forced the prisoners to develop a system of warning everyone that guards were coming. Their system allowed it so that they could warn everyone when a guard was coming into their cell block and what they were doing. They would say, “Bears in the air! Heavy gear!” (Sands 76). This warned that there were guards entering and that they had cleaning supplies and gave people time to put away any contraband they had and told them to prepare for the cleaning supplies that would be forced into their cells. When the hose that was spraying the chemicals into their cells was seen, someone would say, “Hose in the air!”. This was the warning that told everyone to prepare to be sprayed with the chemicals that were meant to clean the cells, but made it hard to breathe, see and induced vomiting (Sands 77). This warning system was crucial not only for the wellbeing of the prisoners but also for the teamwork that seamed undeniably invaluable to their resistance.
Every month Sands could see his family and talk with them for a half hour. On one occasion, his parents brought tobacco and rolling paper with them to give to him. Sands managed to successfully smuggle the materials back into his cell and decided to share his cigarettes with everyone in his cell block who smoked. To accomplish this, he needed the help of nearly everyone in the cell block. The prisoners had a system of delivery that required a lot of communication and coordination and that the cell block be free of guards. First, Sands attached the cigarettes to a string and swung them out the window. The man in the cell next to him, Sean, would catch it and deliver it down the line in the same fashion. Once the package got all the way down the line, one man would send a “shot” across the hallway (Sands 70). The shot would make a connection between both sides of the cell block and allowed them to ferry small packages across the hallway. The person receiving the shot would use a strip of paper to catch the line and pull it to get the package (Sands 71). This intricate system of passing along contraband required a lot of communication. They had one person on watch looking for guards and another person guiding the shot so that the line would land in a place retrievable by the man on the other side (Sands 71). If done successfully the prisoners could enjoy a cigarette to themselves. Without communicating and coordinating between the prisoners, their resistance to the prison would not be possible.
It is incredible that these men, locked away in cells, could form such a resistance by only using their language. They refused to acknowledge the guards for what they are allowing them to take back a little control over their own lives. They used their Gaelic language to secretly communicate with each other without letting the guards know what they were saying. They looked out for each other by giving warnings about what the guards were doing by shouting out what they saw. And most remarkably, they used an intricate system of communication and coordinated movements to pass along contraband that most certainly made everyone’s day much better. There is no doubt that the language these men used played a crucial role in their resistance to their imprisonment.
Works Cited
Adams, Gerry. Cage Eleven. Boulder, CO: Roberts Rinehart, 1997. Print.
Sands, Bobby. Bobby Sands: Writings from Prison. Cork: Mercier,