Key moments in Small Things Like These-Bill Furlong as a hero
Bill’s generosity early in the text
Early in the book we see how generous Bill is when he stops to give the Sinnot boy the change from his pocket as he found him scavenging for food along the road. Bill cannot afford to give away money but we see that he cannot pass the boy without helping him. He is criticised by his wife for doing this but it highlights how kind and generous Bill Furlong is.
The second key moment is when Bill goes to deliver coal to the local convent. He sees the young girls there in bare feet with their heads shaved. One girl asks him if he can take her away. Bill tells her he can’t and she responds, “all I want to do is drown meself. Can you not even do that fucken much for us.” Bill is haunted by this visit and when he tells his wife, she says, ‘if you want to get on in life, there’s things you have to ignore.’ Bill can’t forget about it and this shows that he is heroic.
The major moment in the story is when Bill goes to the convent early one morning and finds a young girl called Sarah locked in a coal shed surrounded by her own excrement. He is shocked to see the state of the young girl and learns that she is an unmarried mother who has had her child taken away from her. When he takes her into the convent, Mother Superior tells him that the girl was playing ‘hide and seek.’ She then subtly threatens Bill with hints that his daughters won’t get into the local school if he causes any trouble. She also hands him an envelope with £50, which is a form of a bribe to keep quiet about this incident. There is a turning point in the story when he goes to leave when he discovers that the young girl’s name is Sarah, which is his mother’s name and she too fell pregnant out of wedlock and would have ended up in the convent only for Mrs Wilson to save her.
The last key moment is when Bill picks up the courage on Christmas Eve to go to the convent and rescue the young girl. When he arrives, she is once again locked in the coal shed and he tells her that he is going to take her home. This is heroic because not only is he defying the church, but he is risking his business and his daughters’ future. Mrs Kehoe warned him not to go against the nuns as there would be consequences. He shows that he is a hero by doing the right thing regardless of the outcome. We do not know what will happen to Bill but the story ends on a positive note as he carries the young girl through the town towards the safety of his own home.
Key Moments in Small Things Like These-Mother Superior as the Villain
We first meet Mother Superior when Bill visits the convent for the second time and finds the young girl in the coal shed. He brings her into the convent and meets Mother Superior at the door. She pretends that they have been looking for the girl and tells her that they were ‘about to call the Gardaí.’
She then tells Furlong that the girl can’t ‘tell night from day.’ All of this is designed to make Furlong believe that there is nothing going on in the convent. She insists that Furlong comes in for tea, despite the fact that he refuses to come in three times. She is a woman who is used to getting her own way.
When Furlong sits down for tea, Mother Superior subtly threatens him by reminding him that admission to St Margaret’s can be decided by her and the other church authorities. She is basically telling him that his daughters won’t get into the school if he causes any trouble. ‘It’s no easy task to find a place for everyone.’
She then makes a comment to him about not having a son to carry his name and he reminds her that he took his mother’s name, which she is not impressed with and she realises that Furlong cannot be easily swayed.
When the young girl comes back in, she is interrogated by Mother Superior and she tells her that they were playing ‘Hide and Seek,’ which makes little sense and is clearly a cover story. The fact that Mother Superior uses this as an excuse shows that she has little regard for other people’s opinions and does not care about the young women. It was clearly Mother Superior who sanctioned this as a form of punishment.
After she pours more tea, she hands Furlong an envelope with £50 in it, which was a large sum of money and it is clearly seen as a bribe for Furlong to keep quiet about what he saw. When we see how she threatens him and then bribes him, it is clear that Mother Superior is a villain. We must also consider how she punished the young girl called Sarah and how she drove the young girls to want to kill themselves. She is also in charge of removing the children from their mothers.