Prophet Song

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-9

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

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Themes

The Tyranny of Authoritarian Society

Content Warning: This section of the Study Guide discusses police brutality, torture, and violence, including the murders of children.

In Prophet Song, Lynch explores how society can easily descend into tyranny. He sets the novel in Ireland, a country contemporarily known as a peaceful and stable nation, turning it into a dystopia controlled by a fascist regime operated by the National Alliance Party.

The novel demonstrates how the tyranny of society is enabled by the support of people who don’t see or care about the threats of authoritarianism. When Larry is arrested and disappears, the entire Stack family becomes the subject of suspicion. Eilish’s boss judges her to be anti-regime because of Larry’s union’s protest. Therefore, when Larry disappears, Eilish doesn’t receive support and empathy but instead, derision and suspicion. When the regime publishes Mark’s name and address because he absconds from mandatory military duty, Eilish loses her job. People in her neighborhood and all over the city hang up the National Alliance Party flag. For some, this could be motivated by a desire to fit in with the changing tides of nationalism and not bring suspicion to their own families. However, others reflect a genuine belief that the government can and should take extreme measures to control its people. After all, a society is created by people for people. Thus, the antagonist of this novel is not just the state, but the people who support the state’s shift to authoritarianism in the first place. The dystopian elements of this novel extend beyond the unjust and inhumane treatment of people by their government; they are also reflected in the actions of other average people, such as the border agent who tries to sexually abuse Molly in exchange for her family’s crossing into freedom. Lynch’s novel illustrates that just as regular people like Eilish are capable of great strength, regular people are also capable of great harm.

To further develop the tyrannical characterization of this society, Lynch never names the society directly. He uses terms such as “the regime” and “the state” to refer to what was once known as the Republic of Ireland. This creates a sense of mystery around the structure of the government and society. It also creates space between the Ireland that contemporary readers know and the potential of an Ireland made unrecognizable and undefinable by tyranny while suggesting that present political or governmental circumstances shouldn’t be taken for granted.

Lynch also portrays the ways that tyrannical dystopias prey on human fear to gain and maintain power. Carole identifies this, realizing that the unknown truth about her missing husband makes her fear for his safety while still hoping for his return. This unknowability, mixed with fear, causes Carole to freeze in place. She recedes into herself and loses the will to try to find normalcy in her life, let alone fight back or pursue justice. Eilish experiences this as well: Given the option to flee the country, Eilish’s fear of the unknown keeps her in Ireland. She fears leaving Larry and Mark behind and the unknown journey that would get her and her remaining children out of Ireland. Fear debilitates these characters because it makes them doubt themselves and their autonomy. If people can’t rely on the facts and knowledge that have always informed their lived experiences, they can’t rely on anything.

The Power of the Family Unit

In Prophet Song, love for her family is the primary motivation for Eilish to maintain grit and resilience in the face of major adversity. In the first chapters of the novel, Eilish must keep her family stable. In the middle of the novel, Eilish must keep her family safe. In the last chapter of the novel, Eilish must risk safety to keep her family alive.

When Larry is arrested, Eilish becomes a single parent. With four kids of varying ages and needs to take care of, Eilish tries to put up a brave and stable front even though she is afraid. She tries to maintain order in the household because she understands that consistent structure is good for her children. Whenever Eilish feels ready to give up, it’s this important job of keeping her family safe and mentally well that keeps her going. The power of family is so strong that Eilish risks her own life to check in on her aging father, who has dementia. She also refuses to leave Ireland when given her first chance to by Maeve because out of loyalty to her family members. Therefore, Lynch illustrates how love for one’s family can overcome The Human Instinct for Survival.

The power of family is further emphasized when Eilish finally decides to leave the country, catalyzed by the cruel and unjust death of her son. She, Molly, and Ben experience formidable danger to pursue freedom. Eilish summons her strength and the last vestiges of her hope because she has no choice but to believe in a future for Molly and Ben. This is her maternal instinct; she can’t stop fighting for or believing in that future. The ending of the novel is left open-ended, but Lynch implies that Eilish and her children get on the boat to sail into their uncertain future. This is symbolic of Eilish’s strength because it highlights that she will go to any lengths for her family.

Molly also exemplifies how love for one’s family can motivate action in difficult times. When her father first disappears, Molly advocates for him by tying white ribbons to the branches of a tree in her backyard. This is symbolic of her loyalty to her father and her determination to hope for his return. As her society devolves into civil war and chaos, Molly grows overwhelmed, but she helps her mother where she can. In Chapter 9, Molly takes charge and leads her mother forward to the border that represents freedom.

The unconditional love of family provides hope and happiness in an otherwise bleak and chaotic world in this novel. Even though Mark is disobedient and often reckless, Bailey lashes out in hurtful ways, and Molly and Eilish struggle to maintain their wills to move forward, they never stop loving one another and fighting for each other. Through the Stack family, Lynch therefore suggests that one way to fight tyranny and oppression is to remain true to the power of the family unit: Unconditional love between family members can’t be destroyed by the state.

The Human Instinct for Survival

Prophet Song depicts the fight for survival in the face of great adversity. There are many threats to life in this novel: Arrests, disappearances, torture, war, and an uncertain escape to freedom. Through all of these threats, Lynch highlights the powerful human instinct to survive at all costs.

Larry is the first character who exemplifies this theme because he risks his safety for the survival of his dignity and ethics. Larry stands by his roles as a teacher and union leader because he believes in the value and importance of his work. Larry knows that capitulating to the state in these early stages of fascism means giving up his dignity, and he wants his ethical code to survive intact. Giving up his morality would be a metaphorical death of autonomy and personhood. By moving forward with the protest despite the warnings from detectives, Larry sacrifices himself for the survival of justice.

Mark also has his own views of survival. For Mark, survival doesn’t mean staying alive, it means fighting for the future: “[T]here is no freedom to think or to do or to be when we give in to them, I cannot live my life like that, the only freedom left to me is to fight” (135). Mark has the opportunity to escape to safety, but instead he chooses to join the rebel army. This decision is indicative of Mark’s survival instinct. He knows that a life in exile is not a life at all and that survival means reclaiming his autonomy. The survival of Mark’s country as he once knew it equates to his own ability to survive. Mark follows in his father’s footsteps; by standing up for what he knows is right, Mark practices his own type of survival.

Eilish is the heroine of the novel. From Larry’s arrest onward, every day is a fight to survive. The well-being of her children is her primary motivation for survival. As a mother, she can’t take a moment to panic because her children need stability for the sake of their own survival. This is true physically and psychologically. When war comes to Dublin, Eilish realizes that her home as a refuge for her children is a fallacy. She can’t protect her children from random bombs, but that doesn’t stop her from trying. When Bailey is injured in a bombing, Eilish endures multiple dangerous journeys to get him to a hospital. There is danger in traveling to a hospital, but the instinct to survive kicks in and propels them into a city destroyed by violence. When Bailey dies, Eilish wants to die too. However, she must keep living because she has other children who need her. Eilish’s survival instinct takes over.

Resilience is the foundation of Eilish’s character. There are so many external conflicts that threaten her safety. Getting fired from her job makes it more difficult to provide for her family, but Eilish braves the danger of the streets to look for cheaper food and even tries to apply for a job at the grocery store. When a group of men attacks her house to intimidate her, she continues to drive the car that is marked with the word “traitor” without showing shame. Eilish’s resilience is pushed to its limit more than once as she loses her husband and two older sons to the regime and its disastrous ripple effects. Even when she is worn out, she continues moving forward. Eilish never gets a respite from this fight for survival and safety. In Chapter 9, she braves long, uncertain journeys with people who threaten her daughter, all while keeping up a happy façade for the good of Ben’s emotional development. As a once-ordinary woman turned dystopian hero, Eilish’s grit and resilience are inherent to her character.