Characterization of Mary

Mary is the main character of the short story “The Wall-Reader” by Fiona Barr. She lives in Belfast, with her husband, Sean, and her baby. Mary stays at home and takes care of the baby, while Sean is an office worker. The couple is middle-class and, according to Mary, “simply ordinary”.

Mary seems to be initially quite sheltered and naïve. Although she lives in Belfast during the Troubles, the unrest does not really interfere with her life. Mary is interested in the Troubles only in connection to the graffiti writers and the slogans they write on the city walls. Mary’s naïve innocence is mostly seen in how she keeps going to the park to talk to the English soldier, without seeming to understand that such behavior is dangerous and could cause problems for her and her family.

When we think about how she imagines the graffiti writers, we can say that Mary is also quite romantic and idealistic. She gives them “heroic and literary characteristics” and constantly reads the slogans on the walls. Although Mary tries to be down-to-earth and admits that the writing on the wall usually consists of cliches and overused political phrases, she also thinks they represent “A whole range of human emotions” which are written with “persistent anarchy on the walls”. The disappointment Mary feels on the night of her escape from Belfast, when she fin...