Remembering the Future

Last Orders seems to me to present a very disjointed and, to a certain extent, chaotic representation of time. Jack’s instructions, concerning the spreading of his ashes provides the motivation or driving force behind the novel. There is a sense in which these instructions come from the past or someplace decidedly not the present, yet catapult the characters of the story into the future. Jack’s old friends move into their respective futures with an increasingly strong preoccupation with the past. The title itself would seem to suggest a movement into the future, yet the narration resists such directional simplicity.

In this story, there is not progressive sequence of events but rather a linear presentation of non-linear events. The narrative moves forward not through logical progression but through an episodic recollection of past occurrences. Within the context of Seamus Deane’s quote, posted earlier by Professor Reimer, the story seems to suggest a “remembrance of the future” rather than an “anticipation of the future” and moves forward by looking back.

While most of the texts that we’ve read so far balance the idea of past, present and future with a stronger emphasis on the future (eg Eureka Street and the Good Friday Agreement), Last Orders seems to privilege the influence of past events. While this may be a topic to discuss after finishing the novel, it would be interesting to consider the ways in which the narrative and characters within free themselves from the past in order to “anticipate” the future.