On Lacking the Killer Instinct (Leaving Cert English): Revision Notes

On Lacking the Killer Instinct

Overview

This powerful poem by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin weaves together three interconnected stories that explore themes of survival, instinct, and courage. The poem reflects on the poet's father's experiences as a young man involved with the IRA during the Irish War of Independence (1919–1921), contrasting his brave escape from the Black and Tans with the poet's own retreat during his final illness. At its emotional core, this is an elegy — a daughter watching her father die, feeling she has failed him by fleeing, and searching in family memory for some measure of reconciliation.

The central unifying symbol is the hare, which connects all three narratives: the poet's personal withdrawal, her father's daring escape from the Black and Tans, and the hare's natural survival instincts. This creature embodies the "killer instinct" - the fierce determination to survive at all costs.

The irony of the title

The title "On Lacking the Killer Instinct" is deliberately self-critical and ironic. The phrase "killer instinct" usually suggests aggression or ruthlessness, yet in this poem it means almost the opposite: the fierce instinct to survive, not to kill. The hare, the quintessential prey animal, is the one who possesses this instinct; the poet confesses she does not. The title therefore frames the entire poem as an act of self-examination — a daughter measuring herself against the courage of both her father and a hunted animal, and finding herself wanting.

The poet's retreat

The poem opens with the speaker fleeing to the hills during her father's final illness. The opening lines establish an immediate parallel: "I fled into the hills, that time / My father was dying in the hospital."

During her retreat, she encounters a hare sitting motionless: "One hare, absorbed, sitting still." The clipped, sibilant language creates a sense of pause and observation, mirroring both the poet's contemplative state and the hare's watchful stillness.

The hare as symbol of survival power

The poem presents a newspaper image of a hare being chased by greyhounds, describing its "bright eye / Full not only of speed and fear / But surely in the moment a glad power."

This "glad power" represents the exhilaration that comes with survival instinct - a mixture of speed, fear, and determined vitality when facing mortal danger. The hare becomes a symbol of:

• Instinctive survival skills
• Power found in moments of extreme danger
• The thrill of successful escape
• Natural resilience and alertness

Father's wartime escape

The poem's central narrative recounts the father's dangerous escape during his involvement with the IRA in the Irish War of Independence. Pursued by "a lorry of soldiers" — almost certainly Black and Tans or Auxiliaries — he experiences the same "glad power" as the hunted hare.

The repetition of "glad" links the father's exhilaration to the hare's survival instinct: "never such gladness, he said, cornering in the narrow road / Between high hedges in summer dusk." This echoes the hare's "glad power" in moments of mortal peril.

The father takes a desperate gamble, fleeing into a house and posing as a family member. The tension peaks when "The soldiers / Found six people in a country kitchen, one / Drying his face, dazed-looking, the towel / Half covering his face." This moment of disguise and survival highlights how chance and quick thinking determine life or death.

Reflection and self-doubt

The poem's final section shifts to personal reflection as the speaker questions her own retreat. She asks: "Should he have chanced that door?" before contrasting her father's courageous gamble with her own withdrawal: "And I should not / Have run away."

The closing image of ritual cleansing in "brown bog water" is deliberately ambiguous. It can be read as purification and acceptance — a quiet satisfaction in the hare's "hour of ease" — but it can equally be read as a more uneasy gesture: a ritual acknowledgement of inadequacy rather than a triumphant resolution. The poet does not tell us she has found her father's courage, only that she has found a kind of peace with her own nature. Strong answers will acknowledge this ambiguity rather than settle on a single reading.

Major themes

Survival instinct vs. retreat

The poem contrasts different responses to crisis - the father's brave confrontation of danger versus the daughter's instinctive withdrawal during his illness.

Life in mortal danger

Both the father's wartime experience and the hare's flight from predators explore how extreme danger can produce moments of intense vitality and "gladness".

Inheritance and legacy

The poem examines what the father has passed down to his daughter - questioning whether she has inherited his courage or lacks his "killer instinct".

Chance and survival

Survival often depends on arbitrary decisions and split-second choices, as shown in the father's desperate gamble.

Grief and elegy

Underlying every image is the fact that the father is dying as the poem is written. The retreat to the hills, the memory of his escape, the closing ritual — all are shaped by loss. The poem is as much about mourning and the guilt of a daughter who could not stay at the bedside as it is about courage.

Cleansing and renewal

The bog water represents primitive ritual and a form of acceptance — though whether that acceptance is peaceful, resigned, or ambivalent is left for the reader to decide.

Key imagery and symbols

• The hare: Represents survival instinct, natural power, and the ability to thrive under pressure
• Greyhounds: Symbolise threat, pursuit, and the constant presence of danger
• The lorry of soldiers: Represents historical menace and the Black and Tans' oppressive presence during the War of Independence
• The towel covering the face: Symbolises disguise, survival through deception, and quick thinking
• Brown bog water: Represents primitive ritual, cleansing, and (ambiguous) spiritual renewal

Stylistic techniques

Narrative structure

This is a narrative poem that interweaves three distinct stories (poet, father, hare) through the unifying symbol of the hare.

Form and free verse

The poem is written in free verse, without a fixed rhyme scheme or metre. Ní Chuilleanáin uses enjambment and long, breath-driven sentences that spill across line breaks — mimicking the momentum of a chase and the rush of memory. Line breaks often fall at moments of suspense (for example, around the soldiers' discovery of the six people in the kitchen), forcing the reader to pause in the same way the fugitive and the hare must pause. The looseness of the form mirrors the poem's central tension between flight and stillness.

Sound devices

Contrast and juxtaposition

The poem creates powerful contrasts between the poet's retreat and her father's courageous advance into danger, highlighting different responses to crisis.

Tone and mood

The poem moves through several tonal shifts:

• Admiration for both the father's courage and the hare's natural instincts
• Fear when describing the danger of pursuit and discovery
• Wonder at the strange exhilaration ("gladness") found in moments of extreme peril
• Grief and self-reproach running beneath the whole poem, as the speaker measures herself against her dying father
• Quiet, ambiguous acceptance in the closing lines, suggesting a resolution that is peaceful but not triumphant