Climb Into His Skin and Walk Around in It

Start your story with a metaphor about human nature.

Climb Into His Skin and Walk Around in It

In Harper Lee’s brilliant novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus gives this advice to Scout:

“First of all,” he said, “if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. 

The Native Americans have a saying which echoes this advice—don’t judge anyone until you have walked a mile in his or her moccasins. 

Norma Shaw lived in East Belfast and she had actually studied this book at school. She was a very intelligent woman and she was able to become a teacher. This was an amazing accomplishment for a person from a working class background. She grew up in the 1970s and the Troubles were creating mayhem in her home city. Her father was a police officer in the RUC, the local police force. It was a very dangerous time to be working in the police and security forces. Norma would hear the news with dread and prayed that her father would not be shot or wounded. Norma’s mother was constantly anxious and the atmosphere in the home was tense. She had a brother, and he also went to university and became an accountant. 

She never openly admitted that she harboured any sectarian feelings towards Catholics and she never voiced any sectarian views. But deep down, she felt that the IRA had declared war on the Unionist people and that their actions were tantamount to murder. They regarded her father as a legitimate target and anyone else who worked in the security forces. 

Jennifer Johnston’s book Shadows on Our Skin was set in the Bogside, Derry in the 1970s. The Troubles were in full swing, there were shootings and bombings and houses were raided on a constant basis. A young sensitive boy called Joe Logan tries to make sense of this dysfunctional, turbulent world. 

So Norma reached the age of thirty and had her job, her circle of friends and her annual holiday—she taught History in a local secondary school in East Belfast and her friends were all from the Unionist community—she lived in a predominantly Protestant area, and she felt deep down that her world was perfect, even though it was somewhat narrow. She felt that given the political situation, it was better to live, work and socialise in her own community. 

A new teacher invited her to attend a book club in the Central Library and she decided to go. ‘The next book we are reading is Jennifer Johnston’s Shadow On Our Skin’ her friend told her. When Norma read this book, it had a profound effect upon her. The novel was about a young boy, Joe Logan growing up in the Bogside, Derry during the Troubles.  Joe was a poetic soul and he finds it difficult to cope with the conflict in his home and the violence and mayhem on the streets-

He sees the world as a bleak place:

Perhaps everywhere you went people were lost, searching with desperation for something they would never find, mutilating themselves and each other in their desperation. There was no safety.

Norma attended the book club meeting in the library at the appointed time and she was amazed at all the opinions people had about the book—the members were very articulate and well informed—they were not afraid to express their views on the Troubles and Norma found this refreshing. 

One of the women was from Derry although she was now living in Belfast. She had studied politics at Queen’s University, Belfast and she now taught in a Catholic Grammar School in South Belfast.   She would tell the group anecdotes about growing up in the Bogside including anti-internment protests, bombs and bullets, bricks and baton rounds. She referred to the British Army as the Brits and made no secret about her feelings towards them. Initially Norma felt uncomfortable. She had never really discussed the Troubles with anyone other than her family and community. But reading and discussing this book had made her question her own outlook on life and especially the way she had interpreted the Troubles. And all along there were two sides to the story. A sensitive boy like Joe Logan was bound to grasp at any straw to help him survive in a city devastated by shootings, bombings, house searches and daily harassment of the Catholic community, culminating in the killing of 13 innocent protesters in what was later referred to as Bloody Sunday.

Before she joined the book club, Norma tried not to think about what made the Catholic people turn up at Civil Rights marches, and protest against discrimination, gerrymandering and poor housing. She didn’t want to accept that the Catholic population had genuine grievances. Her views changed however when she considered things from Joe’s point-of-view, and when she climbed into Joe’s skin and walked around the Bogside in it. Joe was trapped, and in a way she was also trapped. Previously she had only seen one side of the story and she felt safe living inside this worldview. To step outside her own reality and enter a world where a young boy’s life was afflicted with problems in his home and mayhem on the streets helped her to gain a broader understanding of human nature. 

The poet Seamus Heaney referred to the ‘sectarian antagonism’ inherent in the North of Ireland: 

For if this was the country of community, it was also the realm of division. Like the rabbit pads that loop across grazing, and tunnel the soft growths under ripening com, the lines of sectarian antagonism and affiliation followed the boundaries of the land.    

In one of his poems, ‘The Other Side,’ he writes about a Protestant farmer who was a neighbour of the Heaney family.  The poem examines the two worlds that existed side-by-side and in the end, the neighbour is seen visiting the Heaney and waiting respectfully outside until the family have finished praying the Rosary.

Norma had learned the simple trick of considering things from another person’s point-of-view.