Peter Nardi

Eng 225
Dr. Beccy
3/19/23
Looking at all 6 maps and their different depictions of Ireland I’ve noticed that not any

of them look the same. All of them have their own unique shapes and borders to them If they

weren’t labeled, I would never know they are maps of the same place. Maps 1 and 3 are long

horizontally and the others go vertical. Map 1 is the most detailed but no other maps are

similar to it and map 3 looks like they were trying to shove as much stuff on the map as they

could. Maps 5 and 6 are the most similar out of any of them by shape but the features of rivers

and mountains and even towns/cities are in all different areas. These maps look like they didn’t

even try while making them just that they look at a reference map once for 5 minutes and they

had to recreate it based off memory. Maps 1 and 5 have a little drawing on them like sea

monsters and ships in the oceans that look like the kind of doodles you would draw on your

notes in class when you were bored. On map 5 only the major cities are depicted and the

drawings to represent are a collection of buildings. Almost all the maps have abundance of

pictures of mountains and trees to represent the unique landscape of Ireland. They also depict

all the rivers flowing in Ireland but not one is going in the same direction. I want to give these

map makers credit for trying their best making these maps to best the of their capability with

the lack of technology during the time but the inconsistent borders, features, names, locations,

and shapes of all of them makes it impossible to believe that they really tried. The play

Translation does help reinforce my idea that they weren’t really trying to make the accurate

depictions. Since in the play we know there is and obvious understanding barrier between the

native people and British soldiers and surveyors making the maps and translating the language

you can see this when Owen and Yolland are translating names to each other and Yolland
Peter Nardi
Eng 225
Dr. Beccy
3/19/23
struggles. So it makes sense why there is no consistency in the maps because there aren’t a lot

of direct translation between the languages so there can be different interpretations of

everything. In conclusion as represented in the play where we see the barrier between

language and understanding of culture can be shown to be true by looking at these maps as a

direct issue in the process of the British coming over and taking over Ireland and the conflicts

between the people and the soldiers.