Give Peace a Chance

“Give Peace a Chance” enters the novel as a peace slogan voiced at a party, where its hopeful language meets a world organized around armed checkpoints and political tension. Cushla Lavery’s suggestion that Gerry Devlin sing his own song turns the slogan into an invitation, but his response leaves that invitation hanging rather than showing it fulfilled.

A Journey Under Armed Scrutiny

Before the party, Gerry Devlin drives Cushla Lavery along the bottom of Antrim Road, where spaces left by the Belfast Blitz remain visible. An army checkpoint interrupts their journey. A soldier leans into the car and asks where they are going; Gerry says they are going to a party, and the soldier demands an address. The music playing in the car—a traditional air overlaid with drums and electric guitar—sounds to the soldier like a provocation. This encounter gives the later appeal to peace a charged setting: even music and an ordinary journey are subject to suspicion and armed scrutiny.

The Slogan at the Party

When Gerry returns to the party, somebody shouts Give Peace a Chance. Cushla responds by proposing that Gerry sing his own song about peace. The exchange shifts the phrase from a shouted slogan to a possible act of participation: rather than merely repeating a familiar appeal, Gerry might give it a voice of his own. The scene does not establish that he sings it. He asks what the others want to sing, while the narration observes that he speaks as if Cushla had not made her suggestion.

An Uncompleted Invitation

The contrast between the party’s call for peace and the checkpoint’s armed authority gives the phrase its immediate political weight, without resolving that contrast. Cushla offers a concrete response, but the conversation does not develop it into a performance. The expression therefore marks both the presence of a desire for peace and the limits of what this brief scene shows being done with it: the suggestion is made, but its reception and outcome remain uncertain.