The guide on the Kilmainham Gaol tour used three words to describe the old prison: segregation, surveillance, & seclusion. These three words reminded me of a documentary I watched called Solitary about solitary confinement in the modern prison system. Solitary confinement greatly impacts the physical, mental, and emotional stability of the confined prisoner. Imagine being locked in a small prison cell for hours, days, or even months–stuck inside the walls of the prison with no escape. The limitations of your physical body induces an overactive mind, constantly plagued with thoughts of the past and your looming execution. While I walked around the prison grounds, I could not help thinking of how these small cells and the seclusion of the prisoners’ bodies impacted their mental and emotional turmoil.

Where did the minds of the revolutionaries and poets wander in the confinement of their cells? Perhaps, they spent time thinking about the Easter Rising; could they justify their actions as moral and imperative for a free Ireland? Or did they revolt in vain? Would their families survive without them? Would there ever be a free Ireland? How would they face death and what would meet them on the other side? All of these questions, thoughts, and emotions spilling out of their minds and filling up the limited spaces of their secluded, segregated, and surveilled prison cells.

You can see from my picture that Sara and Jolie look very somber at the prospect of solitary confinement in the Kilmainham Gaol.