Milkman centers on two basic forms of violence: sectarian conflict (coupled with political oppression) and gender-based violence. It’s notable, however, that Burns’ focus is not so much on the violence itself as it is on the traumatic effects of living in the constant shadow of violence; the majority of the novel is devoted not to milkman’s stalking per se, but rather to middle sister’s response to it, as well as to her explanations of how living in the environment she does has shaped that response.

Broadly speaking, then, middle sister suggests that living in the midst of a conflict like the Troubles places several incompatible demands on an individual. For example, the knowledge that any car could potentially be harboring a bomb encourages obsessive vigilance. On the other hand, a too scrupulous attention to one’s surroundings might result in learning something it’s dangerous to know. Similarly, it is unthinkable for those in middle sister’s community to “not have a view” (112) on the conflict and, more specifically, for that view not to be in support of the separatists; their sense of themselves as Irish Catholics is bound up in the separatist cause, and in purely practical terms, the paramilitaries are their only line of defense against state violence.