BIOGRAPHY
Frank O’Connor is the pseudonym of Michael Francis
O'Connor O'Donovan, he was born in September 17, 1903
in Cork, Ireland, only child of Michael O'Donovan, labourer and sometime
British army soldier, and Mary (‘Minnie’) O'Connor, domestic servant. He was
raised in an extremely chaotic and poor environment and his early life was
marked by his father's alcoholism, debt, and ill-treatment of his mother. His
childhood was shaped in part by his mother, who supplied much of the family's
income by cleaning houses, because his father was unable to keep steady
employment due to his drunkenness. O'Connor adored his mother and was bitterly
resentful of his father.
He has recounted the early years of his life in one of his best books, An
Only Child, a memoir published in1961 and continued his autobiography
in his book, My Father's Son, which was published in 1968,
posthumously. In his memoirs, he recalled his childhood as "those terrible
years” and admitted that he had never been able to forgive his father for his
abuse of himself and his mother.
He received little formal education in Saint Patrick’s School in Cork, but
his family's poverty forced him to leave school aged fourteen. As a child
he was taught briefly by Daniel Corkery (1878–1964), who was also a later
mentor and encouraged his learning Irish.
In 1918, he joined the First Brigade of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and
served in combat during the Irish War of Independence. He opposed the
Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 and joined the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Irish
Civil War, working in a small propaganda unit in Cork City. He was imprisoned
in the Gormanston camp between 1922 and 1923.
After this episode he turned against republicanism and political violence
generally. His experiences in the Irish War of Independence and the Irish Civil
War are reflected in The Big Fellow, his biography of Irish
revolutionary leader Michael Collins, published in 1937, and one of his
best-known short stories, Guests of the Nation (1931),
published in various forms during O'Connor's lifetime and included in Frank
O'Connor-Collected Stories, published in 1981.
Between 1924 and 1928, he taught Irish in country schools, worked as a
librarian in Wicklow, Cork, and continued to train himself for a writing
career. In these years he adopted pseudonym “Frank O’Connor” to keep his
position as a librarian and retain independence as a writer. He published
stories, reviews and translations in The Irish Statesman, Dublin Magazine,
The Tribune.
With Sean Hendrick, founded the Cork Drama League to stage continental
playwrights such as Chekhov and Ibsen. In 1928 he moved to Dublin to become
librarian of Pembroke Library in Ballsbridge.
From 1935 to 1939 he was a director of the Abbey Theatre and worked in close
contact with W.B. Yeats, its founder. Two plays were produced by him in the Abbey: In
the Train (1937) and Moses Rock (1938). He became
best known for his short stories publishing a several number of collections
from 1936.
In 1937, he made his first broadcast on Radio Eireann.
In 1939, he married Evelyn Bowen. They had a son and a daughter, and they
were divorced in 1953.
In 1941, he produced, The Statue's Daughter, at the Gate
Theatre and began working with the BBC in London. Many of his
stories, like Midnight Court, were later banned.
During World War II (1939 to 1945), he worked as a broadcaster for the British
Ministry of Information.
Following the war, in 1945, O’Connor began a twenty-yearlong association with
the American magazine The New Yorker. During this time, he had to readapt his
narrative style and innovate some techniques to appeal to his new reading
public.
At the age of 48, he became a teacher at Northwester University and Harvard.
In 1950, he accepted invitations to teach in the United States, and worked
as a visiting professor. In this country many of his short stories had been
published in The New Yorker and won great acclaim. He spent much of the
1950s in the United States.
He married, secondly in 1953 with Harriet Rich of Baltimore, whom he met while
lecturing at North-Western University (Evanston -Illinois-). They had one
daughter.
In 1961, he had a stroke while teaching at Stanford University and he returned
to Ireland. He died from a heart attack in Dublin, Ireland on 10 March 1966.
O'Connor's literary career, which lasted more than 40 years (1922-1966), was
very prolific. He published over two dozen volumes of varied literary types:
several plays in collaboration and alone, most of them produced at the Abbey
Theatre, where he was once a director; translations from the Irish such
as The Wild Bird's Nest (1932); verse such as Three
Old Brothers (1936); local travel writing such as Leinster,
Munster and Connaught (1950); criticism such as Mirror in the
Roadway (1956); novels such as The Saint and Mary Kate (1932); short
stories in several collections, including Crab Apple Jelly (1944);
and the autobiographical volumes An Only Child (1961)
and My Father's Son (1969). He also wrote about 300 known
pieces of journalism, including many reviews, as well as articles on social,
political, and cultural issues. He made about 175 radio and television
broadcasts in Ireland and Britain and a few in the United States.
Frank O'Connor Festival and Prize
Since 2000, The Munster Literature Centre in O'Connor's
hometown of Cork has run a festival dedicated to the short story form in
O'Connor's name: The Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award which is
awarded to the best short fiction collection published in English anywhere in
the world in the year preceding the festival. The prize is also opened to
translated works and in the event of a translation winning the prize is divided
equally between author and translator. The award is described as "the
richest prize for the short story form" and is one of the most valuable
literary prizes for any category of literature.
GUESTS OF THE NATION
Film Inspiration
Guests of the Nation has
been filmed several times. The first film was a silent one, directed in 1934 by
Denis Johnston and featuring Barry Fitzgerald and Cyril Cusack. The second
one, was the Neil Jordan’s award-winning film The Crying Game (1992)
which partially adapted the story for another period of Irish revolutionary
violence called de Troubles in the 1970s and 80s
Plot
Guests of the Nation is
about two Englishmen, Hawkins and Belcher, who are held prisoner by Bonaparte,
Donovan, and Noble, members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), somewhere in
Ireland, during the Irish War of Independence in the early 20th century.
The story is told by Bonaparte, who recalls his time guarding both prisoners.
Belcher and Hawkins live in an old woman's house with the two Irishmen, Noble
and Bonaparte, who are supposed to keep an eye on them. They all spend a lot of
time together arguing, playing cards, discussing politics and religion as if
they weren't part of the armed conflict that surrounds them. They have become
true comrades and friends.
Donovan, the third Irishman, is the officer in charge of the small Irish group,
and he is not so friendly with the Englishmen.
When Donovan informs Bonaparte that although Englishmen are prisoners, they are
also being held as hostages, so if the English shoot any of their Irish
prisoners, they are going to execute Hawkins and Belcher in revenge, Bonaparte
is surprised by this news, and he says that he is not comfortable with the idea
of killing them.
The next day, in the evening, while they are playing cards,
Donovan asks for the two prisoners, then he notifies them that four Irish
soldiers have been executed by de British, including a sixteen-year-old boy, so
they are going to be killed in retaliation. They cannot understand what happen
because they believe that a friend could never murder a friend they are all
friends. Hawkins even offers to leave the British Army and join the Irish, in
his opinion friendship is more important than a war. But Donovan ignores this
and shoots him. Later, Donovan tries to excuse his action by claiming that he’s
only doing his duty, but Belcher says that he is not agree with what duty
means, however he doesn’t blame them, and call them “good lads”. Then, Donovan
shoots Belcher and kills him, too.
After finishing their "duty" and burying the
prisoners, Noble and Bonaparte return to the woman's house very sad. Their
reactions to the traumatic experiences they have lived through are different.
As Noble and the old woman fall to their knees in prayer, Bonaparte goes
outside to look at the stars and listen to the birds, feeling far away from
everything and a great loneliness.
This interesting and cruel story shows that people from
different countries and with different views on life can be friends and live
together in peace. But when it happens in a time of war and everyone has to do
their duty, even if their hearts tell them otherwise, they should not put their
friendship before their obligations.
We can find several other topics in this story, apart from duty, war and
friendship, which are currently very present in our society, and which are
sometimes a source of conflict, such as national identity, home and family,
religion, spirituality and materialism.
QUESTIONS
Talk about the different characters
Belcher
‘Awkins
Noble
Bonaparte (the narrator)
Jeremiah Donovan
The woman
Historical context: What do you know about the
independence of Ireland?
1916 Rising
Bloody Sunday
Independence War
Civil War
What is the Stockholm syndrome?
What do you know about the Lima Syndrome?
What do the prisoners and guards do to pass away the
time?
Jeremiah has all the time his hands in his pockets.
What can this attitude suggest?
“Our lads didn’t dance foreign dances on principle”
(372, 9-10). What do you think of this kind of “boycott”? Do you know another
one that is curious or singular?
What is your opinion about “cursing and bad language”?
Why do you think some people use a lot of 4-letter words?
What is the limit of duty? Can duty be an excuse in
front of justice, or in front of your conscience?
They shot the two Englishmen as a retaliation for the
shooting of four Irishmen. What is the difference between justice and revenge?
Do you think it would have been a better solution to
accept the desertion of ‘Awkings?
How can the Irish Militia prove that they have shot
the prisoners if they bury them?
What do you think Bonaparte is going to do after this
experience? What would you do?
VOCABULARY
chum, produce, tray, stayed
put, took to, arskin, tunics, crochety, hatchet, parlatic, platoon, fleeced, comedown,
gulp, fust, strolled, spell, all and sundry, jest, arsk, bleedin', bumped off, put
the wind up, hinder, gibing, shifted, sidled, bog, houseen, telling her beads, crabbed
