Guests of the Nation, by Frank O'Connor



Frank O'Connor at the Wikipedia

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


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