Site Library Library of Rome

Joyce Vs. O'Conaire

James Joyce and Padraic O’Conaire are two Irish authors that developed their careers at
the beginning of the 20th century. The two, however, had very different careers. James Joyce
was born in Dublin in 1882 and by age 22 had already began work on the short stories found in
Dubliners. With works such as Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses he earned his fame and is today
recognized as one of the great European authors to come out of the 20th century. He died in 1941
in Zurich, Switzerland. Padraic O’Conaire, on the other hand, is a more obscure character, or
rare one, anyway. He was born in 1882, the same year as Joyce, in Galway. O’Conaire
immersed himself in Gaelic language and literature at an early age, even throughout an English-
controlled educational system. He published hoards of short stories and articles, a few plays,
and one novel, Exile. He was a Gaelic Leaguer, and served under Michael Collins in his struggle
for Irish independence. He died in 1928 in Dublin, after alcoholism had taken his health. This
study will compare and contrast two books from these authors while looking at social conditions
in Ireland at the time.
Joyce’s Dubliners and O’Conaire’s Exile were both completed around the same time and
they center on similar topics and commentary. Ireland was going through dramatic political,
cultural, and demographic changes during this time and both novels capture it. They can also be
considered as examples of realism in literature since they both present people and things as they
are in real life without idealization (Scribner-Bantam, 752).
In the 19th century, an Irish diaspora became very apparent. People were leaving Ireland
or, more accurately, escaping Ireland. It seemed that if you stayed in Ireland you would be
miserable, imprisoned, or dead. The Famine forced these realities. It was starving the
population, killing off one-fifth the total. It accelerated the Irish masses into rising and the
mobilization of the Fenian movement for an independent Ireland. The English responded by
mobilizing its police and military forces, the likes of which imprisoned anybody thought
suspicious and if you were Irish you were thought suspicious. People left Ireland for America,
Australia, and England (strange enough). The fact was that England, especially Liverpool,
Manchester, and London, had job opportunities. London is exactly where O’Conaire’s Michael
from Exile goes. Michael exiles himself to London, away from his family and wife in Galway,
to earn some money. His visit goes terribly a-ry and he blames everyone but himself for his
misfortunes. So much misfortune happens to Michael in London that I can’t help but wonder if
O’Conaire was trying to say something to his Gaelic readers about leaving Ireland. O’Conaire
seemed to be a great advocate for preserving Gaelic culture. He must have been aware of the
diaspora that had been occurring and the threat it could have on Gaelic culture in Ireland. The
bad air that he paints around London could also have been used as propaganda against the
English to stir some nationalist sentiments, “These English are surely a curse sent to us by God
as punishment for our sins Look at what they turned Michael into ” Michael is constantly
desiring to be back living in Galway with his wife and maybe a few kids with a house up a hill
surrounded by the sprawling heather. There are some beautiful visions Michael has of Ireland
and specifically Galway. Galway is never depicted as London is: a cesspool. He does not get
home to stay, but that is his own doing. He is ashamed of himself in the end for his actions and
exiles himself for good.
Joyce’s characters are the opposite of exles, they are at home– forever. Its just as Sick
Boy beautifully illustrates: “...at one time, you’ve got it, and then you lose it, and its gone
forever. All walks of life...”(Boyle,’96); it’s the depression as old as time. Joyce tells us that
when “its gone forever” you are constantly wanting “it” back again. Always wanting what was
and not what is does not let the past die. Eugene O’Neill has said, “There is no present or future
in Ireland, only the past happening over and over again.” I think Joyce and O’Conaire would
agree with O’Neill and Sick Boy all the way. The returning of the past is shown in “The Dead”
in the form of Gabriel’s wife’s ex-love. The last sentence of the book is a powerful and beautiful
one that levels both worlds; living and dead, past and present:

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through he universe
And faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”
-from “The Dead”

This passage should be interpreted as a commentary about events in history. The past effects
interpretations of the present and the present can even effect interpretations of the past. Joyce
sees the two worlds as one in the same. Time is cyclical (a very druidic idea) and never ending,
as a Celtic knot motif. These thoughts must have been fresh on the minds of the Irish at and
around 1916. It was the year of yet another rising. Another failed rising, initially, but ultimately
a successful one due to the Irish seeing martyrs and not murderers in those men who died
fighting with Michael Collins (an effect that should really be attributed to the English responding
very badly by executing their prisoners very abruptly and against their word). Was Padraic
O’Conaire at that rising? He was certainly under Collins’ command at the time.
Michael’s story in Exile is also cyclical. Michael travels from Galway to London and
back and back to London again. There are smaller cycles of meetings between Michael and
other characters and places inside London. Michael’s thoughts are even cyclical as they shift
between questions of blame and questions of money. Michael’s past comes full circle when he
is murdered by the man who’s livelihood was destroyed by Michael’s revenge over a miserable
life that the man did not truly create for Michael.
The beginning of the 20th century also saw James Connolly’s and Jim Larkin’s struggles
for labor rights in Ireland. In Exile, O’Conaire has Michael join in with and encourage some
women workers in celebrating a London factory that is burning down. The leader of these
women is a big, red-haired woman with the face of a Roman emperor. This whole scene of a big
woman with red hair leading a “rebellion” in London with the context of a Roman’s face; its
very reminiscent of the Celtic queen, Boudicca, leading the Iceni tribe in rebellion against
Roman rule in Iron Age Britain. Exile is loaded with realism, but it does have it’s fantastical as
well.
Exile and Dubliners are works of realism; they present people and things just as they are
in real life, with few exceptions. Real-life people are not ideal and the world will exploit
people’s shortcomings. Both these books center around middle and lower classes and
subcultures of poverty, alcoholism, murder, and debauchery. These themes are truths of the
world and most people try to not recognize their existence, but they rear their ugly heads enough
still. Exile is loaded with examples, but are most obvious after the visit from Michael’s family
as misconceptions are blown wide-open. We learn Michael paranoia of his wife and family is
unfounded and completely a product of his own mind and likewise, his whole reason to be exiled
in London. His wife is not re-married and longed to hear from Michael (the old Michael, not
this new, twisted, jealous Michael). While living in a boarding house, Michael envied a man he
saw everyday from across the street. Michael thought this man had everything he wanted: an
adoring wife, kids, home, and job. When Michael storms out on his family, there is a crime
scene in the street. The envy of his life had brutally murdered his wife and baby with a sledge
hammer while in a drunken rage. Just a little trouble in paradise. Michael lands himself in an
old home of his: on the ground of a park in London. He gets discovered, sometime later,
murdered. His trusty pistol had not protected him from Yellow Man’s old knife.
Dubliners is not low on examples either. In “The Dead”, Gabriel can’t escape the past
and is forced with the realization that he may not even love his wife. The love his wife had
many years ago with a boy she new was truly love, not what he feels. Miss Ivors might tell him
to open up his heart to Ireland and the rest will follow. Gabriel gives a speech in the middle of
the story on the condition of Ireland: not good. Ireland’s youth may lack some staple Irish
qualities– qualities that may be beyond recalling save at dinner parties of a few old sisters. The
speech comes off as an ode to his hosting aunts and to Ireland’s past. Such sentiments can be
taken as a true stream of consciousness and a true representation of Ireland at the time. Some
other truths to be found in Dubliners are these: the mortality of Man, pedophiles do exist, people
will harm others for shear delight, once you leave home you can always go home (you just can’t
stay), and a roisin dubh is found, but never kept, be she from Dublin or Galway or every other
county in Ireland.
In conclusion, James Joyce and Padraic O’Conaire were very different men with different
careers and lives, but their works, Dubliners and Exile, were not all that different. Both were
written at the turn of the start of the 20th century. There was plenty of social and political unrest
and drama unfolding at the time and both books capture some of it at one point or another.
Joyce and O’Conaire both have similar sentiments for the passage of time and this shows in their
writing. Overall, Dubliners and Exile depict characters and places in a non-idealizing fashion
and should be counted as works of realism, even if Michael ran into Boudicca after another night
of drinking and pissing away his cash.

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