Sean O\'Faolain Was an Irish Writer Who

Sean O'Faolain was an Irish writer who often used the relationship between society and individual characters to show his readers how the Irish struggled with adjusting its conservative past with a modern present. O'Faolain's stories do not leave the reader with the satisfaction that things will be better. His protagonists have all been shunned from society and experience all sorts of loss. O'Faolain shows how these characters overcome their realities through inventive ideas.

O'Faolain's Foreign Affairs, a collection of short stories, shows how the Irish, caught in a limited and culturally conservative environment, search for imaginative escape routes to a more fulfilling lifestyle. The characters in O'Foalain's book do not literally travel but instead, use their imaginative and daring sides to free themselves and think outside of the box.

In An Inside Outside Complex, Bertie Bolger, an antique dealer, is dissatisfied with his conservative and boring life. To satisfy his desire for a more fulfilling existence, he engages in voyeuristic acts, such as spying on a widowed dressmaker named Maisie.

Bolger falls in love with Maisie, marries her and leaves her. Later, he accepts her and commits to their life together. Maisie represents an alluring but sometimes confining familiarity, which he both fights and pursues.

Fugue," which is a story in Midsummer Night Madness tells a story about revolution in romantic tones, which shows a great deal of irony. A young Irish rebel flees through the mountains of West Cork from advancing "Black and Tans." Distant outlooks of the hills and valleys are set against the panic that the man feels as he is being chased.

The wind and fog are the man's escape, yet at times they keep him down. The man is actually running for his life in the story, as he is the enemy in this limited and culturally conservative environment, yet the story shows that he still finds escape, through whatever means he is able to.

For example, the man meets a young woman in a farmhouse, where he is hiding. His romantic relationship with this woman shows the reader that he longs for love and is truly lonely and afraid as he runs from his enemies. It shows the reader that although, at this point and time, freedom and love are impossible for this man, and so many others like him, there is always a dream beyond the actions.

O'Faolain's novel, Bird Alone also paints a picture of how the rebellious feel and respond to their situation. This book shows a correspondence between national insurrection against the political oppressor and personal rebellion against the moral repression of Ireland. This story is also set in Cork.

The main character, Corney Crone, escapes the traditional sexual oppression of his community when he impregnates his girlfriend, Elsie Sherlock, in his freethinking ways. She is shamed by her family and kills herself. Corney is left to grieve for her, to regret his vain gesture, and to live as a moral recluse in his own city. This novel shows how people were oppressed by their culture and fought against it to find more fulfillments in their lives.

In Up the Bare Stairs, O'Faolain's man character Francis Nugent, who is a very successful man, tells the story of his escape from the poor and discreet lives of his parents. Nugent remains troubled by old family scars, which he manages to rise above but cannot forget. This character is very typical of O'Faolain as he is one that seeks escape from the limitations and social norms of the past by seeking power.

The characters of The Heat of the Sun try to take imaginative possession of their lives by bringing their secret and repressed desires to bear upon present relationships and actions. In "Dividends," the narrator, Sean, takes a train from his present home in Dublin back to his hometown of Cork. His old friend Mel Meldrum, a savvy bachelor who runs a successful brokerage and is courting an attractive young woman, represents the new modern Cork in the story.

This modern Cork is contrasted against the repressed, antique Cork, mainly represented by Sean's old Aunt Anna Whelan, a retired housekeeper living in a tenement. Sean returns to assist her with her troubled economic affairs, for, after having withdrawn her shares from one of Meldrum's stocks.

Each of the characters in the story would like emotional dividends without the necessary debts to pay to age, poverty, loneliness, or uncertainty. Anna's ridiculous and grandiose notion of old age as an escape from the hard life reminds both of the male characters of their own modern-day compulsions and old desires that both stagnate and stimulate their present lives.