Irish conflicts and divisions - how are they dealt with in O'Connor's &quote;Guests of the Nation&quote;, Trevor's &quote;The Distant Past&quote; and Redmond's &quote;Our Fenian Dead&quote;?

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Frankfurt (Main) (Institut fur England- und Amerikastudien), course: Irish Short Stories from Joyce to the Present, language: English, abstract: Although being a rather small country, Ireland has a long and rich history, which includes many conflicts. One is the conflict with Ireland's neighbour England and another, related one concerns the relationship between Protestants and Catholics, a relationship which is still tense nowadays. These conflicts are subject of many short stories by Irish writers, and in this essay I am going to try to find out how these conflicts are dealt with in some of those stories. I have chosen three short stories by different Irish writers, namely Guests of the Nation by Frank O Connor, The Distant Past by William Trevor and Our Fenian Dead by Lucille Redmond. I will start by analysing these stories by themselves under the aspect of what the main conflict of the story is and how it is presented. Afterwards, I will compare these results in order to find out if any similarities in dealing with these conflicts exist and whether there are some main aspects or messages, which occur in all of them.