cards around a warm fireplace. Donovan seems jealous of the bond that has arisen among the four men, while the old lady actually seems to enjoy the presence of the four men in her home. Eventually, Donovan brings orders that the two Englishmen must be shot as a reprisal for the British army’s execution of some Irish prisoners it held. Donovan blunty explains the situation to Bonaparte:

"There were four of our lads shot this morning, one of them a boy of sixteen."

Later, he is even more blunt in addressing the two Englishmen:

"There were four of our fellows shot in Cork this morning and now you're to be shot as a reprisal."

Bonaparte and Noble are reluctant to participate in the killings, but in the end the executions occur, and Bonaparte and Noble are left with a heavy burden of guilt and sorrow.

In light of all the facts just presented, the various ironies of the story’s title are clear. Although the English live for a time almost as “guests” of their Irish captors, in the end the “guests” are executed because of the demands of war. Executing a “guest” is an enormously ironic act, since guests are usually expected to be treated with special courtesy and respect.

The word “nation” is also somewhat ironic in light of the story O’Connor presents.  In the final analysis, the story suggests that national distinctions are (or should be) far less important than the natural bonds that can develop between like-minded persons.  The Irishman Bonaparte actually has far more in common, temperamentally, with the Englishman Belcher than he does with either of the other two Irishmen, Noble or Donovan. In fact, neither of the Irishmen, Bonaparte and Noble, have much in common with their fellow Irishman, Donovan. Meanwhile, the Irishman Noble has much more in common, temperamentally, with the Englishman Hawkins than with either of his Irish comrades. Yet in the end national divisions win out over the natural bonds that bind the four friends together.

In all these ways, then, both major words of the title, “Guests of the Nation,” prove variously ironic.

Both the first and last words of the title of Frank O’Connor’s short story “Guests of the Nation” are extremely ironic. O’Connor’s story describes the highly unusual relationship that develops between two English soldiers (Belcher and Hawkins) who are being held as prisoners by two Irish soldiers (Bonaparte and Noble) during the Irish War for Independence. Because the Irish Republican Army is a guerrilla  force rather than an army with massive resources, the prisoners are being held inside the country cottage of an old Irish woman, whose name is never given. The other major figure in the work is an Irish officer named Jeremiah Donovan.

During the time that the English soldiers have been held as prisoners, they have actually struck up surprisingly friendly relations with their two Irish guards. Bonaparte has much in common with Belcher, and Noble has much in common with Hawkins, especially in terms of personalities. Bonaparte and Belcher are both quiet and reserved, while Hawkins and Noble love to argue with each other about religion. Ironically, their arguments make them even closer to one another than is true of Bonaparte and Belcher. The old woman, meanwhile, likes both of the Englishmen, but especially Belcher, who treats her with great courtesy, while Donovan seems really close to no one else in the story. In fact, he seems to resent the close relations that have developed between the prisoners and their guards.

The fact that the Englishmen are referred to in the title as “guests” is highly ironic on several levels. In the first place, they are technically enemies but are treated as guests by Noble, Bonaparte, and the old woman. Secondly, although they are technically enemies of the Irish, the Englishmen treat the Irish with the kind of friendship and fellowship one might ideally hope to receive from one’s guests. Finally, and most ironically of all, at one point the Irish guards are given orders by their superior officers (including Donovan) to execute Belcher and Hawkins – not because of anything Belcher and Hawkins have done, but because the English army has executed some Irish prisoners it has been holding. The executions of Belcher and Hawkins are partly ironic, then, because they have done nothing to deserve execution. And their executions are excruciatingly ironic because their own friends, Bonaparte and Noble, must participate in the deed. Even the names of Bonaparte and Noble are very ironic – just two of many touches of irony in this extraordinarily ironic story.

The word “Nation” is also ironic to some extent. Ultimately, it is not the Irish “nation” that executes Belcher and Hawkins; if that were the case, the deed would seem much more impersonal. Ultimately it is Bonarparte and Noble who must spend the rest of their lives troubled morally and/or spiritually by the act in which they have participated.  O’Connor’s story reminds us that it is never really “nations” who kill; rather, it is the individual soldiers who must represent their nations during times of war, often if ways that scar those soldiers, physically and/or mentally, for life.

In the famous final lines of the work, it is not the Irish nation that speaks; instead, it is the tormented Bonaparte:

And anything that ever happened me afterwards, I never felt the same about again.