Sean O’Casey’s play personalizes and humanizes the social and political conflicts of early 20th-century Irish resistance to English domination. The diverse motivations of the characters reveal the wide range of attitudes both toward the Republican cause and to the sometimes violent strategies and tactics that the Irish Republic Army (IRA) used in this struggle. For some of the characters, commitment is deeply felt, while for others it is an empty posture deployed in service of other goals.

The tragic irony that O’Casey constructs is plausible in the romantic world of poetic idealists in particular and of young adults more generally. Caught up in the mystique of rebellion without clearly grasping the potentially lethal consequences, Tommy Owens promotes the idea that one of their set, Donal Davoren, is a “gunman,” a violent enforcer for the IRA. Donal, a romantic youth anxious to impress a woman he knows is out of his league, allows that mistaken impression to be perpetuated. Donal is no such thing: rather than an actual “gunman” he is, as he admits to himself, only the “shadow” of one. Minnie Powell's belief in this identity and desire to protect her friend, however, lead to consequences far more dire than even this imaginative youth could fathom. Her honest but misplaced effort ultimately kills her.

Much of the play’s effectiveness comes from the close confines of a single, low-rent rooming house where the characters live. Rather than show the larger social reality of Dublin, O’Casey emphasizes the drab material world that confines them, which helps the audience understand their desire to escape it. Regardless of their motivation—desire, idealism, peer pressure, or even just plain boredom—once people spin complex webs of illusion, it becomes difficult to return to the drab and mundane world. Sadly, O’Casey shows, the intrusion of reality is often far more sudden and harsh than they had anticipated, and the innocent are the ones who get caught in that web.