Sean O'Casey: Prelude to Playwriting

Extract

During his years in Ireland Sean O'Casey's development progressed by a series of rejections. He was born into an ugly, often hostile world, and was precluded from an ordinary education and normal social contacts by weak eyes. He therefore drew into himself, finding in books both a solace and a weapon. Armed with knowledge, he later turned angrily to face the society which had forced the misery and humiliation of poverty upon him, violently rejecting and rebelling against it. At first he identified his grievances with the woes of “poor oul’ Ireland”; but his experience as a laborer and unionist convinced him that the Nationalists, to whom he had given himself, wanted only to redeem Ireland for the middle class. Widened sympathies then led him to reject in turn the cause of “Irish Ireland,” and to embrace the ideals of socialism. But when compromise and mediocrity threatened these ideals, he scorned the Irish labor movement, denouncing its leaders as philistines, and cast his whole hope on the day when the workers, triumphant, would realize a richer life.