1. Analyze exile in George Moore and Liam O’Flaherty’s short stories.

Exile or what is best known as the “Irish Diaspora” was a permanent issue in the history of Ireland mostly
during the 19th and 20th centuries. Due to famine, poverty and a brutal pressure exerted over population from
United Kingdom’s part, Irish people migrated in great masses to European countries and mainly to the East
coast of the United States.

This problem is well described in short stories written during the first half of the 20th century such as George
Moore’s “Home Sickness” (1903) and Liam O’Flaherty’s “Going into Exile” (1927). In these and other writings
of this period, the matter of migration is treated under several perspectives, but the most commonly used is
the one related to familiar attachment (or better said, forced detachment) and the loss of the sense of
belonging and place very well captured by these two authors.

Moore’s “Home Sickness” narrates the return of James Bryden to his native County Cork after 13 years
working in the Bowery in the slums of New York City because his doctor recommends him to stay in Ireland
a few months in order to recover his health. When Bryden arrives in Ireland, he experiments certain nostalgia
and joy at first, even he feels healthier little by little since the natural environment is good for him. But as the
time passes by, he realizes that the people there he once left behind does not really matter to him, perhaps
for that loss of the sense of place he suffered after 13 years abroad, when he migrated to the United States.
He even finds a suffocating atmosphere and a narrow-mindedness of those people as well as their absurd,
fervent and blind obedience to the Church and the traditionalist old-fashioned customs the local priest
imposes to the villagers. Bryden appears then as an Irish detached from his native country who prefers to
some extent the unhealthy and stressful American urban life, more modern and open-minded.

In turn, O’Flaherty’s story explains how the eldest son and daughter of the Feeney family, who are Irish
peasants from the Aran Islands –where O’Flaherty himself was born-, are about to leave their homeland to
go to Boston, to look for a way to improve their economic situation and their family and to escape from the
precariousness that Irish peasantry suffered. The party that the Feeneys are holding with food, dancing,
singing and laughing, reflects to the contrary a terrible feeling of sadness and melancholy, because they
contemplate the possibility of Michael and Mary not coming back home never again.

The historical context of Ireland before and after the War for Independence and the Irish Civil War was the
propitious climate for this massive exodus that started sooner with the Great Famine. Irish rural population
was immersed in a precarious situation since the 18th century, when this terrible famine occurred more or
less between 1845 to 1850 caused an internal crisis provoking that many people died of starvation and
illnesses because of the potato blight, while other large amounts of people who survived had to migrate to
Europe and to America.

Moreover, the internal situation caused by the conflict against United Kingdom’s sovereignty and its colonial
policies harshly applied over Ireland’s population and which was finished in 1923 after the Anglo-Irish War,
worsened this internal political and economic crisis and many more people continued to leave their
homeland in the 20th century.

These historical factors are indirectly addressed in these short stories mentioned, and this serves us to
connect both of them in terms of social and economic issues. So in “Home Sickness” and “Going into Exile”,
the main characters emigrate to improve their incomes and their future life, in Bryden’s case is clear at the
beginning and at the end of the story when after his disappointment in Ireland and his runaway from his own
past that now he rejects and abandoning his fiancé, he returns to the United States and sets up his own
business making a good profit. However, in the Feeney’s case the end of the story is open, and we cannot
know whether Michael and Mary become prosperous or not, nor even if they have the possibility to help
their family economically and if they finally return home either.

These circumstances lived in general terms by Irish emigrants as any others who had to abandon their home
countries in search for a better life, created a sense of uncertainty, frustration and melancholy for the sense

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of loss and not belonging to any place, very common on the other side in the past, and nowadays more got
over due to the advances and new technologies, which somehow, make the world seem more reachable and
distances shorter.

Likewise, to write about exile, these writers were familiarized with the fact of living outside Ireland, since
George Moore lived in France and England for a long time, and Liam O’Flaherty lived also in the United States
where he besides worked in the film industry with his cousin the famous film director John Ford.

Therefore, living abroad was not an unknown thing for them as was not either for other Irish writers like
James Joyce or later Edna O’Brien whom decided to “self-exile” themselves in order to develop their literary
skills and creativity and to escape from strict nationalism and religious hypocritical rules.

To conclude, it is convenient to highlight and to understand “Irish Diaspora” as a phenomenon integrated in

the recent history of Ireland, very well reflected as seen so far by Irish writers such as Moore and O’Flaherty
and others alluded before, and also to perceive the consequences good and bad within Ireland itself and
outside its frontiers. As a good consequence therefore, and to finish, we can mention for instance, that the
sometimes tragic and chaotic emigration of Irishmen and women, helped to spread Irish heritage, culture
and tradition outside “Mother Ireland”.

WORKS CITED:
Primary sources:
O’Connor, Frank. Classic Irish Short Stories. Oxford University Press, 1985. Oxford New York.

Secondary Sources:
Articles:
History.com Editors. The Irish in Boston: https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/the-irish-in-boston
Pelan, R. (1998). In Schellinger P., Hudson C. and Rijsberman M.(Eds.), George Moore 1852-1933 (Irish).
London: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers. Retrieved from https://search-proquest-
com.ezproxy.uned.es/docview/2137919843?accountid=14609