The Plough And The Stars And A Star Called Henry

Great Essays
The Easter Rising began on Easter Monday, 24th of April 1916, and lasted for six days. The Easter Rising was an insurrection against British rule in Ireland and took place in Ireland's capital city, Dublin. The Easter Rising of 1916 is believed to be the most compelling single event in modern Irish history. The number of plays, novels and poems centred around the Easter Rising are endless. For the purpose of this essay I will discuss how the Easter Rising is represented in both Sean O' Casey's play "The Plough and the Stars" and Roddy Doyle's novel "A Star Called Henry". In both "The Plough and the Stars" and "A Star called Henry", we will look at how Doyle and O'Casey represent the Rising by bringing in the "ordinary people" of Ireland and …show more content…
The play closely reviewed the tragic events of the Easter Rising of 1916. O’Casey used his poor upbringing in Dublin and his experiences with Irish Nationalism to write "The Plough and the Stars" and portray the 1916 Rising . "The Plough and the Stars" is set in Dublin tenements during 1916. O' Casey's play "The Plough on the Stars" centres around the hardships "ordinary people" faced during the Easter Rising. O'Casey points out that no matter how much violence was going on, none of it was helping people with on-going problems such as poverty, illness, and unhappiness. O'Casey successfully illustrates that from all the violence and hardship that was caused, nothing was done and nobody cared about Dublin's slum- dwellers. The first two acts of the play focus in on a period before the Easter Rising whilst the final acts take place during the rising amongst all the action. The play concentrates on a group of working-class Dubliners as they cope with the chaos that absorbs them during that period. Although O'Casey includes some humorous aspects and admirable characters, the overall picture illustrated is a grim, futile world that ordinary people were forced to embrace during the violent period of Irish history around 1916. Sean O' Casey's "The Plough and the Stars" turns the events of Ireland descending into chaos into a thought-provoking

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