Guests of the Nation

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"Guests of the Nation" was a short story written by Frank O'Connor, portraying the execution of two Englishmen held captive by the Irish during the Irish Civil War. The story focuses on the psychology of the narrator, Bonaparte, and Noble, two young Irish Republican Army soldiers, at the moment they are forced to shoot the Englishmen they have been guarding. This is shown particularly notably in the final lines of the story, which describe the aftereffects on Bonaparte and Noble.

Noble says he saw everything ten times the size, as though there were nothing in the whole world but that little patch of bog with the two Englishmen stiffening into it, but with me it was as if the patch of bog where the Englishmen were was a million miles away, and even Noble and the old woman, mumbling behind me, and the birds and the bloody stars were all far away, and I was somehow very small and very lost and lonely like a child astray in the snow. And anything that happened me afterwards, I never felt the same about again.

The story's setting is about war, but the themes are obviously about duty and relationships.