Mat O’Connor Character Analysis

Mat O’Connor—a young, lazy man with prematurely grey hair—represents the sorry state of the Nationalist Party’s youngest generation. The story opens on him loafing in an armchair in the Committee Room on an evening when he should be out canvassing for his boss, the Nationalist candidate Richard Tierney. While other party men are out working the streets, O’Connor is hiding out from the bad weather by rolling cigarettes in front of the fire and complaining that his paycheck is late. At the beginning of the story, he dips one of Tierney’s campaign flyers—which he was supposed to be distributing to voters—into the fire to light his cigarette. As the fire symbolizes Ireland’s dying Nationalist spirit, lighting his cigarette with the fire while skipping out on work shows how the party men are indifferent to the actual values of Nationalism and are instead using politics for selfish ends. Predictably, then, while O’Connor wears Charles Stewart Parnell’s commemorative ivy leaf, he is an unconvincing and morally uncommitted Nationalist: he doesn’t work for the party’s goals, and he changes his opinions about politics and his coworkers easily, showing his spinelessness. Alongside the uselessness of Ireland’s elders (represented by Jack), the young but lazy O’Connor completes the image of an Ireland that is past its political prime and lacking in promise for the future. Even his physical description emphasizes this: as a young man, O’Connor has grey hair and a blotchy face, suggesting early decline.