The Moon Symbol Analysis

At one point in “Two Gallants,” Lenehan looks up at “the large faint moon circled with a double halo.” As the mention of the “halo” indicates, the moon symbolizes the pure, divine, and angelicin contrast to the world of exploitation, transactional relations, and lack of gallantry that Corley and Lenehan inhabit. Yet, while Lenehan often looks up to the moon––perhaps for a glimpse of something outside his own drab, despairing existence––the moon in the story is constantly obscured. A “grey web of twilight,” for instance, passes across the moon’s face while Lenehan looks on. At another time, the “pale disc of the moon” becomes “nearly veiled” as Lenehan looks on. The moon is always passing out of Lenehan’s vision. The moon in “Two Gallants,” then serves as a symbol of lost transcendence and divinity, and shows the fallen state of the two men—and of Ireland itself—as they wander through Dublin.