A Bleak and Broken Friendship
Executing a captive enemy who is also a friend can be a scar on one’s humanity.
Frank O’Connor’s “Guests of a Nation” uses imagery and descriptive language to tell the heartbreaking tale of two captives’ execution. Bonaparte and Noble are members of the Irish Republican Army during the Irish War of Independence. An unlikely bond is formed between the Irish Soldiers and two English captives, Belcher and Hawkins. However, friendship is threatened when reality of the war strikes the men after discovering a possible execution for Hawkins and Belcher. O’Connor’s “Guests of a Nation” and Ivan Shishkin’s “In the Wild North” clearly and effectively portray Bonaparte’s bleak, indifferent outlook on life during the process of Hawkins’ and Belcher’s execution.
Bonaparte begins to experience the shuddering and indifferent feeling as he starts
killing the two captive soldiers. He understands that there is no other way, yet he wishes this didn't have to happen. “I was hoping that something would happen; that they'd run for it or that Noble would take over the responsibility from me. I had the feeling that it was worse on Noble than on me.” (O'Connor 23) This feeling begins to set inside him as they begin killing the prisoners. Bonaparte exhibits this cold feeling as seen in the snow-covered tree in “In the Wild North.” Bonaparte is in shock and disturbance when he shoots Hawkins. “Belcher, who was fumbling a bit awkwardly with the handkerchiefs, came out with a laugh as he heard the shot. It was the first time I had heard him laugh and it sent a shudder down my back; it sounded so unnatural.”(O'Connor 25) Bonaparte begins to feel the chills and shudder that comes with killing Hawkins. This cold and uninviting feeling is portrayed in the cold winter seen in “In the Wild North. The painting features a tree on top of a mountain, far from civilization, covered in snow in what seems to be winter. Bonaparte begins to understand this cold feeling even more as he goes through with the execution.
Bonaparte reaches farther into a darker place as he begins to fully understand the
absence of the two captives. “It was an extraordinary thing, but in those few minutes Belcher said more than in all the weeks before... We stood around like fools now that he couldn't see us any longer.” (O’Connor 25) You can see here Bonaparte starts to realize how they will be more isolated because of this. In “In the Wild North” this one tree that sits atop the mountain stands alone and is distant from everything as is Bonaparte currently. Clearly we see how bleak and barren the story starts to feel as the executions begins. “...than all the rest because we had to carry them to the grave. It was all mad lonely with nothing but a patch of lantern-light between ourselves and the dark, and birds hooting and screeching all round, disturbed by the guns. ” This illustrates this disturbing and frigid feeling that Bonaparte experiences during this execution; the same cold and isolating feeling that “In the Wild North conveys. Eventually, Bonaparte completely regrets ever being there.
We can see the death of the two prisoners of war fully settles into Bonaparte as he
moves into this cold and detached state.
“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 to me afterwards, I never felt the same about again.”(O’Connor 26)
This is the essential feeling of complete devastation and how distraught Bonaparte is. Just as this lonely tree that exists so far from everything else Bonaparte now puts himself in that position having killed those men. Bonaparte at this point is now this tree that sits far from all contact and seems to be disconnected from everything in this way that can't be reversed.
The bleak and touching tale of the unlikely bond between two peoples who are
waging war broken by the reality of war. O’Connor elegantly makes us empathize and sympathize for the people and the events that unfold in this war. With the use of imagery and depictive language, it is utterly understood how hollow and shattered the characters in “Guests of a Nation” feel during the time of war. Through Ivan Shiskin’s “In the Wild North” and O’Connor’s “Guests of a Nation,” we are able to further comprehend the story in an art form and a literary form of work.
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