from Part II - Social Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 June 2025
O’Casey was born into a Protestant family and his father worked as a clerk for the Irish Church Missions, an evangelical society that aimed to convert Catholics. This chapter argues that O’Casey radically reimagined Christianity, depicting characters that inadvertently travesty or re-enact Christianity’s meanings. More broadly, however, he treats the love of the divine as parallel to the love of freedom and country; rather than a strict code, such love is a life-affirming source of inspiration akin to art and poetry. O’Casey’s sophisticated understanding of the value of Christianity has little to do with sectarian differences or superstition, but inheres in caring actions, love of life, and a determination to feed the spirit along with the body.
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