Consider how the ideas of liberation (in terms of labour and nation) are explored in The Plough and the Stars.

Sean O’Casey has long been feted as one of Irelands great literary playwrights. This has not always been the case however, as he endured severe criticism of his works particularly The Plough and the Stars, which sparked a riot when staged in the Abbey theatre in 1926, because of it’s “representation of the 1916 rebels as cowards principally motivated by vanity and self-love” (Pilkington 2001 P101).
Within this play, the final in a trilogy of plays, O’Casey explores many areas of interest to the people of Dublin at the time of its setting in around the Easter 1916 rising. Within the play certain themes are explored: poverty, religion, class, sex, morality, as well as the themes of nationhood and social identity. There is a recurring topic of the struggle for liberation, portrayed through the nationalistic Jack and of the labour struggle through the ‘learned’ Covey. This essay hopes to further explore the idea of liberation found within the play with emphasis on the nationalism and socialism themes. O’Casey began life in a Northside Dublin tenement, a last son of a large Protestant lower middle class Unionist family. O’Casey suffered much during his childhood years, particularly with his eyes, which stalled his learning process as he had to spend much time away from school. However he had a thirst for knowledge and taught himself to read by the age of thirteen. Like all the poor in Dublin at that time he had to leave school and find work at fourteen. He had a few unfortunate incidences in his working life as he tells us in his autobiography which appears to have influenced his later thoughts on the working man. He was fined two shillings by his employer after an incident at work, and refused to accept this unjust censure “- I have no fear of a fine next week for I refuse to be fined now; and what I am refusing today, I will refuse tomorrow.” (O’Casey 1963 p296) O’Casey believed in his rights as a working man and fought for them all his life.
He was also a fervent supporter of the nationalist cause and was general secretary of the Irish Citizen Army, but fell out with his fellow nationalist after a motion to merge with the mainly middle class Irish Volunteers (Newsinger 1977 p231).
This struggle between his first and foremost socialist leanings, with his nationalist inclination, was at the heart of his trilogy of plays and none more than ‘The Plough and the Stars’.
The characters in the play are all seeking some form of liberation, freedom from poverty, drudgery, and their current status. The Covey who may be based on O’Casey himself , is a loud socialist mouthing hollow socialist jargon (Moffat 1987 p29). It is The Covey who takes the Darwinian stance on the class struggle, as he says in ACT 1 “... there’s no such thing as an Irishman or an Englishman or a German or a Turk we’re all only human bein’s...” He is advocating the freedom of the working class and clashes constantly with Peter and Fluther who represent the old order. In ACT II He says “... What’s the use of freedom, if it’s not economic freedom” in a reaction to the Rhetoric of the speaker who is advocating freedom through bloodshed, and further in that Act he calls the speaker a Dope and says “There’s only one war worth havin’ : th’ war for th’ economic emancipation of the proletariat” O’Casey himself took the view expressed in the play by the Covey. He never appreciated that the proletariat can only win that war if it also fights battles against every kind of oppression, national, sexual or whatever—above all, that the Irish working class cannot liberate itself without overthrowing British rule. The Citizen Army did appreciate this, however imperfectly, and this is the fundamental reason that O’Casey holds them up as objects of ridicule. (Conroy 2004)
This is an indication of the conflicts that are apparent within the context of the play. The differing beliefs espoused by the various characters in the play, yet the common thread of their ongoing communal battles with poverty, religion, and the ruling class.
O’Casey named the play The Plough for specific reasons the ‘Plough and the Stars’ was the banner of the ICA. It was one of the workers’ movement’s most poetic flags. The plough represents the turning over of the soil of capitalist society by the class struggle, the patient work of planting the seeds of the future, but also the imperious need to harvest their fruits when they are ripe. As for the stars, they stand for the beauty and the loftiness of the goals and ideals of the workers’ movement. As The Covey states in ACT I “...It’s a flag that should only be used when we’re building the barricades to fight for a Workers Republic!” This was during the only conversation that Clitheroe and The Covey have about the current situation, when Jack remonstratively questions Covey’s opinion on the use of the flag, as he sees it as the symbol of the ICA, where his heart really lies. We never get a sense of what Jack Clitheroe thinks of the socialist movement as he does not express his viewpoint in the play. As Moffat (1987) puts it ‘ (he) seems to be more attracted to the pomp and glory of war than anything else: he rejoins the Citizen Army only after his promotion’. (Moffat 1987 p39) He does not seem to be as concerned with the liberation of the country as with his position. In ACT II he and his Citizen Army Colleagues have been whipped into fervour by the Speaker generally accepted to be Patrick Pearse. He states “Ireland is greater than a wife” and “Death for th’ Independence of Ireland” as they drink in uniform in a pub frequented by prostitutes. His empty and shallow rhetoric shows him for what he is, as O’Casey intended. This was after all someone promoted to commander by General Connolly. Yet this character is what O’Casey provides as the Nationalist leader, a minor figure in many ways in the play.
When the ‘Plough and the Stars’ was staged in 1926, riots broke out on the fourth night because of its portrayal of the 1916 heroes. O’Casey had purposefully parodied the rhetoric used by Pearse and other nationalists to invoke a fight by the ill prepared volunteers and the Citizen Army against the might of the British Army for lofty ideological reasons.
This is seen best in the progress of ACT II, where we see the juxtaposition of the appeals to manhood, sex as portrayed by Rosie and heroism as portrayed by the speeches of Pearse. This act is the heart of the play as we hear Pearse’s fiery inspirational war cries through a window calling his countrymen to arms. Where in the pub we see Rosie calling the men for more natural reasons. “The scene becomes layered: two different registers – the seedy and the civic, the everyday and the heroic – are compressed into one, as O’Casey formally draws a comparison between the wheedling of the harlot and the wheedling of the patriot, between the drunken lust for sex and the drunken lust for war and bloodshed”. (Domestico 2010)

Liberation through nationalism is treated as a secondary narrative and an ideological nirvana, whilst O’Casey uses fallacies and farce to demonstrate the nationalistic expression through his characters. The characters in the play are not one dimensional, indeed throughout the play the various cast members each in their own way call for liberation, in Nora’s case it is through her hoped for escape from the drudgery of tenement dwelling, in Jack’s case he believes his promotion will liberate him personally , in Fluther we see a man struggling with addiction and doubt about his ability to fight for his country, who feels liberated but not conflicted through the rhetoric of the leader and the guiles of Rosie. In the Covey, a representation of O’Casey himself, who sees liberation from poor working conditions as a precursor to any nationality liberation fight but essential for true freedom.