Character Analysis of Jeremiah Donovan in "Guests of the Nation"

Guests of the Nation displays vividly the gravity of the tragic dilemma in which O'Connor's characters are caught,between military duty and the ancient sancta of the moral law.In this paper,the author analyzes Jeremiah Donovan,the Irish commanding officer,who is seemingly unfriendly and cold-blooded because he delivers the news of the impending executions to Bonaparte,the innocent narrator and also one of the Irish guards and it is Donovan who fires the gun at the execution.To the exterior,he is a cold antagonist who mercilessly murdered the two English hostages.However,Donovan is a character of dualities and as a victim of the war,he is a character full of contradicts.In the interior,Donovan is a character tortured by the conflicts between what is natural and what is unnatural.