Ireland’s Decline Theme Analysis

Joyce once wrote that he set the stories of Dubliners in Dublin because he saw that city as being the center of a “paralysis” that he saw as afflicting all of Ireland. “Two Gallants” puts the paralysis and decline of Ireland on full display. One way the story makes this point is through an intensive use of symbolism—from the harp, to the street names, to the moon and colors that symbolize purity and the Catholic Church, to the fact that Lenehan’s path is basically just one big circle, so that for all his walking, he ends up where he started. Together, these symbols indicate both Ireland’s decline and the various forces behind that decline. The story also captures Ireland’s fall through the characters it portrays. First and foremost are Lenehan and Corley, who come from well-to-do backgrounds but who are—as petty conmen who avoid honest work and seek to manipulate women—morally, spiritually, and financially bankrupt. But Lenehan and Corley are not outliers. The story portrays all of Irish society as similarly fallen, as both the product of its failed citizens but also the cause of the citizens’ failure.

“Two Gallants” is suffused with symbolism, and all of it is used to both communicate the declined state of Ireland and the causes underlying that decline. Virtually every symbol in the story—and there are a lot of symbols in the story—is connected to Ireland’s decline. For instance, the harp, which is a traditional symbol of Ireland, is personified as a weary woman dishonored by her master and the people watching her being played. The moon, which functions as a symbol of purity or saintliness, continually gets obscured by clouds, implying the general loss of such purity in Ireland. Women function as a symbol for Ireland in the story as well, and those women are constantly being mistreated, objectified, betrayed, and even prostituted by Irish men. While not precisely symbols, even the streets that Lenehan and Curley walk on suggest and record Ireland’s historical decline under English colonial rule. From Rutland Square, which was named for a British lord, to George’s Street, on which a man flew a black flag with an uncrowned harp to protest British rule in 1849, the story’s locations are imbued with a history of English domination. Within this landscape of Ireland’s decline, it’s no surprise that Lenehan’s journey ends at the corner of Ely Place—a dead end.

The characters themselves and their behavior also attest to Ireland’s decline. The story implies that Corley and Lenehan were both born into upper-middle-class families, but that both have now fallen on hard times due to an interplay of national and personal failures. Such a decline is evident in the shift from Corley’s father, a police inspector, to Corley himself, who avoids honest work and scrapes together an income as a police informant. Lenehan’s way of speaking makes clear his “genteel” upbringing, and when he orders a meager meal of buttered peas and ginger beer, he is embarrassed enough by his fall that he tries to hide the way he speaks to better fit in. Meanwhile, Lenehan wishes for a settled life that itself seems a pale reflection of what his own youth must have been like, but he can’t even see a way to attain that bit of comfort or security.

Irish society, as portrayed in “Two Gallants,” is beset by a vicious circle: lacking self-rule or autonomy, it’s culture, economy, and institutions have declined. That decline has resulted in its citizens becoming thwarted hopeless, focused on what they can scrape for themselves from the scarcity of opportunities—and the citizens, thus reduced, fail their country in turn, offering Ireland no hope for renewal.