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    A Study Guide for Frank O'Connor's "First Confession"
    A Study Guide for Frank O'Connor's "First Confession"
    A Study Guide for Frank O'Connor's "First Confession"
    Ebook32 pages22 minutes

    A Study Guide for Frank O'Connor's "First Confession"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Frank O'Connor's "First Confession," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535823357
    A Study Guide for Frank O'Connor's "First Confession"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Frank O'Connor's "First Confession" - Gale

      11

      First Confession

      Frank O'Connor

      1939

      Introduction

      First Confession, a comic short story by Irish writer Frank O'Connor, was first published in Harper's Bazaar in March 1939. An earlier version of the story, Repentance, was published in 1935, but the story was extensively revised for publication in 1939. O'Connor, as was his habit, made further minor revisions to the story for publication in his Collected Stories in 1946 and again for his collection Traveller's Samples in 1951. The 1951 version, representing O'Connor's final intentions, is the one usually reprinted, but the core of the story was written during the 1930s.

      Although the setting is unspecified, the story clearly takes place in Ireland, possibly Cork. The story is a first-person account, one that is in many respects autobiographical, of the experiences of Jackie, a precocious Catholic boy who has to make his first confession before he can receive his first Communion. Plagued by his irascible grandmother and his vindictive, treacherous sister Nora, Jackie tries to navigate his way through this rite of passage to a more mature understanding of spiritual matters and the role of religion in his life. O'Connor incorporates many elements of highly traditional Catholicism in a way that gently pokes fun at them while recognizing that religious belief is a matter to be taken seriously. At the core of the story is Jackie's confession to a priest that he had plotted to kill his grandmother, though readers know from the tone of the story that he would never have actually committed such a deed.

      Author Biography

      Frank O'Connor was the pseudonym of Michael O'Donovan. O'Connor, a prolific writer of short stories constructed around the details of Irish life, was born on September 17, 1903, in Cork, Ireland, where he grew up in poverty. His father, a day laborer, was frequently drunk and berated

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