Themes
At the beginning of the story, before the characters are introduced, the cars speed through Inchicore, and the writer's own voice remarks that "through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its wealth and industry" and the Irish onlookers raise "the cheer of the gratefully oppressed".
Motor cars at the early 1900s were generally considered a luxury item, here serving as the symbol of the richer, wider world beyond the confines of backward Ireland. The protagonist Jimmy Doyle seeks to enter this wider cosmopolitan society and carve an equal place for himself, but this ends in failure: he finds himself out of his depth, becomes drunk and unable to keep track of the card game, and ends up losing heavily to the Englishman Routh whom he earlier challenged. The story can thus be seen as skeptical about the aspirations of Irish Nationalism to make an independent Ireland the equal of other countries.
Read more about this topic: After The Race
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)