STORY 17: "FIRST CONFESSION" BY FRANK O'CONNOR

Frank O’Connor, pseudonym of Michael O’Donovan, (born 1903, Cork, County Cork, Ireland—died March 10, 1966, Dublin), Irish playwright, novelist, and short-story writer who, as a critic and as a translator of Gaelic works from the 9th to the 20th century, served as an interpreter of Irish life and literature to the English-speaking world.

Raised in poverty, a childhood he recounted in An Only Child (1961), O’Connor received little formal education before going to work as a librarian in Cork and later in Dublin. As a young man, he was briefly imprisoned for his activities with the Irish Republican Army. O’Connor served as a director of the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, in the 1930s, collaborating on many of its productions. During World War II he was a broadcaster for the British Ministry of Information in London. He won popularity in the United States for his short stories, which appeared in The New Yorker magazine from 1945 to 1961, and he was a visiting professor at several American universities in the 1950s.

(https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frank-OConnor)

In First Confession by Frank O’Connor we have the theme of conflict, appearance, division, connection, fear, innocence and honesty. Taken from his Collected Stories collection the story is a memory piece and is narrated in the first person by a man called Jackie. What is interesting about the beginning of the story is that O’Connor may be exploring the theme of conflict and appearance. 

(http://sittingbee.com/first-confession-frank-oconnor/)