When writing a paper on "one of the most significant and important modern Anglo-Irish authors," one would think an overview of the author's works would be included. In this paper ,this was not the case. This author clearly did not spend the time nor the effort to thoroughly research O'Flaherty. The author spends far too much time on insignificant events in O'Flaherty's life while leaving out such important aspects as his works, his middle age years, and his criticisms. Without these pieces of information, any sort given in the paper becomes superfluous, that is, without the results, why give the cause? This paper lacked in bringing is all together. S/he does very well in the early parts of O'Flaherty's life, but leaves out what is necessary, such as O'Flaherty's accomplishments as an author.
Simply listing the titles of all of O'Flaherty's books does not bring credit to them. For instance, Famine is considered one of the most significant historical novels about the Irish Potato Famine. This story, written in a trilogy with Land and Insurrection, is set on the Aran Islands. Using his "intimate knowledge of peasant life," O'Flaherty captures the incredible blight of the Irish peasant (Sheeran). But the author of this paper fails to even mention Famine.
Two aspects that this paper excelled were in the superb rehash of O'Flaherty's early years and the analysis of what caused O'Flaherty's "gloomy" outlook on life. The paper spends a lot of time with O'Flaherty's village and how life was there. The author does this well but then fails to carry it over into his novels. The paper doesn't show that since O'Flaherty lived in such poverty that he wrote more than a few novels simply to make money and that he fought tooth and nail for poverty rights of the Irish peasant. His works were based solely on the peasant class due to his upbringing. The author never mentions this.
Another topic that would seem to be important was why O'Flaherty didn't live in Ireland all his life. Due to the nature of the Ireland's Literary Voice class, that is, purely focusing on those authors and poets who lived in Ireland, it seems that would be a good analysis. Being that O'Flaherty and Joyce are considered to be the two most important Anglo-Irish writers, a comparison to Joyce would be appropriate. A reason for why O'Flaherty generally wrote in Gaelic would also be interesting. These small facts and analysis's would make this paper have much more substance.
What this paper is is a good beginning. It does a great job of giving the beginnings of O'Flaherty's life but then it doesn't go on from there. The paper falls short in it's relating his early life to his works. It doesn't analyze any part of his early works. It doesn't even mention them, save the chronology of works at the end. But this chronology can be found easily, there is no new information there. The author should go back and look at what s/he wrote. They would see that it needs a lot more work, and they should begin by reading more than the first few pages of Doyle and Sheenan. This paper has some promise, but generally falls short of its purpose, "The Life of Liam O'Flaherty."