In Frank O'Connor's short story "Guests of the Nation," who is the real outsider and who is the real enemy?

The real “outsider” in “Guests of the Nation” is almost
certainly Jeremiah Donovan, the Irish officer who appears in the first paragraph of the story and
who then reappears (usually near the beginnings of new sections throughout the tale). Although
Donovan is an Irishman and should therefore presumably have a close relationship with his fellow
Irish soldiers, in fact he seems remote and distant from everyone else almost from the beginning,
and he becomes increasingly more distant – even belligerent – as the story develops. He seems
most attractive in the opening paragraph; thereafter, he becomes less and less attractive, both
to readers and to some of the other characters, including the narrator (Bonaparte) and Hawkins,
one of the two English captives. Significantly, Belcher, the English soldier who is perhaps the
most appealing character in the entire story, remains thoughtful in his relations with Donovan
until the very end of the tale, just as he has remained thoughtful and considerate in his
dealings with all the other characters. If there were anyone in the story with whom the awkward,
self-conscious Donovan might have struck up a friendship, it might have been Belcher. Instead,
Donovan remains an outsider to the very end and becomes more and more isolated as the tale
proceeds.

Donovan is associated with an increasing level of literal
and figurative darkness throughout the story. Each time he enters the tale, the tone and
atmosphere of the work become increasingly grim. Donovan seems to resent the close friendships
that have sprung up between the two Irish captors and their two English captives. He senses that
he is not respected by his Irish comrades, and the fact that they bond with men who should
nominally be their enemies makes his status as an outsider all the more apparent, to him and to
us. By the end of the tale, Donovan simply disappears. He is no longer relevant to the epiphanies
shared by Bonaparte and Noble. At this point, he becomes an “outsider” in the additional sense
that he is now outside the story itself and thus outside the consciousness of its readers.
Interestingly, “Frank O’Connor” was simply the pen name of the writer Michael O’Donovan. O’Connor
thus gives his own “real name” to one of the least attractive characters he ever created. It is
as if O’Connor wanted to imply that no one can ultimately or entirely separate himself or herself
from the kinds of flaws Donovan so clearly reveals.

If there is a
real “enemy” at all in this story, that “enemy” may be the kind of unthinking hatred between
nations that leads people to mistreat and even kill persons of other nationalities – persons who
in other circumstances could easily have been friends. Part of the point of O’Connor’s story
seems to be that we are too quick to treat each other as enemies and too unwilling or unable to
change our assessments when new facts arise. Yet O’Connor seems less interested in making
thematic points than in exploring a genuinely tragic situation. In that situation, friends must
kill friends because the latter have been designated as enemies, not because
they are foes in any genuine sense of the word. Ironically, in a story about war that is set in
wartime, real enemies seem difficult to identify.