Beginning of Essay
In , I found the embodiment of that Irish virtue and tragedy. remains one of the most obscure and controversial heroes in Irish history. A survivor of the disastrous 1916 Easter Rising, Collins forged the fragments of the revolutionary movement into a ruthless u ....

Middle of Essay
.... defending the General Post Office in the Easter Rising. It's the Irish equivalent of the Alamo, and the terrible beauty addressed in Yeats's poem "Easter 1916" can almost be glimpsed in the painstakingly re-created destruction, carnage, and valor. Wooed by Boland and won by Collins when his friend and rival travels to America with de Valera in search of support, she serves as a device to separate the two boys and inject feeling into passions that are largely theoretical. The character who most projects the burning, almost pathological patriotism that has fueled Irish nationalism to the present day is Alan Rickman's de Valera. His aquiline eyes buttre ....