Gar O’Donnell, a man in his mid-twenties, prepares to leave the small town of Ballybeg, Ireland, where he’s spent his entire life. Gar is divided into two characters: Public Gar and Private Gar. Public is the Gar the other characters in the play see and speak to, whereas Private is Gar’s internal alter ego, whom only Public can hear and only the audience can see. The night before he’s set to fly to the United States to live with his aunt and uncle in Philadelphia, Public goes to his room and packs while having a conversation with Private. As Public prepares for his journey, Private speaks boisterously to him about how great his trip will be, celebrating the idea that Gar will become rich and successful in America. When Gar takes out an old suitcase and finds a newspaper clipping of his parents’ wedding announcement, Public and Private pause for a moment to consider it, thinking about Gar’s mother, Maire, who died three days after giving birth. Private thinks about what Madge—the housekeeper—has said about Gar’s mother, envisioning what the woman was like before her death. Before he can get too wrapped up in the memory, though, he suddenly cuts himself off by reciting an old speech, which begins, “It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles!” Having diverted himself, Gar begins to sing out loud, chiming, “Philadelphia, here I come.”
Later, Gar sits at the kitchen table with his father, S.B. As Madge comes in and out of the room, the two men barely speak, though Gar desperately wants his father to say something meaningful. Gar has spent his entire adult life working in the general store that S.B. runs, and though this means they spend every day in close proximity to one another, their relationship remains unaffectionate and strained. As S.B. periodically gives predictable and boring statements while sitting at the table, Private pleads with him to say something unpredictable. Because S.B. can’t hear him, though, he continues to say the things he always says at the end of each day. This thoroughly frustrates Private Gar, who suggests that he would reconsider leaving home if his father would only say one genuine sentence, something surprising that might indicate that he actually cares about whether or not Gar leaves home.
Gar’s stilted relationship with his father isn’t the only reason he has decided to leave. He also hopes to escape his memories about his relationship with a local woman named Kate. The details of their bond are still fresh in his mind, as he vividly remembers the night he and Kate went to her house to inform her parents of their plans to get married. When they arrived, her father, Senator Doogan, informed her that Francis King had returned to Ballybeg, and he told her to go speak to him in the kitchen. Leaving Gar and Senator Doogan alone, Kate ventured into the house in the hopes that Gar would ask her father for his blessing to marry her. However, as soon as Kate went into the next room, Senator Doogan started speaking to Gar about Francis, making it clear that he wanted Kate to marry the young man. Humiliated, Gar left the house before Kate could reenter the room. Shortly thereafter, the Doogans announced Kate’s engagement to Francis.
As the evening before Gar’s departure progresses, Master Boyle—one of Gar’s grade school teachers—pays the house a visit. Gar is aware that his mother dated Boyle before she started seeing S.B., and it’s quite obvious that Boyle never got over his feelings for her. In fact, Boyle is widely known as an alcoholic, and this is partly because he turned to drinking in the aftermath of his relationship with Maire. Bidding farewell to Gar, he advises him to never look back once he leaves Ireland, saying that he should try to be “one hundred per cent American.” He then gives Gar a collection of his own poems, a gesture that touches Gar. When he tells Gar that he’ll miss him, Gar begins to get choked up, and Private shouts at him to run into his room so that nobody will see him cry.
Lying on his bed, Gar thinks about his upcoming trip and remembers when his aunt Lizzie (his mother’s sister) visited Ballybeg last year. She and her husband, Con, have been living in Philadelphia for years, and though they lead a very happy existence, they’ve never been able to have children. This, Lizzie implied when she visited, is the only thing missing from their lives, which is why they wanted to come see Gar in Ballybeg. Lizzie is a fiercely unique and hilarious woman who is apparently very similar to Gar’s mother. Because of this, Gar relished his time with her when she was in Ireland, and decided to accept her offer to house him if he ever decided to come to the United States. Wooed by the idea of being in such close contact with someone similar to his mother, he made plans to fly to Philadelphia and work in a nearby hotel. Remembering the moment of this decision, Private criticizes him for making this sudden choice simply because of the fact that Lizzie and Con visited on the day of Kate and Francis King’s wedding, suggesting that Gar was particularly impressionable when Lizzie invited him to live with them. Not wanting to consider such things, Public Gar tries to drown out Private Gar—first by whistling “Philadelphia, Here I Come,” and then by quoting, “It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the Queen of France…”
Leaving his room, Gar decides to go to the pub to say goodbye to his friends Ned, Tom, and Joe. As he prepares to leave, Private tries to get Public to admit that he doesn’t really want to go to the United States, but Public ignores him. Shortly after leaving, he returns with his friends, who were already on their way to his house when he passed them on the road. Sitting down at the table and drinking beer, Ned—the leader of the group—boasts about how badly they’re going to beat the next team they play in soccer. As the conversation continues, Gar becomes increasingly annoyed by the fact that Ned and Tom are too busy talking about sports and women to acknowledge that this is his last night in town. Joe, for his part, keeps trying to bring the conversation back to Gar, but the other two young men sidestep his remarks. When Joe reminds them that Gar will soon be living in Philadelphia, Ned starts talking about Jimmy, another one of their soccer teammates who moved to the States. Reminding his friends how small Jimmy was, Ned launches into a story about going swimming in a collection of caves with Tom, Jimmy, and two women. He says that he and Tom decided to get in the water while Jimmy remained on the banks with the women. The next thing they knew, he claims, they saw Jimmy running naked and yelling for their help while the two women chased him.
As the group laughs, Private Gar internally reflects upon the fact that this story is inaccurate. In reality, Gar and Joe were also there that night, and all of the boys went swimming together, leaving the two women alone on the banks. When they got out, they passed the time by childishly wrestling one another, and then Ned decided it would be funny if they took off Jimmy’s pants. And though Jimmy was quite small, he successfully fended them off, at which point the five boys left the caves, leaving the women behind. Instead of pointing out the many inaccuracies of Ned’s story, though, Public Gar simply makes a comment about how their soccer team will probably do well the following week.
After sitting around for a while, Ned and Tom decide to go drinking at the local hotel, hoping to flirt with two women they saw in town earlier that day. Just before they leave, Ned turns around and gives Gar his belt as a goodbye present, awkwardly telling him to use its large buckle to fend off any attackers in America. He and Tom then set out for the hotel, leaving Joe to sit with Gar, who tells him to follow them. At first Joe insists upon staying to keep Gar company on his last night, but he soon decides that he’d rather be with the other two men, thinking that they might actually meet some women and have a good time. Just before he leaves, he makes a joke about how Madge should actually give them tea the next time they come, since she was the one to invite them for tea in the first place. As he says this, Gar realizes that his friends didn’t come to see him of their own accord, but came because Madge asked them to pay a visit before Gar’s departure.
Not long after the boys leave, Kate comes to say farewell to Gar. This catches him off guard, but he manages to invite her in and make small talk while Private inwardly voices his misgivings, excitements, and anxieties about their conversation. At one point, Kate says that Gar’s father will miss him, and this sets him off on a long rant about how he is glad to be leaving Ballybeg, since it’s nothing but a trap that keeps people from making any kind of progress in life. As he says this, Private pleads with him to stop, observing that these words are hurting Kate’s feelings. Nonetheless, Public Gar continues to babble on with these vehement words until Kate tells him she’d better go. When he returns from seeing her to the door, he stands distraught in the kitchen as Private gets lost in the memory of his relationship with Kate. Overwhelmed, Gar hisses at his father in the next room, imploring him to say something, though his voice isn’t loud enough for the old man to hear.
Later, Gar recalls one of his only memories of a time when he and his father were happy and emotionally connected to each other. Gar was a young boy, and he and S.B. were fishing in a rowboat. They weren’t saying anything, but it was clear they were both quite content, and S.B. even began to sing. Thinking about this in the middle of the night, Gar gets up and finds his father sitting at the table. S.B. was unable to sleep, so Gar works up his courage and asks him if he remembers that day in the rowboat, feeling as if this is his last chance to relate to his father. At first, S.B. doesn’t recall what Gar is talking about, but he slowly begins to piece the memory together. However, Gar is so embarrassed and upset by his father’s initial reaction that he appears unable to listen to anything else the old man says. Ending the conversation just as S.B. actually starts to come out of his shell, Gar rushes out of the room.
At this point, Madge enters. As she and S.B. talk about Gar’s imminent departure, he asks if she remembers how Gar used to dress up in a little sailor’s suit. Remembering his son’s childhood fondly, it becomes clear that he feels a great deal of affection toward the boy. Reminiscing in this way, he walks out of the kitchen, at which point Gar returns and speaks briefly with Madge before watching her leave, too, thinking about how he’ll remember this moment for the rest of his life. Once he’s alone, Private Gar asks, “God, Boy, why do you have to leave? Why? Why?” Public Gar simply says, “I don’t know.”
