In the context of the appalling inter-communal violence and killings of Northern Ireland during the 1970s, Seamus Deane felt dismayed by those who found parallels between that situation and O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy. For Deane, O’Casey’s most famous works subject political ideologies to hostile scrutiny, whilst offering a form of sentimental humanism as the norm of the ‘ordinary’ people. This chapter examines how the views that Deane expressed about O’Casey fitted with Deane’s broader thinking about politics and society, and shows how Deane provided a telling critique that proved influential for O’Casey’s reputation, as well as for Irish literary and cultural studies more widely.