Some Irish writers` attempts to deal with political and cultural turbulence in the early twentieth-century allow readers to see why it was important for these writers to play a central role in forming a national identity. They used their art as an impetus for change, hoping that they would help end ambiguity among Irish concerning their place and purpose as a nation. My intention in this article is to show the connections between three Irish writers by establishing their investment in Christian confession as a vehicle for promoting a unified Ireland: J. M. Synge`s Playboy of the Western World, James Joyce`s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and W. B. Yeats`s Purgatory. Their investments in confession aesthetics illuminate the way in which each (Protestant or Catholic) uses Christianity to narrate and critique national identity formation. The writers dealt with in this paper argue for the importance of individuals and individual groups as part of the collective whole that compose the Irish culture.