Redmond Barry, Irishman

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, and I just finished a revisit of this film, somehow also coincidental with hearing again the following quote:

“To be Irish is to know that in the end the world will break your heart.”

― Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Putting aside, since it is not my point, how much that is true of everyone, or to an extent true of people in general, it made me think about the character of Redmond Barry.

First of all some might say he did not have a heart, which is patently absurd. Of course he did. He loved his son, his mother, Captain Grogan, etc... But let's move beyond that.

It is fair to say Redmond Barry did not have a reflective, certainly not melancholy, nature. He believed that application of his efforts would achieve the goals he sought, and to an extent the world rewarded that view. But in the end, as the quote recites?

The film ends before we actually see Barry in exile, living on a relatively meager allowance, and minus one leg. And minus his wife, his only son dead. Did the world break his heart? Probably.

But did he know it, and in that connection to what extent are we to view Barry's Irishness as central to his character?

And why did Thackeray set his novel's first third in Ireland, and his main character as from there? What is the relevance of such things as Bullingdon's virtually racist prejudicial remarks?