Julia Schwartz

April 29, 2004

The Sisters

            James Joyce’s story “The Sisters” from his collection of short stories, entitled Dubliners, is ironic upon the most basic principle that the main characters seem not to be a pair of sisters, as the title would insinuate, but instead a dying (and ultimately dead) priest and a young boy who worships him. The sisters to whom the title refers are the sisters Nannie and Eliza, who care for the old priest and tell the young boy and his aunt about the details of James’ death and his demise.

            The sisters say that James’ demise was because of a loss of confidence he underwent after a chalice broke in a church service at which he was officiating. They say that the fault of this incident was not the priests’, but one of the altar boys; however, it seems that this was the starting point for his unraveling.

            Still, though, this explanation is almost too simple. The reader, and the boy, begs for something more elaborate. Perhaps the secret lies in the confession the priest makes to the boy in his dream the night after Cotter tells him and his aunt and uncle that Father Flynn died. In this dream, the father begs for forgiveness for the sin of simony, which is the buying or selling of church offices or duties. So, then, the reader wonders how Father Flynn, who seemed to be a good-natured, kind, and generous Irish Catholic priest became involved with this crime that is punishable with excommunication, which, to a priest, would be the ultimate punishment.

            This sin is alluded to earlier in the story, when, in the first paragraph, the boy expresses his disconnected feelings to words like paralysis and simony. These words, which he cites with gnomon, are very important themes through the story; the priest is in a state of paralysis as the result of his third stroke. While a gnomon can be a physical object used for alignment of certain objects with the sun to determine the time of day, it is also representative of the holy belief of religion. Therefore, all three words tie in directly with the story.

            It seems that the priest did indeed commit a sin of simony, and was not only the bystander to the altar boy breaking the chalice. His unraveling, then, is a result of his guilt over his crime, and his feelings that he has violated the gnomon of his religion. Guilt often consumes a character, and clearly Father Flynn is one of the above.

            Oddly enough, when the boy introduces the word simony, he says that he “longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.” If the priest has committed simony, the boy is near him through his relations with the priest, and the boy ultimately does look upon its deadly work, as he sees the dead priest – dead as punishment for his crime.

            When or what exactly the crime of simony involved for Father Flynn is always a bit unclear. However, it seems that the aunt and uncle’s early visitor, Old Mr. Cotter, seems to know about the crime, judging from his disdainful treatment of the dead man and his disapproval of the boy’s relationship with the priest. Twice in the story the confessional is mentioned, once when the boy is recalling the discussions he had with the priest and his fascination with the duties of the confessional, and the second time when Eliza recounts Father Flynn’s seeming insanity as he sits in the confessional at the church, chuckling to himself shortly before his death. Perhaps the irony of his duties at the confessional and his unconfessed sin of simony drive Father Flynn to the point of insanity.

            Unfortunately, the mystique of the story is in the uncertainty surrounding Father Flynn. Clearly, he was guilty of some oddity or crime, and it seems most likely from the clues in “The Sisters” that it was the crime of simony that the priest committed and never confessed to. Joyce alludes to the ultimate punishment of God in this story, by showing that even though no one but he himself knew the explicit details of the crime, he was able to wreak ultimate vengeance on Father Flynn and unleash the ultimate punishment: three strokes that did not prompt a confession, and finally, death.