Saffron wrote:. The darkness I feel from the words "paralysis" and "gnomon" come from the association to death and the fear of death. I assumed Father Flynn was paralyzed by the stroke (his 3rd), so it is descriptive of his actual condition as well a building block of the story. When I looked up the word "gnomon" (it is the little triangle or shape that the light of the sun falls on to create the shadow on a sundial to point at the time) I immediately thought of a ghost pointing the way - a foreshadowing of the death and maybe the role of Father Flynn in the boys life. Let me just say, I am aware that I may have over thought this.

Great stuff, both of you. I don't know why, but it floors me to know about 'gnomon.' I thought it wasn't worth looking it up, but the fact that the sundial shadow has a name like that seems to have a significance even if I can't directly relate it to the story. On the boy's ambivalence about Father Flynn, I noted that after the priest's death, the boy says he felt a sense of freedom, but it was a sense that "annoyed" him, in keeping with an overall ambivalence.

I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death. I wondered at this for, as my uncle had said the night before, he had taught me a great deal. He had studied in the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to pronounce Latin properly. He had told me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of the different ceremonies of the Mass...

About the attitudes of Cotter and the uncle toward the priest, it might be that some men, especially, held an unfavorable view of the priesthood as a being too caught up in meaningless doctrine or speculation. Just because the Church was powerful in Ireland doesn't mean that it was beloved.

Now here is what I want to know:
1. I with Geo: What the heck does the dream mean?
2. What is the supposed simoniac sin that Father Flynn committed? Are there clues in the story?
3. Why did Joyce name the story "The Sisters", why, why, why? (The sisters express only pity and kindness toward their brother and imply that he has been wronged).

That's what I like, a person demanding to know something! Can I deliver? Uh, sorry. Not on 1 and 2, at least. The simplest explanation is that the boy dreams because the adults implied that Flynn had done something wrong, and the dream represents the boy's unsuccessful attempt to know what paralyzed priest had done. It's incongruous that the paralyzed priest can smile (and why would he be smiling?), but dreams don't make sense (contra Freud). And the boy smiles back at him, actually has a smile on his face, wanting to absolve the priest of his sin of simony. Who knows, maybe the theory Old cotter had does relate to why Flynn committed some specific impropriety, but the scene at the end with the sisters doesn't seem to support that. Damn this Joyce, why couldn't he make it easier for us? Did he know that there would be book clubs like this and he'd have to give them what they paid for? That brings me to the title. The only answer I have (weak) is that the sisters' lives were devoted to the care and maintenance of their brother, who unlike them had been able to attain a position of some prestige, whereas they remained poor and uneducated. So the story is not theirs, but the effect of the Irish social system fell most heavily on them. That's all I got.

But I am pleased to have picked up on some humor I'd missed. Imagine this story as a film, and there wouldn't be a way to avoid chuckling at such parts as:

"Father O'Rourke was in with him a Tuesday and anointed him and prepared him and all."

"He knew then?"

"He was quite resigned."

"He looks quite resigned," said my aunt.

"That's what the woman we had in to wash him said. She said he just looked as if he was asleep, he looked that peaceful and resigned. No one would think he'd make such a beautiful corpse."

"Yes, indeed," said my aunt.

and

"Ah, poor James!" said Eliza. "He was no great trouble to us. You wouldn't hear him in the house any more than now.

and

If we could only get one of them new-fangled carriages that makes no noise that Father O'Rourke told him about, them with the rheumatic wheels, for the day cheap--he said,

The word I'm coming back to that describes the story is "haunting." The old priest in the confessional, softly laughing to himself, juxtaposed with the scene in the sisters' sitting room, the coffin upstairs containing the "truculent"-looking priest, is kinda spooky, is definitely that way for the boy.

One comment I read on this story said that in the latter part of it, the boy withdraws. We had been prepared in the early going for his reflections on all of the action, but at the sister's house he is mostly silent. I don't agree with that view. In the presence of adults, and on such an occasion as the first death experienced, the boy says about as much as is natural. And he has the important observation at the very end:

She stopped suddenly as if to listen. I too listened; but there was no sound in the house: and I knew that the old priest was lying still in his coffin as we had seen him, solemn and truculent in death, an idle chalice on his breast.

I agree with geo that the creepy/weird quality of the story makes it fascinating and helps it be a very good one indeed.

DWill wrote: The only answer I have (weak) is that the sisters' lives were devoted to the care and maintenance of their brother, who unlike them had been able to attain a position of some prestige, whereas they remained poor and uneducated. So the story is not theirs, but the effect of the Irish social system fell most heavily on them. That's all I got.

Thank you, that does make sense. Not so weak, I think.

DWill wrote: But I am pleased to have picked up on some humor I'd missed. Imagine this story as a film....

Yes, I definately had a smile on my face reading over the passages you quoted.

DWill wrote: I agree with geo that the creepy/weird quality of the story makes it fascinating and helps it be a very good one indeed.

I love this story and have read it 3 times this go 'round. Creepy/weird does seem to be the type of short story I like best; which explains my liking Alice Munro. Speaking of her reminds me. I just worked with a family that is basically a living version of her story The Bear Came Over The Mountain, which was the basis for the movie Away From Her. When I first read that story (I know I am so far off track, I can't see land) I did not have the experience with people with dementia as I do now and the story did not seem wholly credible to me. It sure does now!

The boy knows that the priest is on the verge of death and yet he strolls by every night without going in to see him. He's curious but something is holding him back from actively visiting the priest to see if he is ok. Every night he did this he said to himself 'paralysis'.

I really can't see the direct tie in of Gnomon or Simony but I enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts. One deals with the natural world and the other with the buying and selling of divine favor. Neither holds religion in a favorable light and while one brings attention to man's attempt to understand nature, the other shows human weakness and hypocrisy. Could also mean ancient Greek Man/boy sexual relations and the giving of money to keep his mouth shut.

The boy wonders at his emotional detachment, at his pause, I think. He is paralysis and the priest is paralysis. Maybe you guys are right and the check of human knowledge and divine knowledge create some kind of stalemate that generates little or no good.

I'm reading this without any kind of perspective. What's worse - I have my own 2013 perspective that is going to twist what's there. Anyway, I find that the conversation between the boy and the old man "your friend is dead" is strange. The older folks don't really like the priest and find that there's something wrong with him. They give no respect to the dead priest.

When the boy is told the news of the priest's death he feels he needs to hide his concern and his concern is so muted that it seems to take little effort for him.

What Mr. Cotter says, how he cuts of his own sentence, and how the next story develops, it sure does leave an impression of a relationship that was too close for comfort and one that might have scarred the boy some.

Then, "when children see things like that..." See things like that? Not learn things like that. There is a visual instead of describing how certain ideas are past on.

Then all the ...I'm going to my happy place (christmas time) and here I am in a pleasant but vicious region with the priest waiting for him... why the lips were so moist with spittle.

"But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin." Sounds like the priest paid him not to tell anyone what he did. Why else describe him in this way?


The odour of the death got me a little. I had flashbacks of the Brothers Karamazov to be honest but the way in which the sentence was constructed made everyone think of a stinky corpse and then - bam - no, the flowers. To me this means that his whole outfit stunk - was a farce.

The questions asked by the priest to the little boy...is this a sin or is it ok? Will god think it's ok and that it's just human weakness???

Nothing is explicit. There is a lot that's here and a lot that there isn't. I think of the Nun by Diderot. How repressed these people are sexually. I think of Rabelais and his portrayal of the clergy, I think of Voltaire, De Sade, Boccaccio, Hugo, Eco... the list is long and these are only authors that I've read - all who write about the depravity of the church. If literature was the only thing left to history - no non-fiction books - then those who would read about us would know that our clergy was the devil.

So, this all points to a man who stroked it too much... 3 times to be exact and he probably had herpes.

geo wrote:And then in an early scene Old Cotter seems to be saying its unhealthy for the boy to spend so much time with the old priest, that that a young lad should "run about and play." I can't help but wonder if there are hints of sexual abuse. The narrator describes a scene where the old priest is doing something with his tongue:

"When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue lie upon his lower lip--a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well."

I can't quite make sense of the boy's weird dream when the priest seems to seek forgiveness from him, an inversion of the normal priestly role:

". . . I remembered that it (heavy grey face of the paralytic) had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin."

The tongue-lolling may be only the priest going through the motions of receiving communion and indeed, the priest seems to crave forgiveness as he nears the end of his life. At the end of the story, the two sisters are talking about Father Flynn's accidental breaking of a chalice, an offense that must have been taken serious (though somewhat lessened in this particular case because the chalice was empty). Even so, apparently Father Flynn was deeply disturbed by the incident.

Towards the end of his life, Father Flynn became increasingly nervous and agitated (perhaps in fear for his mortal soul), and one night when they find him in the church confessional by himself "wide awake and laughing-like softly to himself." And the final Irony of the story is the last line that this incident is when they thought "there was something wrong with him."

I do agree, there does seem to be a sort of sexual tension when the priest is discussed by any of the characters in the story. The ending is a little confusing, although I can't help but wonder if there's some sort of connection between the boy dreaming of the priest confessing and then the sisters bringing up how the priest was, "sitting up by himself in the dark in his confession-box, wide-awake and laughing-like softly to himself." This connection made me wonder if, firstly, the priest was truly alone in the confession-box, perhaps there was someone on the other side? Secondly, if the boy was trying to escape from some secret that the priest had told (or potentially did) to him.

When the sisters said, "and then his life was, you might say, crossed." I couldn't think of many other ways in which a priests life could be crossed, except for in sexual perversion.

The dream was another indicator of potential sexual abuse or tendencies, for, the boy didn't smile back in the dream until after he remembered that James Flynn was "paralyzed".

"But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin."

Perhaps he was absolving him for personal reasons? Or perhaps it is his subconscious trying to piece together sexually implied moments or things said by the priest that he didn't fully understand.

I also found it odd that the boy kept referring to James Flynn as an "it" or "the paralytic", rather than as a human being. Perhaps he used these terms to emotionally or mentally distance himself from the priest, for he appears to only use it when referring to him in his dream.

"It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something. I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again I found it waiting for me. It began to confess to me in a murmuring voice and I wondered why it smiled continually and why the lips were so moist with spittle."

It may be that the boy distances himself from the idea of James Flynn whenever he is forced to confront Flynn's sin. He may be scared of the truth. It isn't until the last sentence that he begins to call James Flynn a "him" or "his" or a "he" again. He continues to refer to him in a more personal manner again after he "absolve[d] the simoniac of his sin" at the end of his dream. Which could indicate his finally confronting this sexual sin and coming to terms with it, rather than avoiding or being afraid of it, perhaps due to his own lack of understanding of his own sexuality (depending on how young he actually is).

I did end up googling the significance of the chalice in the Catholic religion and came up with this,

"The chalice is a symbol of Holy Communion and the forgiveness of sin won by Christ's blood shed on the cross."

There is more, if you wish to read it at: http://www.catholic-saints.info/catholi ... symbol.htm

If the chalice is a symbol of God's forgiveness of our sins, then perhaps that is why the priest was so devastated by the chalice breaking. The sister's also mysteriously mention that the breaking of the chalice was somehow "...the boy's fault". At first, when I read this, I couldn't understand how it would be the boy's fault, no matter how many times I went over that sentence. However, in light of the idea of the priest having sexual perversions, it suddenly made sense to me that the chalice breaking could only be the boy's fault by inciting those previous passions and sins from the priest. I thought it was interesting that the boy didn't react to Eliza's comment of it being his fault, so it made me wonder if perhaps the boy was only vaguely aware of his affect on the priest (rather than it being outright abuse), thus explaining his mysterious thoughts and feelings toward the priest throughout the book. Perhaps he didn't understand his feelings of discomfort around the priest himself.

I think this entire story is a very gradual unraveling of this ultimate sin that the priest committed. Although, I can't figure out why James Joyce would title it "The Sisters".

Thanks for your interesting comment, LokiMon. The story is suffused in mystery, I think we all agree on that. Perhaps with the passage of time and the revelations of child abuse by priests, we're more likely to attribute that sin to Father Flynn. The story hints at simony as the sin, but it's never made clear what ecclesiastical privileges the priest tried to sell. I read the dream scene as indicating that there was an unusual closeness between the priest and the boy. It could have had a sexual component, as the priest appears to the boy as lascivious as well as ghoulish and creepy. The boy could also have been marked for holy orders by the priest, which would explain why he spent so much time tutoring the boy. so there is a weird reversal of roles in the dream, as the boy becomes the confessor.

I thought that the boy referred to by the sisters as causing the dropping of the chalice was probably the altar boy.

I don't know why Joyce chose "The Sisters" as the title, either. I had thought the reason could be that the sisters' lives were the most affected by having to kowtow to their brother the priest, while they remained poor and uneducated. But that's all I have.

Saffron wrote: Now here is what I want to know:
1. I with Geo: What the heck does the dream mean?
2. What is the supposed simoniac sin that Father Flynn committed? Are there clues in the story?
3. Why did Joyce name the story "The Sisters", why, why, why? (The sisters express only pity and kindness toward their brother and imply that he has been wronged).

I think 'the sisters' represent good, piety, innocence, kindness, helpfulness etc. and so stand in counterpoint to the shrouded mystery and possible evil-doing in which Father Flynn and the boy may be involved. This creates emotional tension in the story and so is central to the narrative and, in this way, it makes sense that the title is 'The Sisters'. And perhaps Joyce wants us to think about where 'good' is found ... and where 'salvation' is found by drawing attention to 'the sisters' where otherwise they might be considered minor characters?