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Zarqa Javed At first reading, Joyce's first short story and the one which lead him to the idea of compiling a collection of stories mirroring Dublin life, "The Sisters", appears to be a small vignette into the minds-eye of a boy responding to the death of his priest and supposed mentor. We witness the boy's suspicion of the priest's death, his (slightly paranoid) efforts to conceal a true response on learning of the actual death, his private visitation on the priest's home, and finally his presence at the funeral. We eavesdrop, as the boy does, on the incomplete, hesitation-filled comments of those who knew the priest. The priest's character forms through testimony of different witnesses. And it is through this testimony, particularly of the sisters at the funeral, that we learn that there was something fishy in the actions of the old, paralyzed, and seemingly demented priest. What intrigues us and keeps us guessing after reading is what exactly was the nature of the relationship between the boy and the priest? Mr Cotter seems to think that the relationship was a little needless and perhaps too serious, that a boy should "run about and play with young lads his own age and not be..." The boy's uncle agrees by denigrating the boy as being "Rosicrucian"---"a member of a society claiming to be well versed in the secrets of nature." He's implying that the boy was going after knowledge that was out of his reach and perhaps even sinful and unhealthy to go after. Throughout the story we are confronted with incomplete thoughts, *something* remains perpetually unspoken. And our curiousity is peaked further by the boy remarking in his reverie after learning of the priest's death that he finds himself "smiling feebly, as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin." Joyce builds meaning in this story by introducing words, precise short quick words denoting exact meaning---such is the case with "simoniac" which is a small word connoting a reference to the "Samaritan sorcerer rebuked by Peter for offering money to purchase the power of giving the Holy Ghost," or in general terms, "the buying or selling of a church office or ecclesiastical preferment." (Webster's Third Dictionary) So we are told that the priest (rather, his dead, grey face) suffers from committing the sin of simony. But what was bought and what was sold? The boy bought knowledge, inside information on the workings of the church, but what did he have to pay for it? Or was it the priest buying something? Richard Ellmann in his biography of Joyce says of The Sisters: "the priest transmitting corruption to the susceptible boy unhealthily remains an intimation, to be contested with the invulnerability of the two well-formed sisters and their mixture of malapropism (misapplication of a word or phrase) and acuteness." Just why is this story titled after two characters that are introduced only towards the end and one of whom (Nannie) does not even speak? Its because the sisters are the ones who lived with the priest, knew his secrets, knew him well enough to call him by his first name. Their insight is the direct rival to the lack of insight of the boy (and we readers) as to what the priest was really about, what he was sick of, how his sickness was manifest. Joyce uses the word "truculent" twice. Both times the priest's dead face is described as this picture of wildness, fierceness, cruelity, deadly destructiveness. His chalice is "idle" but his face is "copious,..grey and massive" and most significantly "truculent." The boy himself is saddened by the death but seemingly only in a superficial way. He says "I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood." In fact he's seemingly freed by the event---"I felt annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom." He's annoyed because to feel relief after a death is certainly a sin.....especially since the priest had given him so much. But obviously he had taken something as well. Again, what price did the boy have to pay for his education? It is a question which never is answered. The story ends abruptly. We are left guessing. And in the light of this story being the first one in Dubliners, Joyce has done quite a job of peaking our interest in what follows, hinting at themes he considers important and is sure to explore in later works. The epiphanies reached in this work are "bald and underplayed", an arrid (and thus appetizing) precursor to the lyrical ones he will reach in later works. |
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