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Maureen vidya, very insightful remarks at the end there about the boy having some knowledge of the priest that no one else had...i think you're on to something! remember the boy's description when he has his dream, "I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again I found it [the face of the priest] waiting for me." something to think about...on this... "what exactly is the implication of breaking the chalice ...... me thinks me missed the whole point here ...... moreover who is the 'boy' in fault here ....... experts , help !!! i seem to be sinking (:-))) ha!! i am laughing out loud!! :-)) the implication is up to you, but the chalice is very sacred to catholics -- it is the receptacle of the blood of jesus and metaphorically when we drink the blood [wine] we are drinking in this whole system of belief, joyce might have said drowning in it ;-). i don't know if you have ever seen the sacred heart picture but every one should really maybe do that -- it is iconography (even tho catholics would never admit that) :) of jesus, in which he stands holding his heart and the sacred heart of jesus hangs on a wall of every irish catholic home in ireland (frank mccourt, in his book, _angelas ahses_, humourizes this aspect of irish life when the mother and father, every time they move to a new home, poorer and poorer still, they hang onto that sacred heart picture!). "Why the sense of freedom ? Was the price paid by the boy this feeling of being comfined by the priest (which gives him this sense of lightness , freedom ........)" the sense of freedom puzzled me too when i first read sisters. i think it may have different levels of meaning. one is, clearly the priest [from reading the description of what he was teaching the boy] was training the boy for the priesthood, he was supposed to follow in his steps; so the boy is freed of that by his death? also, he may be freed of a teacher/pupil relationship that he knew on some level was unhealthy for him...i mean the priest was taking snuff constantly and was so grotesque based on the boy's descriptives through out the story, and the priest haunts the boy in his dreams. it is no wonder he felt free. :-) Again what was the meaning of the boy dreaming that the priest was 'confessing' to him ...... But I got the feeling that the boy knows something more about the > priest , his guilt than anyoneelse knew . Something that was left unsaid to the readers ." i have the same questions. what is the priest confessing to the boy? vidyal, you say you got the feeling the boy knew something the others didn't -- what specific passages gave you that impression? will you find them and then post them or think about them yourself and try to arrive at joyce's meaning? i think joyce always gives us the answers, we just have to locate them, like a puzzle. some thoughts: at some point the boy says, "I puzzled my head trying to find meaning in all of his [Cotter's] *unfinished sentences*." this is cool, because so are joyce's *readers*! also related to the above quote, consider this passage: "As I walked along in the sun, I remembered old Cotter's words and tried to remember what happened afterwards in the dream. [here, joyce is asking readers to do the same thing?] I remembered that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique fashion. [this brings to mind for me a few things, like the curtain that miraculously ripped down the center at the moment of jesus' death on the cross, the lamp again brings me back to the sacred heart photo; i am gonna see if i can find it on the net.] I felt that I had been very far away in some land where the customs were strange--in Persia, I thought....but I could not remember the end of the dream." notice the [....] is just like the unfinished sentences of all of the elders? also note the reference to the east again, as in araby. i don't know i am just grabbing at straws here. but vidya, will you think about my question to you? |
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