|
|
|
|
|
Maureen what an excellent analysis chandra! and i am with you on it and i must apologize for writing from memory last nite, some of my details were off. i think that the priest had turned away from the church too, and, the people, rather than considering this a rational, thoughtful act, decided he had become 'queer' or odd, or had 'lost it,' in some sense. for a priest to turn away from the church is so unthinkable to these catholic devotees (the priest is the pride of the community, the druid so to speak, and all parents want their children, esp. their boys, to become 'men of the cloth' -- my mother used to pray for that every night of the week when we would say prayers before bed! :-) ...that they can not even 'utter the words,' nor consider their possibility as reasonable, sane, respectable or even just ... honest. :) one of the things i really like about this story is how joyce displays a kind of 'inability to recognize or consider something *base*' on the parts of the people; at the same time, he shows the various hypocrisies surrounding all of them, and thus surrounding this story and thus, the culture -- the priest was living a facade; the men talk about making the boy a real man, they even say, "Let him learn to *box* his corner," play with kids his own age, not spend too much time with a man "like that" [every time i read this i get the feeling that the men feel that the priest had some kind of effeminate quality, or that they fear he was homosexual]; the women are 'full of it' basically -- note how eliza mourns and wales over her brother james [also note that she is "miss flynn", not mrs.] and then quickly reverts to detailing all of the pains and nuicances she had to 'struggle' thru in preparing for his funeral! they keep describing his death as 'beautiful' and him as looking 'beautiful', it is so exaggerated as to be absurd (and dishonest), but then the boy's description of his dead teacher is altogether ugly, horrid, almost frightening in fact. so yes, joyce gets at the small mindedness of people here as well as his belief that the church, as a frame around ireland, makes everything inside that frame hypocritical. :-) maybe true, maybe not true, but i do think that is joyce's implication in _the sisters_. :-)
ruth bushi
well, after missing a couple of days at my computer, it seems most of the issues have been covered, esp in Chandra's tour de force! All I can add, in affirmation of this reading, is a point I read recently in a critique of the story: the title of the story itself, concerning characters that seem pretty minor in the story. The author pointed out that the social background Joyce paints for them highlights the necessity of a brother in the Church; that his motives were never truly spirirtual, but something he clawed to through the catechism and other rules because it was expected of him. As you've already pointed out, in the breaking of the empty chalice is confirmation of the 'emptiness' of his own spirituality. So, sorry if this has already been pointed out...I move on to the other postings... BTW, any thoughts, anyone, on the priest's paralysis as the theme of Dubliners? |
|
|
|
|
|