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Zarqa Javed
21.3. 1999
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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