The Sisters (The Dubliners)

The Sisters

Questions to ask: Why is it called “The Sisters”? The boy does not meet the two sisters until later in the story.

He had often said to me: “I am not long for this world,” and I had thought his words idle.

Idle words= empty words

-it shows how the boy does not believe everything the priest says

-questioning/self-awareness

Terms:

Simony: using faith to make money

Gnomon: absence of something

The whole story resembles a gnomon. Like the incomplete shape, we still can make the connection that it is in fact a parallelogram. Throughout the story there are many things left unsaid but we can probably guess what happened. (eg. The weird relationship with the boy, the priest going nuts)

-Joyce purposely leaves things out (incomplete dialogue for example- words left unsaid)

-The absence is important

-Older Cotter is portrayed as unsympathetic but his words may be the harsh truth.

-It is not seen through an eight-year olds’ eyes, but rather an adult remembering. He is no longer innocent

-There is a lot of shifting between the 8 year old perspective and the adult’s

Was there something between the priest and the boy?

-The boy feels freedom at the priest’s death

-Perhaps the reason why the boy was angry at Old Cotter for speaking badly about the priest is because he is supressing the bad things he have experienced (past victim). With Old Cotter mentioning the things he tried to forget, he would naturally get defensive and angry.

Pg. 9 = In the dream, the priest is confessing to the boy

-perhaps the priest has done something wrong (reversal of roles, instead of the priest hearing the confession, the boy does)

-not quite a saint

-contrast of the advertisement of death to the sunny part of street with theatrical advertisements. (Hollow, acting, not realà like the priest)

-Empty chalice=empty shell

-Cup=love àempty

-Breaks chalice= broke the promise with God?

Eucharist= cracker and sherry

-Refuses cracker= refusing the teachings of Communion?

-Empty Fireplace= loss of life/spirit (dead in a spiritual sense- gateway to hell)

-The sisters are uneducated yet they speak “shrewdly”

“We crossed ourselves and came away.”

=crossed= purposes or sacrifice

-they cannot question faith, they try to find blame in something else – accountability of the church (did not believe the bad things the church/priests did)

“But still…They say it was the boy's fault.”

-It was the boy’s fault/ Perhaps it was the boy that “tempted” him resulting in the breaking of the chalice.

“His face was very truculent”

-Truculent= defiantàbut he’s dead.

Epiphany:

-Boy realizes the priest is not that much of a saint, in seeing that he sees that the priest is mere a person of shortcoming which sets him (the boy) free.

MY ORIGINAL CAT SCRATCH NOTES:

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