The next day, the boy says, “I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death.” That night, the young boy has a troubling dream in which Father Flynn - or “it,” as the boy thinks of him in the dream - visits and tries hard to confess something.

The narrator’s uncle mutters his agreement with this disapproval, for whatever reason. The narrator’s uncle tells Old Cotter about the narrator’s friendship with the priest, and Old Cotter is disapproving, calling Father Flynn a “peculiar case.” The aunt doesn’t know how anyone can criticize the priest and asks just what Old Cotter means. He arrives home, and a family friend named Old Cotter is there telling the narrator’s aunt and uncle that the priest has died. And yet, for all the mysticism suggested by that, the narrator learns of the priest’s death in a much more mundane manner. It’s an ominous tone, as we walk with him at night, looking in dark windows for death, the silent observer he will be throughout the story. Instead, he passes the home each night, watching for the light from two candles that will indicate the priest has died. When he thinks of the paralysis, he says, “It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.” Perhaps he feels guilty for his fascination, because he never does actually go visit his old friend in his last days. Inside the boy is a mixture of fear and further curiosity. The boy and the priest have been friends for some time, the priest teaching him - maybe in an effort to gain an apprentice - all about the religious rites and symbols, and the boy has always been fascinated. He’s had several strokes, the last one leaving him at least slightly paralyzed:Įvery night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. When the story begins, he tells us his friend, the Catholic Priest, Father Flynn, is about to die. I can’t find any indication of his true age, but he seems like an early adolescent. We rely on what isn’t said, on rumor, on mood, to explore the story which is simply presented to us. Much of the helpful framework, which was included when the story was originally published, is not there. Obviously, Joyce continued to write them. The journal had approached Joyce, who was then only 22 years old. There, Joyce published three stories in a series called Dubliners, but then complaints caused the paper to stop publishing them. This story was originally published in The Irish Homestead Journal on Aug(under the pseudonyn Stephen Deadulus).

Click here for the Dubliners overview post and for links to reviews of the other stories. “The Sisters” is the first story in James Joyce’s Dubliners.

The sisters dubliners