Joyce and Maclaverty the Themes

Joyce and MacLaverty

The Themes of Sin and a Lack of Priestly Redemption in Joyce and MacLaverty

The absence of a clear vision of heaven on earth, the persistence of human fallibility and sin even in the lives of holy men, and the general pervasiveness of Roman Catholicism influence in society is evident both in the early Irish Catholic tales of the 20th Century author James Joyce and the contemporary Canadian Catholic author of Irish extraction Bernard MacLaverty. Both Joyce and MacLaverty, in their respective short stories, "The Sisters" and "The Beginnings of a Sin," suggest that contemporary, Catholic commonsensical societal and religious notions of what constitutes 'the moral' are profoundly different from the more complex morality that the main characters deploy in their daily lives.

Both "The Sisters" and "The Beginnings of Sin" contrast the perspective of a young boy before and after his encounter with a seemingly religious figure. At the end of both coming of age tales, the young male child emerges sadder but wiser from his encounter with a priest who is shown, over the course of the narrative, to be both human and fallible, in contrast to the young man's initial expectations of what a holy figure and representative of the Catholic Church should be like on earth. Thus, the dominant theme of both tales might be said to be a fall from grace.

In MacLaverty's "The Beginnings of a Sin," the young boy Colum begins the tale in his worldview of faith as a kind of young, pure, Catholic figure of innocence. The boy adores the parish priest Father Lynch. Solely to please Lynch, Colum has sold more raffle tickets for the church building fund than anyone else involved with the Church of his age group. He is done this not simply out of piety, but more importantly to make the man Colum admires so much proud that that the lad has gone above and beyond what is expected of him. The short story of James Joyce "The Sisters" likewise stresses the young central protagonist's struggle to please Father James Flynn during the man's life, and then comprehend the death of Father Flynn, a man whom the boy idolized and who was a confidant and educator of the young man, despite the urgings of adults that the boy ought to be runing about and playing with young lads of his own age.

In Joyce's tale, although naive in his morality, the narrator immediately strikes the reader are knowledgeable of Catholic doctrine for his young age, since Father Flynn had taught him extensively about numerous aspects of Catholic history, religion and literature. However, although this knowledge is evident in his actions both to the reader and to the other characters in the story and the boy's uncle refers to him as a Rosicrucian, or a member of a private organization of philosophy and learning whose purpose was to investigate the hidden secrets of nature and mysticism, Father Flynn did not really teach the boy about the true mysteries of death. Only real life experience, Joyce suggests, can educate the young man in the true mysteries of the end of life, embodied in the form of the priest at the priest's own wake. Likewise, Colum's financial strivings for the church do not really 'buy' the boy's salvation -- he only comes to understand sin when he sees this sin embodied in the afterhour, refrectory actions of the priest he trusted.

Thus although the young boys may seem like holy innocents, their religious admiration is tainted with a certain amount of self-interest. Colum has sold the raffle tickets, not for God and the Church so much as the approval of Father Lynch, regardless of the boy's true inklings towards a fervent religious faith. In "The Sisters," the tainting of care with self-interest is evident on a titular level, as the title "The Sisters" signifies the presence two sisters, Nannie and Eliza, who both have taken care of the priest in his illness and who have lived through him, seemingly for the purpose of their entire existance, just as the young boy Father Flynn took under his wing had sought refuge and purpose from the other boy's games. Religion provides refuge and protection from the cares of the world just as much as it educates one about the world's mysteries. Religion did not protect Father Flynn from madness, nor did it teach the narrator or the sisters about the true nature of loss and death, Joyce suggests in his narrative, however gently and tactfully.

Joyce's tale in particular suggests the danger of living through others, and of self-sacrifice as encouraged of saints -- and women -- in the Catholic Church. The two sisters seem preoccupied with illness and death, as a result of their caring for Father Flynn for so long, to an unhealthy extend. Much of Joyce's story revolves around the sisters in their efforts to ensure the ceremonial formalities of the Father's passing, such as his embalmment, securing the documents of his burial, funeral, and wake, are correct and in accordance with Catholic doctrine, regardless of whether these ceremonies provoke comfort in the hearts of the living, who were close to the father.

However, the boy, in observing these solemn ceremonies finds a certain horror in the passings of such insurance for the world beyond. "But no," thinks the boy, as he first observes the corpse of the Father, now shorn of his intellectual and priestly authority. "When we rose and went up to the head of the bed I saw that he was not smiling. There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the altar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice." (Joyce, p.14) Unlike the calm assurance of both the sisters and the sentiments of Father Flynn in life, death still reveals itself horrible to the eyes of the young boy, and the occurence of seeing the Father is experienced as kind of fall from grace, a fall from the ideals the boy heard embodied in the priest's own rhetoric in life.

Likewise, in MacLaverty's "The Beginings of Sin," the priest's santimonious and self-sacrificing rhetoric is belied in the man's drunken behavior when the young boy comes to give him the hard won funds he has earned for the man, and, he thinks the faith he idolizes. Rather than building a new church, the bestowing of funds from the hands of the boy simply breaks the boy's faith, and breaks his glasses, because the priest is not as perfect as the boy and the doctrine of the Church, in the boy's understanding, suggested. Similar to Joyce's Father Flynn as well, the priest of "The Beginings of Sin" is guarded by a female figure, a woman who cannot formally participate in the vesitges of sanctity of the church, who is neither a nun, a sexual being, nor a maternal figure, yet 'guards' the priest as his housekeeper.

In Joyce, in the months prior to his passing, helping to explain his stricken condition, the sisters of the title have been protecting the priest's scholarly reputation, even during the priest's suffering and the insanity that beset him during his late ailment. Mac MacLaverty's priest, of course, is not insane from a bodily ailment, he is merely falling-down drunk, an affliction he has, despite his better intentions, brought down upon himself. After the scene in the refectory, MacLaverty's depicted housekeeper sends the boy Colum on his way -- only after taking his collected funds. Emotionally, she does so with a similarly dismissive note as the Joycean sisters were always vaguely repeating, "Ah, poor James!" To dissuade visitors from coming to see him during the priest's end infirmity.

Thus, the plot of a priest's fall from grace due to a psychological or physical ailment in the eyes of a young and naive male acolyte is underlined in the theme of sacrifice and disenchantment in both short stories of both the authors Joyce and MacLaverty. One boy sacrifices his money to the drunken priest, Father Lunch, while he sees a housekeeper who has sacrificed her life to Father Flynn's care, while another young lad hears of a priest whose mind he admired yet lost his mind, whom he sacrificed many afternoons to learn from, even while the priest's caretakers sacrificed their own lives to the man's care. The characterization of the dominant characters is thus, because of the two protagonist's shred faith, age, and gender, fairly similar, as is the characterization of the minor female protagonists whose lives mirror an even more serious form of life's sacrifice to the male representatives of God on earth. In both tales, these physical, human male representatives are not nearly perfect as God on earth, despite the community's perceived investiture of such power in the persona of the priest, in the eyes of the needy and observing young male child.