Likewise, the two sisters who sacrifice so much for the man will their sacrifice as well, given their evidently ardent faith, however misguided. The setting of an Ireland where the Catholic faith remains such a respected institution gives further force to the power of the man, even though Joyce's powerfully symbolic language and writing style ultimately deflates the image of the man in death. Death, Joyce ultimately suggests, comes to use all, even a man who strove to have such a close relationship to God, and even a man whose life had such impact upon the young boy's conciousness and the conciousness of the sisters. But the drunkneness of Flynn, however, is a moral failing, rather than a largely unwilled affliction. Drunkeness, although it might be common to the community, mileu and setting of the short story, is not something that comes to us all like death, and the housekeeper seems driven to her occupation out of economic as well as ideological necessity. Thus, the later writing suggests not so...

The boy Colum lies to protect the church, rather than is motivated to be truthful to the community and to his mother. At the end of his adventure, Colum feels compelled to lie to his mother about how his glasses came to be broken by the night's doings, but his image of faith will not be the same. As Joyce's narrator is haunted by images of the priest's death, MacCally's narrator is haunted by memories of arriving at the rectory one evening and seeing Lynch like an ordinary man -- not dead, but fallen.
Works Cited

Joyce, James. "The Sisters." From Dubliners. London: Bloomsbury, 1914.

MacLaverty, Bernard. "The Beginnings of a Sin." From a Time to Dance, and Other Stories. London: Jonathan Cape, 1982, p. 135-147.