Dubliners: The Sisters

Passage: "It was late when I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as a child, I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his unfinished sentences. In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again the heavy grey face of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my head and tried to think of Christmas."

In "The Sisters", Joyce uses the death of the protagonist's close friend, Rev. James Flynn, to develop a theme revolved around a child's internal struggle with growing up. To further establish this theme, Joyce separates the story into three parts, each corresponding with a different chronological mindset. In the beginning, he presents the reader with a character unable to grasp the idea of the deterioration of his mentor's health, the protagonist is childlike. Joyce uses the above passage as a transition between black and white concepts of childhood, to more abstract and complex concepts of adulthood; contrasting the protagonist's childish thoughts of "Christmas" with the looming "heavy grey face of the paralytic". He explains how the priest showed him "how complex and mysterious were certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as the simplest acts." Rev. Flynn is much older than the protagonist, offering a wealth of insight. Joyce uses the church as a metaphor for life; the protagonist is understanding the complexity of adulthood.



Diction plays a key role in how the reader will understand the story. Joyce uses word choice to shape his tone. Using words like: "grey", "dark", and "heavy". "There was a heavy odour in the room- the flowers." The flowers were an uplifting detail to the situation- death- at first, but the beginning of the sentence: "heavy odour", although ambiguous, conveys a negative tone towards flowers, which are an emblem of optimism and happiness. Joyce also, like Mr. Cotter, leaves many passages open ended, "But I could not remember the end of the dream." In doing so, he leaves a lot of thinking to the reader.