The Sisters

“—No, I wouldn’t say he was exactly […] but there was something queer […] there was something uncanny about him. I’ll tell you my opinion.”

Mr. Cotter’s vague remark about Father Flynn exemplifies Joyce’s use of ellipses to reflect pauses in dialogue. It is also emblematic of the fact that most of the characterization and plot detail is conveyed through dialogue. In this instance, what is not said is more important that what is, and Joyce uses this technique to build suspense.

“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.”

The narrator’s annoyance with Mr. Cotter’s condescending treatment helps characterize the narrator and reveal how he sees himself as a young man, not a child. The abrupt shift from the narrator’s attempt to “extract meaning from [Mr. Cotter’s] unfinished sentences” to the disturbing image of the paralyzed person hides any clear interpretation from the reader. Joyce therefore increases the reader’s curiosity about the missing details.

“It began to confess to me in a murmuring voice and I wondered why it smiled continually and why the lips were so moist with spittle. But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin.”

The disturbing image of the gray-faced paralyzed person is purposefully vague and represents the narrator’s distress before sleep. The image is the narrator’s attempt to come to terms with his former friend’s post-stroke condition. The confession and absolution imagery suggests the narrator’s complex feelings on religion and death. Joyce uses alliteration and consonance—the repetition of the “s” sound both at the beginning of and within words—to produce a rhythm and emphasize the harsh sounds within the words. This increases the sense of confusion and anxiety in this passage.

“Had he not been dead I would have gone into the little dark room behind the shop to find him sitting in his armchair by the fire, nearly smothered in his greatcoat.”

Joyce presents details about prior events through flashbacks in the narrator’s thoughts. Rather than a typical reminiscence about the past, this passage emphasizes the narrator’s sense of loss by imagining what would be happening in the present if Father Flynn was still alive. The imagery of Flynn being “nearly smothered in his greatcoat” also foreshadows Flynn’s death before it occurs.

“Sometimes he used to put me through the responses of the mass which he had made me learn by heart: and as I pattered he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now and then pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately.”

Joyce uses ambiguity, diction, and imagery to present the narrator and Flynn’s relationship, as well as to raise questions about their attitudes to Catholicism. Flynn seems to be instructing the narrator by having him learn and practice the language of the mass, possibly suggesting that he is training the narrator for the priesthood. However, the choice of the word “pattered” suggests rote recitation rather than a more serious way of speaking, and Flynn’s pensive smile and the image of him “pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril” makes it unclear what he is thinking as he listens.

“As I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter’s words and tried to remember what had happened afterwards in the dream. I remembered that I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique fashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some land where the customs were strange, in Persia, I thought. […] But I could not remember the end of the dream.”

This passage shows that the narrator is still thinking about Mr. Cotter’s words about Flynn being a “peculiar case” (28) and the narrator being a child. It reveals that the narrator still finds these comments significant and upsetting. Joyce maintains the reader’s sense of suspense by withholding explanation. Persia (now Iran) was exoticized in the culture of the time, so the narrator’s dream of a faraway land is significant to the sense of dreaminess and escape.

“There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the altar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice. His face was very truculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled by a scanty white fur. There was a heavy odour in the room, the flowers.”

Joyce uses vivid sensory imagery in this passage, in which the narrator views Father Flynn’s body. The detailed physical descriptions, even including Flynn’s nostrils, indicate how intently the narrator is looking at the corpse. The inclusion of the detail of what the room smells like also contributes to the visceral effect of the lines on the reader.

“—Ah, there’s no friends like the old friends, she said, when all is said and done, no friends that a body can trust.”

Joyce employs ambiguity and sarcasm in these lines to hint at meaning beyond what is being said. The syntax of Eliza’s lines involves ellipsis in the last clause with several words being left out; the assumption is that Eliza means “no friends [like the old friends] that a body can trust,” and is referring to the subject in the first part of the sentence. However, because the phrase “old friends” is left out, the ending clause of the sentence, read alone, includes the implication that no friends can be trusted.

“She stopped, as if she were communing with the past, and then said shrewdly:

—Mind you, I noticed there was something queer coming over him latterly.”

Again, Joyce uses vague details to build suspense about the details of Flynn’s decline, with “something queer coming over him” functioning as an ambiguous but ominous description of the priest’s state. Eliza’s long pauses, which happen several times in the conversation, also build suspense about what she is about to reveal or fail to reveal. The word choice of “communing” simultaneously connotes the Catholic ritual of communion and something more paranormal, which would have been in direct opposition to Catholic beliefs.

“—He was too scrupulous always, she said. The duties of the priesthood was too much for him. And then his life was, you might say, crossed.”

Eliza’s analysis of her brother’s difficulty in life and in the priesthood is characteristically vague, with Joyce ensuring that the details in the dialogue obscure from the reader what Flynn was too scrupulous about. The word “crossed” functions as a double entendre—a word that has two meanings—as Eliza seems to be using it to suggest that his life was ill fated and he was, as the aunt suggests in the next line “disappointed,” but it also connotes the religious imagery of making the sign of the cross (e.g., he crossed himself).

“It was that chalice he broke…That was the beginning of it. Of course, they say it was all right, that it contained nothing, I mean. But still…They say it was the boy’s fault. But poor James was so nervous, God be merciful to him!”

Joyce uses ellipses to indicate the halting rhythm of Eliza’s speech and to emphasize what is not being said in the sentence as well as what is. Instances of ellipses are different lengths, with more dots indicating a longer pause. The imagery of the chalice with nothing in it raises a question about whether religious ritual is viewed as meaningful or empty.

“And what do you think but there he was, sitting up by himself in the dark in his confession box, wideawake and laughing-like softly to himself?”

Particularly in his later works, Joyce extensively employs portmanteaus—the combining of two words into one. Both wideawake and laughing-like are instances of portmanteau that reflect spoken diction of the time in Dublin, which enhances the reader’s experience of the story’s Dublin setting. This is part of Joyce’s experimental style and his focus on innovate ways to represent real life in Dublin in his stories.

“She stopped suddenly as if to listen. I too listened but there was no sound in the house and I knew that the old priest was lying still in his coffin as we had seen him, solemn and truculent in death, an idle chalice on his breast.”

Joyce uses a long, cumulative sentence to build on the narrator’s image of Flynn’s body, with successive clauses adding layered imagery and meaning. The choice of “truculent” feels out of place for a dead man, and adds to Flynn’s characterization as a complex and potentially malevolent individual. Joyce also uses anthropomorphism—attributing a human thought or action to a nonhuman thing—in the reference to the “idle” chalice, which makes the animate image of the chalice a juxtaposition for the dead man.