32 pages • 1 hour read
James JoyceThe Sisters
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1904A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Chalice
The chalice is a symbol of the eucharist, the ritual in the Roman Catholic mass in which the priest transforms bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. A traditional and key Catholic belief is that this transformation is actual rather than symbolic, so the objects must be treated with extreme reverence. The chalice is the ceremonial cup used to hold the wine in this ritual. The chalice appears twice in “The Sisters,” first when the narrator views Flynn’s body—“There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the altar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice” (181-83)—and in Eliza’s anecdote near the conclusion of the story in which Father Flynn has broken a chalice. After her distracted pause in the conversation, Eliza suggests: “—It was that chalice he broke. […] That was what was the beginning of it” (282-83). In that anecdote, the breaking of the empty chalice is described as the beginning of the end, marking Father Flynn’s decline, after which he “began to mope by himself, talking to no-one and wandering about by himself” (289-91). The chalice in “The Sisters” thereby takes on a layered sense of symbolism: first, the already loaded connotation of the eucharist; second, the symbol of Flynn’s disappointed experience and suggested descent into mental illness toward the end of his life.
Windows
Windows function as a symbol in “The Sisters” and recur throughout Dubliners. They tend to be associated with the uncanny and suggest a portal to another world. After death, they were often opened, the remnant of a tradition to allow the soul or spirit to escape. In the opening of the story, the narrator peers through the window to determine whether Flynn is still alive, associating it with the transition from life to death. When the narrator is remembering a dream, the symbol appears indirectly in relation to “long velvet curtains” (152) that suggest “some land where the customs were strange” (154), again indicating the transformative connotation of windows as a portal. Window imagery is often paired with descriptions of otherworldly lighting. When viewing the house of mourning from the outside, the narrator sees that the “window panes of the houses that looked to the west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds” (158-60). While tiptoeing into the room to see Flynn’s body, the narrator notices that “[t]he room through the lace end of the blind was suffused with dusky golden light amid which the candles looked like pale thin flames” (170-72). The lyricism of this passage is incongruous and may suggest that the narrator is happy at Flynn’s death. Although imagery of dusk is traditionally associated with death, the narrator’s focus on light and beauty feels almost celebratory, characteristic of the story’s ambiguous treatment.
Smiling
A motif of facial expressions inappropriate to the circumstances recurs throughout “The Sisters,” specifically uncanny smiles. As the narrator is preparing for sleep after learning that Flynn has died, he describes the grey face of the paralytic as smiling in a disturbing manner:
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 (79-83).
As the narrator remembers Flynn and their conversations about religion, he remembers: “When he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his tongue lie upon his lower lip—a habit which had made me feel uneasy in the beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well” (146-49). The motif of such expressions is associated with disquiet rather than the conventional association of smiling with happiness. This is characteristic of the narrator’s sense of physical disgust, possibly connected to physical abuse and shame. The narrator also describes an instance of smiling at the same moment as he looks on Flynn’s body. Observing Nannie’s disheveled appearance, the narrator imagines that “the old priest was smiling as he lay there in his coffin” (178-79), before looking on the body to see Father Flynn’s solemn expression. Such descriptions of ominous smiles add to the uncanny tone of the story and augment the reader’s growing sense of disquiet.
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By James Joyce
