Father Purdon Character Analysis

Father Purdon is the priest at a Catholic retreat that Kernan attends with his friends Power, Cunningham, and M’Coy in the hope that he will find redemption from his heavy drinking and general misdeeds in life. Purdon is very business-like and transactional, comparing sin and redemption to debt and credit, respectively, and calling himself the “spiritual accountant” of his congregants. In his sermon, there is none of the spirituality and professions of faith that one might expect from a priest. Furthermore, his name is a subtle pun that reveals author James Joyce’s distrust of the Catholic Church: “Purdon” was also the name of Dublin’s prostitution district undermines his credibility as a religious authority figure and more generally associates his focus on the transactional nature of religion with the similarly transactional realm of prostitution.