The Sisters

by

James Joyce

Father James Flynn Character Analysis

The narrator’s friend and mentor. At the time the story begins the elderly priest has already suffered two strokes and is in deteriorating health. A third and final stroke kills the priest, and over the course of the story the characters reckon with his death and their complicated feelings around his character. While the narrator and the priest’s sisters, Eliza and Nannie, seem to have at least some positive memories of Father Flynn and are upset about his death, the other characters have more negative impressions of the old man. The narrator reports having spent hours with the priest learning Latin and about the Catholic tradition, recalling the Father Flynn often made even the simplest rites and rituals very complicated. Father Flynn had a snuff habit, and the narrator would often help him to remove the snuff from the packet. In the process of using snuff, Father Flynn would sully his “ancient priestly vestments,” and this was one of many ways in which his remarkable inelegance is at odds with the divine authority that one might expect a priest to emanate. Nannie and Eliza claim not to have been bothered by caring for the elderly priest, but they imply that, in the time leading up to his death, he was in extremely poor health and going mad, sharing memories of him laughing to himself at night in a chapel or breaking a chalice. The narrator himself believes that the priest may have been engaged in the illicit practice of simony, or the purchase of entrance into heaven. The most damning characterization of Father Flynn comes from Old Cotter, who worries about a young man like the narrator spending so much time with the priest and implies that the Father Flynn may be pedophilic. Though Joyce leaves this unresolved, the narrator’s own memories of how Father Flynn made him uncomfortable add some weight to the Old Cotter’s suggestion. As Father Flynn represents the Catholic Church more broadly, the problematic aspects of his character symbolize the problematic aspects of the Church as Joyce saw them.

Father James Flynn Quotes in The Sisters

The The Sisters quotes below are all either spoken by Father James Flynn or refer to Father James Flynn. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Utility of Education Theme Icon
).
The Sisters Quotes

Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

“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…”

Related Characters: Old Cotter (speaker), The Narrator, Father James Flynn
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

“Let him learn to box his corner. That’s what I’m always saying to that Rosicrucian there: take exercise. Why, when I was a nipper every morning of my life I had a cold bath, winter and summer. And that’s what stands to me now. Education is all very fine and large…”

Related Characters: The Narrator’s Uncle (speaker), The Narrator, Father James Flynn
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:

“Though I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as a child I puzzled my head to extract the 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.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn, Old Cotter
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

“But the grey face still followed me […] 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.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

“It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave his ancient priestly garments their green faded look for the red handkerchief, blackened, as it always was, with the snuff-stains of the week, with which he tried to brush away the fallen grains, was quite inefficacious.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn, Old Cotter
Related Symbols: Father Flynn’s Snuff
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

“I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even annoyed at discovering myself in a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

“I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the Church had written books as thick as the Post Office Dictionary and as closely printed as the law notices in the newspaper.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

“There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the altar, his large hand 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 odor in the room—the flowers.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn, Eliza
Related Symbols: The Chalice
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

“It was that chalice he broke…That was the beginning of it.”

Related Characters: Eliza (speaker), Father James Flynn
Related Symbols: The Chalice
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis:
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Father James Flynn Quotes in The Sisters

The The Sisters quotes below are all either spoken by Father James Flynn or refer to Father James Flynn. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
The Utility of Education Theme Icon
).
The Sisters Quotes

Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and the word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the name of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and yet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

“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…”

Related Characters: Old Cotter (speaker), The Narrator, Father James Flynn
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 1
Explanation and Analysis:

“Let him learn to box his corner. That’s what I’m always saying to that Rosicrucian there: take exercise. Why, when I was a nipper every morning of my life I had a cold bath, winter and summer. And that’s what stands to me now. Education is all very fine and large…”

Related Characters: The Narrator’s Uncle (speaker), The Narrator, Father James Flynn
Page Number: 2
Explanation and Analysis:

“Though I was angry with old Cotter for alluding to me as a child I puzzled my head to extract the 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.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn, Old Cotter
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

“But the grey face still followed me […] 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.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

“It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave his ancient priestly garments their green faded look for the red handkerchief, blackened, as it always was, with the snuff-stains of the week, with which he tried to brush away the fallen grains, was quite inefficacious.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn, Old Cotter
Related Symbols: Father Flynn’s Snuff
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:

“I found it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even annoyed at discovering myself in a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 4
Explanation and Analysis:

“I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the Church had written books as thick as the Post Office Dictionary and as closely printed as the law notices in the newspaper.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 5
Explanation and Analysis:

“There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the altar, his large hand 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 odor in the room—the flowers.”

Related Characters: The Narrator (speaker), Father James Flynn, Eliza
Related Symbols: The Chalice
Related Literary Devices:
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:

“It was that chalice he broke…That was the beginning of it.”

Related Characters: Eliza (speaker), Father James Flynn
Related Symbols: The Chalice
Page Number: 9
Explanation and Analysis: