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Book 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Confessions, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Faith and Conversion
Sin and Salvation
Interpreting the Bible
God, Goodness, and Being
Time, Eternity, and the Mind
Summary
Analysis
[1] It’s time now for Augustine to recall his youthful, fleshly sins. He does this out of love for God; even though the memories are bitter, they help him enjoy God’s “sweetness” all the more. [2] In those days, Augustine wanted nothing except to love and be loved. This desire went beyond friendship, and Augustine was unable to distinguish between love and lust. He fell deeper and deeper into sin, unrestrained by God. If only someone had encouraged him to channel his desires into marriage and fatherhood, or else into chastity. Instead, by the age of 16, Augustine was swept away by lust. His family, caring only that he become a good public speaker, didn’t restrain him.
From his infancy and childhood, Augustine moves on to discuss his adolescence. While the story of his teenage years involves confession in the sense of admitting his sins, he sees the act of confessing as a testimony of God’s mercy to him as a sinner and hence an act of praise. Augustine doesn’t get into the specifics of his “lust,” but readers can infer that he wasn’t living a celibate life. There’s some implication that Augustine’s sexual behavior was regarded as typical for a teenage boy and that as long as it didn’t interfere with his future, his family didn’t worry much about the consequences.
Themes
[3] That same year, Augustine’s small-town literary and rhetorical studies were disrupted by his father’s determination to send him to Carthage. Augustine tells this story not for God’s sake, who already knows it, but for the sake of other people, who might need to learn that God hears the cries of a penitent person. Many people praised Augustine’s father who, though not rich, saved up to ensure that his son had the chance to study. Yet, Augustine notes, his father made no effort to ensure that Augustine matured as a Christian.
Up to now, Augustine had been living in the town of Thagaste, where scholars believe his father may have been a town councilman. Though the family is believed to have owned property and thus had some social prestige, they would not have been wealthy by any means. By scrimping and saving to send Augustine to the bigger city of Carthage (in what’s now Tunisia), Augustine’s father hoped to raise the family’s name and fortunes accordingly. Today, Carthage is a few hours’ journey from Souk Ahras, Algeria, the site of ancient Thagaste; obviously, it would have been a much longer journey in the fourth century.
Themes
In the meantime, Augustine lived lazily at home. Though his father wasn’t bothered by Augustine’s evident lust, his pious mother grew concerned. Yet his mother’s warnings about sexual misconduct went unheard—Augustine felt embarrassed to heed them, not realizing they came from God. Instead, he wanted his friends to believe he was just as depraved as they were, whether he had done the same things or not. And, indeed, even his mother didn’t restrain him entirely, because she feared that marriage might hinder Augustine’s academic success. So, Augustine was free to commit many wicked deeds.
Themes
[4] Augustine was even willing to steal, though he lacked for nothing. In fact, he only wanted “to enjoy the theft itself and the sin.” Near his family’s vineyard was a pear tree loaded with ugly fruits. One night, Augustine and his friends shook a bunch of pears off the tree, not even to eat them, but simply to throw them to the pigs. Augustine confesses to God that, at this time, he loved the evil he committed for its own sake.
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[5] Augustine observes that the world is filled with beautiful things, but that even these good things can be “occasions of sin” because they belong to the “lowest order of good” that can tempt people away from the higher good of truth and God himself.
Themes
[6] Augustine returns to the subject of the stolen pears. He didn’t really want them, because he had better pears at home. He only found pleasure in the sin of stealing them. The theft didn’t even offer the “deceptive” beauty found in pride or ambition. Augustine observes that a sin like sloth can pose as a love of peace and extravagance can pose as abundance, and yet real peace and abundance can only be found in the Lord. Even grief, in a way, is a desire to be like God, “from whom nothing can be taken away.” All these things are examples of an “unchaste love” that seeks elsewhere what can only truly be found in God, and feebly try to imitate what only God can do.
Themes
[8] Continuing to reflect on the pears incident, Augustine muses that he wouldn’t have committed the theft if he hadn’t also enjoyed his friends’ company at the time. If he had really desired the pears for themselves, he wouldn’t have needed the “thrill” of stealing alongside accomplices. [9] Why was it so much fun to steal with his friends? This kind of friendship “bewitch[es]” the mind, drawing on the shame people feel when they refrain from going along with a crowd.
Themes
