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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Grace, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Morality, Redemption, and the Catholic Church
Catholicism vs. Protestantism
Community, Isolation, and Gender
Summary
Analysis
In a pub bathroom in Dublin, Ireland, two men try to lift up another man who’s fallen down the stairs. They manage to turn the fallen man over onto his back; he’s covered in filth from the pub floor, and his mouth is oozing blood. Then, with the help of a bartender, the two men are able to carry the injured man up the stairs and lay him back down on the floor.
From the reference to a pub, readers can infer that this unidentified man’s accident has occurred due to excessive drinking. Through the detailed descriptions of filth, ooze, and blood, the man is in serious trouble physically. Moreover, the story portrays him as being at a moral or spiritual crisis. He lies at the bottom of a flight of stairs: it seems he has hit rock bottom, literally and figuratively.
Active
Themes
The pub manager asks if anyone knows who the injured man is, but no one does. The bartender served the injured man rum earlier, and he was with two other men at that time—but no one knows where his companions are now. Noticing blood pooled under the disheveled, semi-conscious man’s head, the worried manager calls the police. Eventually, a constable arrives and takes down the manager’s account of what happened. He, too, asks who the injured man is—but again, no one answers.
It's striking that the man is alone: in this scene at the pub, everyone else seems to be accompanied by friends. The reader can infer that the man has been abandoned by whoever he came with. It’s also noteworthy that the bar manager calls the police after seeing how injured the man is: rather than calling medical services, he defaults to law enforcement, likely to avoid any liability on the part of the bar. Rather than helping the man, the bartender protects himself and his establishment. Calling the constable immediately also demonstrates how much the police dominate this Dublin society.
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Suddenly, a young man in a cycling-suit makes his way through the crowd of bystanders and calls for water and brandy, which the bartender promptly delivers. The young man washes the blood out of the injured man’s mouth and then forces brandy down his throat, which shocks the injured man awake. The bystanders help the man to his feet and begin chattering about taking him to a hospital. The constable then asks the injured man where he lives, but the man ignores him and requests that someone call him a cab.
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Just then, a tall man named Mr. Power joins the crowd and recognizes the injured man, calling out to him and referring to him as Tom. He tells the constable (who seems to know Mr. Power) that he’ll see Tom home, and the young man in the cycling-suit explains what happened as he helps Mr. Power lead Tom out of the pub. Meanwhile, the manager shows the constable the scene of the accident as the bartender cleans Tom’s blood off the floor.
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Themes
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Outside the pub, Mr. Power hails a cab. Tom thanks the young man for his help, introduces himself as Kernan, and suggests that they have a drink together sometime. On the cab ride to Tom Kernan’s house, Mr. Power asks how the accident happened—but Kernan claims that he isn’t able to answer, showing Mr. Power that he bit off a piece of his tongue when he fell down the stairs.
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Kernan is a traveling salesman with old-fashioned sensibilities—he cares about being dignified, so he always wears a silk hat and gaiters. He has a small office at his firm, in which he keeps different kinds of tea that he likes to sample.
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Mr. Power, who’s much younger than Kernan, works at the Royal Irish Constabulary Office in Dublin Castle. Mr. Power has risen socially and professionally in tandem with Kernan’s decline—though Mr. Power and Kernan’s other close friends still hold Kernan in high esteem, because they knew him at his most successful. Mr. Power is rumored to have mysterious debts, but he’s a charming young man nonetheless.
When the cab arrives at Kernan’s house, Mr. Power helps him in, and Mrs. Kernan immediately puts him to bed. Mr. Power waits downstairs and converses with the Kernan children, who start to play around with him in the absence of their parents. Mr. Power is shocked by their accents and lack of manners. When Mrs. Kernan returns from putting her husband to bed, she confides in Mr. Power about her exasperation with Kernan’s heavy drinking. Mr. Power rushes to explain that he wasn’t responsible for Kernan’s latest drinking binge, but he assures Mrs. Kernan that he’ll help him make a fresh start anyway. He promises to bring someone named Martin over to speak with Kernan soon, and then he says goodbye to Mrs. Kernan and sets off in the cab.
Mrs. Kernan watches Mr. Power’s cab pull away from her house and then silently reflects on the past 25 years of her marriage to Mr. Kernan, throughout which she has been very unhappy. Kernan was a handsome, charming man when they were first married—but within weeks, Mrs. Kernan grew tired of her role as a housewife. Two of the couple’s children have grown up and left the house—and moved away from Dublin—while their three youngest still live with them. The next morning, Mr. Kernan wakes up and stays home sick from work. Mrs. Kernan scolds him for his latest transgression, but she’s nonetheless thankful that he’s not abusive like other “worse husbands.”
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Two nights later, three of Kernan’s friends—Mr. Power, Mr. Cunningham, and Mr. M’Coy—arrive at the Kernans’ house. Kernan is unaware that he's the victim of a plot that Power has thought up and entrusted Mr. Cunningham with carrying out. Mr. Kernan was raised Protestant and only converted to Catholicism when he married Mrs. Kernan; he often takes jabs at the Catholic Church. Mr. Cunningham, an older colleague of Mr. Power, seems like exactly the right person to help Kernan. Everyone pities Cunningham for his own unhappy marriage to a drunkard, but everyone still respects him for his intelligence and sensibility.
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Literary Devices
When the men told Mrs. Kernan about their plan, she expressed her trust in Cunningham. However, Mrs. Kernan is more of a habitual Catholic than a devout one, and she isn’t confident that a middle-aged man like Kernan will be open to new ideas. Nevertheless, though, the plot might help him—it can’t hurt, anyway. For her part, Mrs. Kernan believes in the Sacred Heart and the sacraments—but she also believes in the banshee and the Holy Ghost.
The men begin to discuss Mr. Kernan’s incident in the pub. M’Coy asks Kernan if his tongue still hurts, which it doesn’t—but he’s still feeling sick. M’Coy has lived a colorful life with a variety of jobs—presently, he’s the secretary to the City Coroner, which makes him professionally interested in helping Kernan. Cunningham asserts that Kernan’s drinking is what’s making him sick, but Kernan denies it. Next, Cunningham asks who Mr. Kernan was with at the pub; Kernan identifies one of the people he was with as Harford, but he doesn’t remember the other one. Mr. Cunningham judges Kernan’s choice to associate with Harford—Harford is business partners with Mr. Goldberg, an Irish Jew, and Cunningham is suspicious of Jewish people.
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Mr. Kernan quickly changes the subject to the young man in the cycling-suit who saved him from being arrested by the constable in the pub. All four men express their annoyance with the fact that their taxes go toward the police, whom they find ignorant and foolish. They are then interrupted by Mrs. Kernan bringing in a tray of drinks for all of the men except Mr. Kernan. She and Kernan get into a brief spat over this, exchanging sarcastic barbs with each other.
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After the bottle of stout (dark beer), has been passed around, Mr. Cunningham subtly brings up a spiritual retreat that he, Power, and M’Coy are all planning to attend on Thursday. Kernan inquires more about it, prompting Cunningham to suggest that Kernan should join them, as if the idea had just occurred to him. Kernan silently considers the idea—he isn’t particularly interested in the retreat, but he knows that he should listen respectfully while his friends are discussing religious matters.
While Kernan is thinking over the proposal, the conversation turns to the Jesuits, an order of the Catholic Church. Mr. Cunningham and Mr. M’Coy each showily share their admiration for the Jesuits, proclaiming that the General of the Jesuits is right next to the Pope in status. Mr. Cunningham says that Jesuits are so esteemed that they’ve never been reformed in the history of the Church.
Mr. Kernan chimes in to say that he likes that the Jesuits cater to the upper classes, but he criticizes “secular priests,” whom he finds foolish and arrogant. Mr. Cunningham disagrees, arguing that the entire Irish priesthood is honorable and world-renowned. Kernan thinks about this and decides that he believes Cunningham, since he respects him as a good judge of character. He then asks his friends for more details about the spiritual retreat. Mr. Cunningham tells Kernan that the retreat is a casual affair and will be led by Father Purdon, a Catholic priest known for his laid-back style.
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The conversation about Purdon segues to Father Tom Burke, a famous preacher in Dublin from several decades back. Mr. Kernan recalls seeing him with a friend Crofton, and he talks about how much they loved Burke’s sermons. Cunningham soon interjects, pointing out that Crofton was a Protestant Orangeman and therefore wasn’t supposed to be at the Catholic Burke’s sermons. Mr. Power points out that Burke appealed to both Catholics and Protestants, and M’Coy suggests that there is not much difference between the two sects of Christianity. Cunningham quietly puts an end to the discussion by affirming that Catholicism is “the old, original faith.”
The discussion is interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Fogarty, a grocer who has brought a bottle of whiskey for Mr. Kernan. The men have another round of drinks, and Fogarty joins in the conversation, which turns to the papacy. The men get to discussing the various papal mottos of popes from across the ages, each recalling slightly different versions of them. Mr. Power remarks that he and Mr. Kernan never learned any of the mottos, since they went to a “penny-a-week” school and received a lesser education than the other men.
Meanwhile, Kernan tries and fails to remember points of Protestant theology that he can contribute to the conversation. He ends up asking Cunningham if he’s correct in thinking that some of the older popes were less than ideal, and Cunningham admits that this is true. However, he insists that no pope has ever preached false doctrine. The men then continue to discuss the papacy and argue over whether or not popes speak ex cathedra, or with automatic infallibility. Cunningham tells a story about two cardinals at the sacred college—John MacHale and a German cardinal—who refused to acknowledge papal infallibility. MacHale, however, submitted to the Pope as soon as he spoke, demonstrating his faith. The enthusiastic way Cunningham tells this story inspires the other men.
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Just then, Mrs. Kernan returns to the room and begins to listen in on the men’s conversation. Kernan shares that he once saw MacHale speak at a statue unveiling ceremony, recalling how fierce and perceptive his gaze looked. After a pause, Mr. Power declares to Mrs. Kernan that they will make her husband a pious man. Then, Kernan’s friends prepare to leave and remind him that he needs to bring a candle to the church in order to participate in the retreat. Kernan strongly objects to the use of candles, calling them “magic-lantern business.” He eventually agrees to go, on the grounds that he is not forced to use the candle.
That Thursday, Kernan, Power, Cunningham, M’Coy, and Fogarty arrive at the Gardiner Street Jesuit Church for the retreat. They sit down together in the pews and soon realize that they recognize many acquaintances in the crowd. Soon, Father Purdon emerges and struggles to ascend the pulpit. He’s a large man, taking up two-thirds of the pulpit, with a huge red face. Father Purdon leads the congregation in kneeling and then reads the scriptural passage for the day (Luke 16:8-9), which he describes as one of the most difficult passages of the Bible to interpret. He says that it’s an important passage for practical businessmen and professionals.
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Literary Devices
Father Purdon then launches into his sermon. He says that he has a deep understanding of human nature, and that he knows not everyone is called to devote their lives to religion—most have to live as regular people and concern themselves with worldly matters. Purdon describes himself as a “spiritual accountant” for the businessmen assembled in the church. He tells the congregation that Jesus Christ understands human weakness and failure—Jesus only wants people to keep their accounting honest and ensure that the “books of [their] spiritual life” are balanced. Purdon concludes his sermon by encouraging the congregants to set their accounts right.
