Paralysis, Deterioration, and the Obsolete Theme Analysis

While the narrator and other characters are genuinely upset at Father Flynn’s passing, in some ways, they are also relieved. This is because the elderly Father Flynn is characterized as a relic from the past, whose influence on young people and religious teachings are no longer relevant. The death of the priest, then in some ways represents the death of the brand of Catholicism that he espoused. James Joyce himself was a lifelong critic of the Catholic Church, particularly the teachings and practices that he considered obsolete. Through portraying Father Flynn as old fashioned, overly esoteric, and physically deteriorating, Joyce argues that the teachings of the Catholic Church are obsolete and that, like the priest himself, the time has come that they cease to exist.

Father Flynn is characterized as being someone whose beliefs and practices are not relevant to the time period in which he lives. When the narrator learns of the priest’s death, he feels a sense of “freedom, as if [he] had been freed from something by his death” even though the priest “had taught me a great deal. He had studied in the Irish college in Rome and had taught me how to pronounce Latin properly.” Here, the narrator’s chooses to share that the priest had taught him Latin immediately after admitting that he is, in some ways, relieved that Father Flynn has died. It is as though the narrator is trying to convince himself that he should feel worse that Father Flynn has passed, because he learned so much from the older man. However, it is clear that the narrator does not necessarily value the lessons he learned with Father Flynn, because those lessons weren’t necessarily useful. This is made evident by the choice to give Latin as an example. Indeed, at the time the story was written, Latin itself was already a dead language. At first glance, it seems that the narrator is remembering the Latin lessons in the context of feeling grateful for the priest and everything he taught him. However, upon further analysis, it seems that the link between learning Latin and the priest’s death is that both the language and the person have become obsolete.

After Father Flynn has died, the sisters who looked after him share stories about his old age that subtly link the deterioration of Father Flynn’s body with the process of his view on religion becoming obsolete. Eliza, one of the man’s sisters, shares that when she brought Father Flynn his soup, she’d “find him with is breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in the chair and his mouth open.” Here, it is clear that Father Flynn’s old age has caused him to lose control over his body. However, Eliza first mentions the breviary—a book of recitations to be practiced daily, mandated by the Catholic Church—which draws readers’ attention to the deterioration of Father Flynn’s religious practice before they notice the deterioration of his physical body. The fact that these two things are linked together suggests that Father Flynn’s perspective on the Catholic faith was perhaps as obsolete, as ready to die, as his physical body was.

Father Flynn’s strokes caused him to become paralyzed at the end of his life, which is deeply symbolic in the story. Joyce chooses paralysis because it implies the end of movement. Since Father Flynn is the symbolic embodiment of the Catholic Church in the story, his paralysis represents the Catholic Church’s inability to move with the times, its inability to evolve in order to remain relevant. There is also the implication that the Catholic Church can paralyze those that become involved with it. The narrator, for example, feels “freed from something by [Father Flynn’s] death.” This implies that Father Flynn, who connected the narrator to the Catholic faith, had a paralyzing effect on the narrator’s life. Catholicism, the story implies, kept him stuck.

This analysis is further supported by the symbolism of the chalice in the story. Eliza mentions that she and her sister, Nannie, really noticed that Father Flynn’s health was deteriorating when he accidentally broke a chalice. This moment also has superstitious overtones: Nannie didn’t just notice that the priest’s health was deteriorating because he broke the chalice, but also believes that his poor health may have come as a superstitious sort of consequence for breaking the chalice. This, in turn, paints the Catholic faith as superstitious and irrational. The priest has also been buried with “his hands loosely retaining a chalice.” The detail that he is loosely holding the chalice invites readers to draw a parallel between the loose grip Father Flynn has on the chalice in death and the time that he dropped it while he was alive, demarcating the beginning of his illness. Because the chalice is such an important instrument in Catholic rituals, this symbolism links Father Flynn’s physical death with his inability to function as a religious leader. In Roman Catholicism, chalices are used as the cup in communion ceremonies and in Mass. Thus, the idea that his hold on the chalice is loose suggests that his hold on the Catholic faith is loose—and, by extension, that the grip that Catholicism has on Irish culture is loosening as well.

Father Flynn’s death is met with such a complex, largely ambivalent emotional reaction because it is, so to speak, his time to pass. But not only does this idea refer to his physical body; the education he provides for young people, his approach to Catholicism, and his religious ideologies were no longer suitable for the time in which he lived. Towards the end of his life, Father Flynn was not only physically deteriorating, but also mentally unstable. The narrator and the women who took care of him refer to moments when he was smiling or laughing to himself seemingly for no reason. For example, towards the end of his life, the priest had the delusional idea to “go out for a drive one fine day” to see the house where he was born. By characterizing Father Flynn not just as physically unwell but as having lost his mind, Joyce drives home his criticism of the Church. If Father Flynn is the symbolic embodiment of Catholicism, then the religion is not only obsolete, but is so nonsensical that it is as mad as the priest himself.