The Sisters (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: James Joyce
- First Published: 1904
- Type of Plot: Domestic realism
- Time of Work: 1895
- Setting: Dublin, Ireland
- Principal Characters: The narrator, The boy's aunt, Eliza Flynn, Nannie Flynn
- Genres: Short fiction, Domestic realism
- Subjects: Maturation or coming of age, Death or dying, Orphans or orphanages, Priests
- Locales: Dublin, Ireland
The Story
In this opening story from James Joyce's Dubliners (1914), the unnamed narrator is an adult recalling his first direct experience with death when he was a boy in Dublin in 1895. He tells of passing on several evenings the house in which a retired old priest, who was his mentor, lay dying. Then, when the boy, who lives with his aunt and uncle, comes down to dinner one night, he hears them and a neighbor talking about the priest, who has just died.
Old Cotter, the neighbor, says that “there was something queer . . . something uncanny about him” and...
[The entire page is 1483 words long]
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