23 pages • 46 minutes read
First Confession
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Themes
The Corruption of the Catholic Church
It may be difficult for a contemporary reader to understand how deeply the Irish culture of the mid-20th century was shaped by religion. In many ways, Irish culture depended on the Catholic Church to provide the country with its identity and was a source of deep pride. Without understanding the pivotal role the Catholic Church played in defining the identity of Ireland, a story that so savagely denounces the Irish Catholic Church would lose much of its meaning.
Until the young priest reassures Jackie that his sins are not as grievous as he believes, the Church is represented in the story by two dark and unsettling forces: 1) Mrs. Ryan, Jackie’s catechism teacher, who uses visions of hell to intimidate and manipulate children, and 2) Jackie’s sister who uses religion to inflate her ego and intimidate her younger brother.
The catechism teacher, perpetually dressed in black, draws a vivid picture of hell to her charges. “All eternity! Just think of it!” she says. “A whole lifetime goes by and it’s nothing, not even a drop in the ocean of your sufferings” (Paragraph 5). Rather than inspire the children through images of a loving God or the radiant expanses of heaven, she offers them a penny to hold a finger over an open flame for even five minutes. Her instruction is as compelling as it is cruel.
For O’Connor’s Irish readers, his depiction of the corruption of religion would be stinging. While the Catholic Church had for millennia provided the country its identity, it now produced only hypocrites and shallow, formalistic Christians who cared more about appearing virtuous than being virtuous. Only the young priest, ironically, in his sympathy toward sinners, and his dismissal of the gravity of Jackie’s offenses, softens O’Connor’s critique of his nation’s defining religion.
The Importance of Honesty
Although the importance of honesty in a story about the sacrament of confession might seem obvious, the story offers many nominal Catholics—Gran, Nora, Jackie’s abusive and alcoholic father, his catechism teacher—whose behaviors, attitudes, and actions reflect a deep and disturbing spiritual dishonesty. The Catholic conception of confession demands honesty between the one confessing and the priest listening to the confession. Absolution, that is, the forgiveness of the sins by the priest as an agent of God, assumes total and honest admission of sins.
Jackie evidences a fear of honesty as he strategizes over how he might avoid telling the priest the direst of his sins, that he had attacked his sister with a bread knife and that secretly he wanted to kill his grandmother. Once in the confessional box, however, he opens up. The priest, with a twinkle in his eyes, sweeps an arm toward the chapel filled with parishioners there to do their weekly confession. “You can see by the looks of them,” he says, “they haven’t much to tell” (Paragraph 29), much like Nora who was in and out of confession in minutes despite her treatment of her brother during the previous week. Her later behavior, when she sees Jackie walking with the priest, reveals that her confession had no impact on her. It is Jackie who reveals the benefit of honesty in the lighter-than-air feeling he has as he exits the church, relieved of the burden of his. In just feeling the afternoon sun, “My heart soared,” he says (Paragraph 58).
Irish Identity
The heart of the tension in Jackie’s household is not just the arrival of his grandmother but that she comes from the country. His home is a microcosm of the problem Ireland faced in the mid-20th century. Long after other European countries had transitioned from a rural to urban culture, Ireland in the 1930s and 1940s, when O’Connor was growing up, hesitated to abandon its lush countryside, pastoral farms, and quiet, if distinctly un-modern life. In addition, Ireland struggled against centuries of British occupation. Indeed, O’Connor was briefly imprisoned for his role in Ireland’s civil wars in the 1920s.
Jackie’s family lives in the city, presumably the city of Cork (given O’Connor’s biography), which was then as now the second-largest city in Ireland. Gran comes from the country. Her ways seem unsophisticated—she seldom bothers with shoes; she takes deep swigs from a bottle of beer she is always carrying; she eats with her fingers; and her favorite meal to prepare is a kind of salty fish soup with roughly chopped potatoes that reflected the poverty of rural Ireland. Even at seven, Jackie knows Gran does not belong. “She was a real old countrywoman and quite unsuited to life in the town,” he says (Paragraph 1). Her presence is such an embarrassment that he feels compelled to hide that he even knows her when his friends see her.
O’Connor sees what Jackie could not—Gran represents a way of life that was dying out. Her move to the city was not voluntary—she is a widow and has no place to go. The farm, presumably, is lost, sold off, or, more likely, left to tenant farming as Ireland’s agrarian identity began to fade. It never occurs to Jackie to think kindly of the old woman who has ended up in the family home in the city because she has no other place to go. O’Connor offers little optimism about the urban world that is emerging as Gran’s generation fades. Cork is a world of dysfunctional families, an indifferent church, raging and violent alcoholics, narrow, dingy, and dirty streets where children must fend for themselves, left on their own by parents who must both work long hours just to keep their pitiful hovels intact.
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By Frank O'Connor
