Doubt: A Parable

“Every easy choice today will have its consequence tomorrow.” 

This early quote from Sister Aloysius establishes how clearly she believes in making hard choices in life, and in the value of being strict with oneself and set in one’s morals.

“Don’t be charmed by cleverness. Not theirs. And not yours.” 

Sister Aloysius can see that Sister James is easily swayed by charm, warmth, and cleverness. This quote showcases Sister Aloysius’s distrust of everyone, including herself, and prefigures Sister James’s eventual siding with Father Flynn.

“Satisfaction is a vice.” 

Sister Aloysius, here referring to Sister James’s performance as a teacher, showcases her tenacity and restlessness. She will refuse to feel satisfied that her suspicions are unfounded, or that Father Flynn is properly punished, or even that her accusations are correct.

“Innocence is a form of laziness.” 

Sister Aloysius is describing Sister James’s inability to see the suspicious activity of her students, but this quote comes to describe not only her blindness to inappropriate relations, but also Mrs. Muller’s own rejection of these suspicions in order to remain ignorant and to believe the best of her son’s caretakers.

“They’re children. They can talk to each other. It’s more important they have a fierce moral guardian.” 

Sister Aloysius verbalizes her belief that she and her fellow nuns and priests should not offer human warmth to the children, but rather symbolize something higher—morality and constancy. She says that she will always choose the abstract moral choice over the gray, empathetic version of events.

“Sometimes it’s the little things that get you.” 

Though Father Flynn is here talking about the danger of dirty nails, his phrase also speaks to his own downfall. His long fingernails, love of sugar, progressive beliefs, and friendliness with the students create suspicion in Sister Aloysius, and spell his downfall. It is only small things that breed her suspicion, but they are what bring about his resignation.

“It is not your place to be complacent. That’s for the children. That’s what we give them.” 

Sister Aloysius believes herself to be a guardian for the children, despite (or even as part of) her coldness to them. Again, she is showcasing that she values a role as a symbol—a gate against corruption—over that of a confidante or friend.

“When you take a step to address wrongdoing, you are taking a step away from God, but in His service.” 

Sister Aloysius expresses her Machiavellian belief that the “ends justify the means.” This further showcases the tenacity in her pursuit of what she believes to be just; she will not stop when faced with a small sin in the pursuit of rectifying a larger sin.

“Here, there’s no man I can go to, and men run everything.” 

The strict Catholic hierarchy is clearly restrictive to Sister Aloysius, and doubtless to many other nuns in similar situations. Though nuns were often closer to the students in 1960s Catholic schools, and perhaps more attuned to any inappropriate relationships, men held positions of power and banded together for their own protection.

“If I could, Sister James, I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil.” 

While Sister James thinks of her innocence as proximity to God, Sister Aloysius sees it as a detriment in a lifetime fight against evil, and believes that only through skepticism can one serve as a moral guardian and religious guidepost.

“Imagine what it must’ve been like in the frontier days when a man alone in the woods sat by a fire in his buckskins and listened to a sound like that. Imagine the loneliness! The immense darkness pressing in! How frightening it must’ve been!” 

This is the second time (the first being his first sermon), where Father Flynn has expressed wonder at men handling fear in the face of unknown forces. The play implies that he may be dealing privately with his own demons. Whether these demons are his urges toward young boys, or another crisis of faith and morality, is left to the reader to decide, but the struggle itself is strongly implied.

“It’s the habit. It catches us up more than not. What with our being in black and white, and so prone to falling, we’re more like dominos than anything else.” 

Though speaking about Sister Veronica’s fall on a branch, this image also symbolizes Sister Aloysius’s preoccupation with her own role as moral symbol. She, too, perhaps gets tripped up in the symbol of her habit and role, causing her own moral fall.

“You just want things to be resolved so you can have simplicity back.” 

Sister Aloysius continues to be unrelenting in her judgment of Father Flynn, and of Sister James’s unease at the accusations. Here, Sister Aloysius refuses to see hesitation as anything other than weakness.

“What actually happens in life is beyond interpretation. The truth makes for a bad sermon. It tends to be confusing and have no clear conclusion.” 

Contrary to Sister Aloysius, Father Flynn clearly believes in moral gray areas. Here, in defending his use of parables in his sermons, he is showcasing an unwillingness to apply moral certainty to his own life in the way that Sister Aloysius does—where clear choices are to her still present, though difficult.

“The most innocent actions can appear sinister to the poisoned mind.” 

Father Flynn, in defending himself, paints Sister Aloysius as an unreliable moral compass. He strives to put doubt in Sister James’s mind about his guilt, trying to introduce reasonable doubt into her perception of the situation.

“She sees me talk in a human way to these children and she immediately assumes there must be something wrong with it. Something dirty. Well, I’m not going to let her keep this parish in the Dark Ages! And I’m not going to let her destroy my spirit of compassion!” 

Father Flynn attempts to defend himself to Sister James using different angles. Here, the reader is left to wonder if he is emotionally manipulating Sister James by playing on her own sense of progressive familiarity toward the children, or if he is simply attempting to connect with her given their common values. In either case, he begins to set up an argument in which he and Sister James oppose the retrograde and suspicious actions of Sister Aloysius.

“There are people who go after your humanity, Sister James, who tell you the light in your heart is a weakness. That your soft feelings betray you. I don’t believe that. It’s an old tactic of cruel people to kill kindness in the name of virtue. Don’t believe it. There’s nothing wrong with love.” 

This is the argument that really sways Sister James. Father Flynn furthers the idea that compassionate people like Sister James and himself must fight for their innocence and warmth against the cruelty of inflexible moral guardians like Sister Aloysius. It appeals to her sense that this pursuit is clouding her relationship to God, and whether it’s an act of laziness to believe this (as Sister Aloysius suggests), or an act of faith in her own spirituality, is left to the reader to decide.

“Well, I would prefer not to see it that way if you don’t mind.” 

Mrs. Muller’s initial reaction to the suggestion of an inappropriate relationship between Donald and Father Flynn is a call for ignorance. She inhabits Sister Aloysius’s earlier assertion that innocence is a form of laziness, by pleading a desire to stay uninformed.

“You’re not going against no man in a robe and win, Sister. He’s got the position.” 

Even Mrs. Muller sees that the Church’s gender-based hierarchy prevents Sister Aloysius from taking direct action against Father Flynn. She’s resigned to Sister Aloysius’s impotence, and prefers to use it as an excuse to drop the issue.

“You’re the one forcing people to say these things out loud. Things are in the air and you leave them alone if you can. That’s what I know. My boy came to this school ‘cause they were gonna kill him at the public school. So we were lucky enough to get him in here for his last year. Good. His father don’t like him. He comes here, the kids don’t like him. One man is good to him. This priest. Puts a hand to the boy. Does the man have his reasons? Yes. Everybody has their reasons.” 

Mrs. Muller’s argument is similar to that of Sister Aloysius in that she thinks the “ends justify the means,” though her conviction prompts an opposite path. She sees the end goals as a good education for Donald, and the closest thing he has to a compassionate male figure in his life. She does not understand this inappropriate relationship in black and white terms, nor even as definitively real; she thinks it something that Donald might even gain from, should it exist in the first place.

“I will do what needs to be done, Father, if it means I’m damned to Hell!” 

Sister Aloysius’s drive to prove her point, and, in her mind, to guide Donald, goes further than is rational. In her dogged pursuit of what she perceives as justice, she would sacrifice her own soul. This is seen as either a noble self-sacrifice or a twisted expression of her doggedness depending on one’s interpretation of the play.

“Are we people? Am I a person flesh and blood like you? Or are we just ideas and convictions. I can’t say everything. Do you understand? There are things I can’t say. Even if you can’t imagine the explanation, Sister, remember that there are circumstances beyond your knowledge. Even if you feel certainty, it is an emotion and not a fact.” 

Father Flynn’s final appeal to Sister Aloysius synthesizes his point of view’s entire argument. It is an appeal to her sense of humanity, and to attempt to turn her away from the moral certainty upon which she’s based her actions. He pleads with her to entertain the idea of doubt in her own beliefs, which she has not displayed up until this point.