First Confession
First ConfessionMrs. Ryan and the Priest
In Frank O’Connor’s story “First Confession”, Mrs. Ryan and the priest are different. Mrs. Ryan and the priest approach Jackie differently and have different affects on him.
Mrs. Ryan makes Jackie feel like a sinner in her approach to him. She teaches him how to examine his heart by asking himself a few questions, “Did we take the name of the Lord, our God in Vain? Did we honor our father and mother? Did we love our neighbors as ourselves? Did we covet our neighbors goods?”(614). This made Jackie feel like he is a sinner because he feels that he was not honoring his grandmother and feels that he coveted Nora’s penny she got every week from their grandmother.
Mrs. Ryan affects Jackie by making him feel that confession is scary. After telling her story about the man who made a bad confession, Jackie becomes scared of going to confession. Mrs. Ryan is trying to scare Jackie so that he won’t make a bad confession but instead she causes him to become scared of going to confession. Jackie becomes so scared that he starts to think, “…I would make a bad confession and then die in the night and be continually coming back and burning people’s furniture” (616).
The priest uses an approach of understanding. He understands Jackie’s thought of being a sinner, for instance, he tells Jackie that there are a lot of people he would like to go after...
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