Doubt: A Parable

John Patrick Shanley

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 2005

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Summary

Scene Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Scene 2

Scenes 3-4

Scenes 5-6

Scenes 7-9

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

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Preface-Scene 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface Summary

The preface outlines the emotional core of the play. Shanley posits that we live in “a culture of extreme advocacy, of confrontation, of judgment and of verdict” surrounding a core of total ignorance and doubt (vii). Doubt, insists Shanely, is an interesting dramatic moment that express itself when one is “on the verge of growth” (viii). He wrote Doubt to analyze that moment, and also to explore his own childhood experiences in Catholic school in the 1960s, a time when “the whole world seemed to be going through some kind of vast puberty” (viii). In Shanley’s view, the faith of students and religious leaders there was a “shared dream” (ix), adherence to which made them “terribly vulnerable” (ix). As outside forces sought to dismantle their faith and way of life, its guardians “sacrificed actual good for perceived virtue” (ix).

Scene 1 Summary

This scene introduces Father Flynn, a priest in his late thirties, described as working-class and from the Northeast. He gives a sermon throughout the short scene. The opening line of the play is his question, “What do you do when you’re not sure?” (5), and the sermon analyzes this question through a short parable that presents no answer or resolution. Father Flynn describes a sailor whose ship sank, killing every crewmember but himself. After crafting a raft, the sailor set a course based on the stars. Clouds rolled in and blocked his view for twenty nights, during which time he began to doubt his original course, wondering if he was getting closer to home or going further out to sea. Father Flynn describes this situation as analogous to the crisis of faith being experienced by some in the congregation. He concludes by saying, “Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty. When you are lost, you are not alone” (6).

Scene 2 Summary

Scene 2 introduces Sisters Aloysius, Beauvier, and James. Sister Aloysius, the principal of the school in which the play is set, is a woman in her fifties or sixties, described as “watchful, reserved, unsentimental” (7). Sister James, on the other hand, is in her twenties, also reserved but with “a bit of sunshine in her heart” (7).

Sister James visits Sister Aloysius’s office to check up on a student of hers whose nose had started bleeding. Sister Aloysius says she sent the student (William London) home, and that she thinks the nosebleed was intentional. She cautions Sister James to be more suspicious. Sister Aloysius further chastises Sister James, telling her to be less performative and enthusiastic, to be hard on the bright students, and to work harder, especially when dealing with boys (Sister James’s former teaching experience having been at an all-girls’ school).

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Sister James begins to cry, which Sister Aloysius discourages. She presses Sister James to be less innocent, saying, “Innocence is a form of laziness” (12). “Liars should be frightened to lie to you,” she counsels. “They should be uncomfortable in your presence. I doubt they are” (12).

Sister James mentions Father Flynn, and Sister Aloysius questions her about his sermon, and what she thinks it was about: “Is Father Flynn in Doubt, is he concerned that someone else is in Doubt?” (14). Sister James has no answer, and the conversation concludes with Sister Aloysius asking her to be alert and pay attention.

Preface-Scene 2 Analysis

The opening of the play poses the main question that will be explored in the scenes to follow: “What do you do when you’re not sure?” (5). In his preface, Shanley says that this question is at the heart of his dramatic interest in the play: “There is an uneasy time when belief has begun to slip, but hypocrisy has yet to take hold, when the consciousness is disturbed but not yet altered…It is that crucial moment when I renew my humanity or become a lie” (ix). So, immediately, his play asks us: what does one do in the face of uncertainty? And how does one act if one is uncertain, but one’s profession and beliefs require moral certainty?

Sister Aloysius, for her part, is introduced as a near-caricature. She begins by calling art a “waste of time” (7), and accusing a student of purposefully causing his own nose bleed. She comes off as a ludicrous example of a strict, inflexible educator, going so far as to encourage Sister James to exhibit less enthusiasm as a teacher. She dismisses all signs of progress and change, even ballpoint pens and lipstick in the Christmas pageant. Sister James, meanwhile, is the very portrait of a young, ideal, naïve woman. Sister Aloysius condescendingly tells her: “if things occur in your classroom which you sense require understanding, but you don’t understand, come to me” (13). Sister Aloysius speaks to Sister James as though she is a child, and Sister James cries like one. Sister Aloysius pushes her to cultivate “starch in her character” (15). Scene 2 ends with Sister Aloysius telling Sister James that Sister Veronica is going blind, but that her condition must be kept secret. This is simultaneously an act of kindness and one of subterfuge. Sister Aloysius longs to protect Sister Veronica, but without upsetting her accustomed community.