The grandmother’s country-like mannerisms are contrasting with the town life that the family is adapted to. Jackie narrates, “my grandmother was a real old countrywoman and quite unsuited to the life in town. She had a fat, wrinkled old face, and, to Mother's great indignation, went round the house in bare feet-the boots had her crippled, she said. For dinner she had a jug of porter and a pot of potatoes with-some-times-a bit of salt fish, and she poured out the potatoes on the table and ate them slowly, with great relish, using her fingers by way of a fork.” The principal root of skirmish in the family is accredited to the Country versus Town binary. The grandmother exasperates Jackie’s mother, who is her daughter-in-law, through her bearings which are not applicable for a town setting. Unmistakably, the grandmother is not habituated with the urbane ethos.
Confession dictates paramount honesty, whereby the confessor divulges all his/her depravities and aberrant intents. Ryan persuades the children against fabricating ‘bad confessions’ (false) using a priest’s encounter. Rayna relates, “Then the priest knew it was a bad case, because the fellow was after making a bad confession and committing a mortal sin. He got up to dress, and just then the cock crew in the yard outside, and lo and behold! - when the priest looked round there was no sign of the fellow, only a smell of burning timber, and when the priest looked at his bed didn't he see the print of two hands burned in it? That was because the fellow had made a bad confession. This story made a shocking impression on me.” The exemplification vis-à-vis the ‘two hands burned’ hints at the grim corollaries of ‘bad confessions.’ Had the fellow been candid in his confessions, the ‘burned hands’ would not have manifested. The figurative hands relate to the concept of hell whereby the definitive chastisement for sinners would be to blazing unremittingly.
“The Drunkard”
Mick Delaney undergoes a damaging relapse following Mr. Dooley’s departure: “Father ordered lemonade and two pints. I was thirsty and swallowed my drink at once. But that wasn’t Father’s way. He had long months of abstinence behind him and an eternity of pleasure before. He took out his pipe, blew through it, filled it, and then lit it with loud pops, his eyes bulging above it. After that he deliberately turned his back on the pint, leaned one elbow on the counter in the attitude of a man who did not know there was a pint behind him, and deliberately brushed the tobacco from his palms.” He degenerates straightforwardly in the course of grieving his acquaintance’s expiration. Although Larry is his ‘brake’, he cannot forestall the slippery slope of his father’s reversion. The degeneration affects Larry who becomes a drunkard as result of being in a bar which his father. The bar predisposes Larry to inebriation. Larry had not premeditated to be an alcoholic like his father for he has perceived the deleterious repercussions of boozing. Mick Delaney’s resolution to take Larry to the bar with him is tantamount to appealing to Larry with the threat of alcoholism which he submits to ultimately.
