Doubt can never be compared with certainty in terms of providing a sense of community powerful as faith. A community in doubt is a divided community sine people live with mistrust and cannot tell what they expect of that community. As a single mother, I have never trusted any man who claims that he can take care of me and my child. It is not easy to trust a man anymore after what I have learnt from my married friends and how their husbands are unfaithful. This doubt creates mistrust a and poor social bonds between me and men within the society.
Personal innocence is not something that one should lose so easily. There is need to weigh between experience and innocence, once one innocence is let go it is not easily to gain it back. Innocence should however not be a reason to play safe and live an ignorant life.
The ball point that Sister Aloysius uses symbolizes the conflict between her and Father Brendan, she prefers the fountain pen because it is not as fast as the ball point, and she therefore has time to think about what she is writing about. She does not accept other people’s points or give her opinion without thinking of what she should write about. This is symbolized by the fountain pen that she uses. She is a character who does not change her made once it is made up; there is nobody who can convince her to change her ideas so easily.
Sister Aloysius starts suspecting Fr.Flynn after his sermon on doubt. She asks Sister James to watch for anything unusual. She was able to prove that there was something going on between Fr.Flynn and Donald who was the only African American students after she saw the father staffing Donald’s undershirt into his locker. She believes in her intuitions, in her quest for the truth and does not rely on the conviction of other people. Her truth is relative and not absolute relying on her intuitions can result to ignorance of the real truth as she pursues her own truth; she should be ready to listen to others before making her own misguided judgment.
If Sister Aloysius presumes innocence, her quest for the truth might fade away if she presumes guilt she will have the desire to pursue it until she finds enough evidence against Fr.Flynn.
Father Flynn does not have any other men to work around him, and the sisters are not in support of him, they believe that he as a man has a lot of powers while they look powerless. The nuns are determined to prove that Father Flynn is engaged in something which is not right and due to the gender segregation they are ready to prove that they are much powerful than men. At the end of the play, the power that Sister Aloysius had been seeking is thwarted since she loses. She loses her faith which she had held for so long.
Sister Aloysius feels that she had accused Father Flynn falsely, and this raised doubts in her. She had a strong distaste for men whom she thought had more privileges than men. She had lost her faith in pursuit of her doubts which was against her religion. She had gone against the will of GOD by lying about the father so that he would resign.
Work Cited
Shanley, John Patrick. Doubt: a parable. New York: Theatre Communications Group ;, 2005. Print.
