Film Analysis: Doubt By John Patrick Shanley

When most people feel like they are close to God; they usually make good moral decisions. In Doubt by John Patrick Shanley; Sister Aloysius tells Sister James that “In the pursuit of wrongdoing, one steps away from God. Of course, there’s a price.” When stepping away from God someone is committing sins and they are doing things that are usually not accepted. As the main characters stepped away from God, they had to pay the price of making wrong choices and the price of being pressured by those choices. Stepping away from God to do things that are wrong is not worth it. Sister James made bad choices every time she had stepped away from God. Sister James is the ego in between Father Flynn and Sister Aloysius, as the ego Sister James is the

Nicholas church is willing to step away from god and do wrong things. Father Flynn is seen to have a large amount of indulgences. During the dinner with the priests father Flynn is seen eating bloody meat and wine (film). These luxuries that he has symbolizes his love for indulgences as they are not items that are easily obtained. With his nails, Father Flynn keeps them clean and “likes them a little long” (16). This example of the motif of hands also shows that he loves to indulge in himself as he keeps his nails as long as he wants. He further indulges when he is talking with James and Aloysius in Aloysius’ office he takes “three” (28) cubes of sugar. When Flynn and Sister James are talking in the garden, the stage directions read “The crow caws. He yells at it” (42). Shanley uses zoomorphism by making Aloysius the crow, as the crow is making noise, Flynn is trying to silence it. During Father Flynn’s sermon about Doubt, Father Flynn uses the metaphor of a man in a boat lost at sea. Father Flynn had said that this man had “began to have doubts” (6). Flynn may use this metaphor as a relation to him. Father Flynn may be beginning to have doubts in his faith. The epigraph in the beginning of the play reads “The bad sleep well”. In the scene where Sister James and Father Flynn are speaking in the garden, Sister James tells Father Flynn that she has “one bad dream” (38) and she has not “slept right since” (38). Since she cannot sleep she is supposed to be good according to the epigraph, this is juxtaposed against Father Flynn who says “I can’t sleep on occasion” (38). Since he can’t sleep on occasion this means that he is mostly bad and has very little conscience that can keep him