Doubt: A Parable

Sister Alyosius states that “when you take a step to address wrongdoing, you are taking a step away from God, but in His service” (20). At the end of the play, she even goes so far as to say that she would damn herself to hell to do what needs to be done. Ultimately, she believes that if the greater good is served, it’s all in the service of God. Mrs. Muller, as well, believes that a good outcome is more important than addressing temporary trauma. When confronted with the potentially inappropriate relationship between her son and Father Flynn, she insists that ultimately, Father Flynn is a positive influence, and that bearing the remainder of the year will set Donald up for a better high school and a chance at college. Both women believe that eventual justice is more important than avoiding wrongdoing, but are set on very different paths.

Father Flynn refers to isolated men in crisis throughout the play. In the opening sermon, when discussing President Kennedy’s assassination, he says that it was awful, but was at least a public experience: “How much worse is it then for the lone man, the lone woman, stricken by private calamity?” he asks (5). Later, when discussing the windstorm with the nuns, Father Flynn says “Imagine what it must’ve been like in the frontier days when a man alone in the woods sat by a fire in his buckskins and listened to a sound like that. Imagine the loneliness! The immense darkness pressing in! How frightening it must’ve been!” (26). Donald Muller, too, is referred to as “isolated” because of his race (21). For him, this isolation becomes a vulnerability that Sister Aloysius believes Father Flynn exploits. And for Father Flynn, his preoccupation with private pain suggests that perhaps he is struggling with inappropriate urges that he cannot express to anyone. Sister Aloysius and Sister James, however, are bound together. As Father Flynn says in his opening sermon: “Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty” (6).