Father Flynn escaped the paralysis of poverty relatively early in his life. As an exemplary student, he was able to study abroad in Rome. This education allowed him to pursue a career with the Catholic Church and therefore escape the constraints of poverty. Just as he seems to be enjoying his freedom, Father Flynn drops a chalice in mass and everything changes. His sister Eliza notes, “That affected his mind” (Joyce 11). There is no explanation for the dropping of the chalice, but his sister believes it to be the cause of his later signs of mental instability, saying, “It was that chalice he broke. […] That was what was the beginning of it” (Joyce 11). Joyce leaves sufficient clues, however, that the dropping of the chalice is not a cause, but an effect of the paralysis that is already beginning to spread; however, Joyce also leaves the cause of this paralysis a mystery.

Father Flynn's sister Eliza seems to believe that the priesthood took a toll on her brother's health: “'He was too scrupulous always,' she said. "The duties of the priesthood was too much for him"” (Joyce 10). By calling Father Flynn scrupulous, Eliza implies that he considered his vocation a serious responsibility, possibly one that was very intimidating. Indeed, the way that Father Flynn presents the mysteries of the priesthood to the narrator is daunting to the boy: “The duties of the priest towards the eucharist and towards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave to me that I wondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake them” (Joyce 7). Father Flynn might have revered the Church and his moral responsibility so much that he feared that he was unable to do all that he needed. Paralysis by fear could have led Father Flynn to his state of mental instability.

Father Flynn could also have been paralyzed by the corruption of the Catholic Church. At the beginning of the story, the narrator ponders the word “simony” in comparison to the word “paralysis.” His relation of each word to Father Flynn hints at what could have been common knowledge to the characters of the story. Similarly, in his frightening dream of the old priest, the narrator wonders why Father Flynn's face is smiling and thinks, “it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin” (Joyce 5). Father Flynn is called a simoniac with little doubt, leading the reader to believe that his corruption could have been the cause of his mental unsteadiness. In fact, it is in a confession box that Father Flynn finally shows concrete signs of insanity: “sitting up by himself in the dark in his confession box, wide awake and laughing-like softly to himself” (Joyce 11). With the confession box as a clue, Joyce hints that Father Flynn was possibly driven mad by the paralysis of his own guilt.

The narrator is thus given a choice. He seems to be paralyzed by his own surroundings. As a young boy, he is taught to play with the other boys his age, but he is very intellectual and spends most of his time with Father Flynn, who teaches him Latin and the mysteries of the Church. He clearly despises Old Cotter's ignorance and is upset when Old Cotter speaks badly about Father Flynn: “I crammed my mouth with stirabout for fear I might give utterance to my anger. Tiresome old rednosed imbecile!” (Joyce 5). This shows the boy's respect for Father Flynn. However, Old Cotter and the boy's uncle have a valid concern about the priest: he is certainly mentally unstable. So, although spending time with the priest is intellectually helpful to the boy, the reader is left wondering if the narrator will follow his friend's path, and if the initial escape from the paralysis of poverty and ignorance with eventually lead to a fall.

The boy seems to understand that Father Flynn is a negative influence in his life even though he cannot comprehend it. He comments on how uncomfortable he first felt in the presence of the older man, and the dead priest also haunts the narrator in a dream. When Father Flynn dies, the boy feels liberated from his mentor's expectations of him, saying, “I felt it strange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt even annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I had been freed from something by his death” (Joyce 6). Perhaps the narrator senses the paralysis of Father Flynn by the Church and knows that he will be free of it in the future.

The narrator is left with a decision that the reader will never see finalized. He can listen to Old Cotter and his uncle and become like the other boys his age, or he can join the priesthood to escape the plain life and lack of knowledge that does not stimulate his intellect. Either way, however, it seems that he will be paralyzed by one factor or another. Through his dream of Persia, Joyce hints that the boy's possible salvation lies in the pursuit of knowledge for creative and imaginative means as opposed to the fear and structure brought on by knowledge of the Church.

 

Many scholars see the hero Aeneas as a model that Virgil was presenting for the emperor Augustus to follow. Throughout the epic, Aeneas is referred to as “pious Aeneas,” and it is apparent that Virgil is stressing this piety and reverence for a reason (Lecture, Dr. Gleason, 10/11). Augustus was a young man with a huge amount of power, and it was around this time that the Roman republic started to become more like an empire (Lecture, Dr. Griffin, 10/15). It can be argued that Virgil used The Aeneid to remind Augustus of the values that had been important in Roman culture in the past and what a good leader should be like (Lecture, Dr. Gleason, 10/11). In several places, he almost directly states his purpose, as when Aeneas's father Anchises tells Aeneas directly what he should strive to do: “Roman, remember by your strength to rule Earth's peoples-for your arts are to be these: to pacify, to impose the rule of law, to spare the conquered, battle down the proud” (The Aeneid in Norton Anthology 1 1123).

Euripides is a little less straightforward about the purpose of The Bacchae, but the image he presents is far more extreme. Whereas in The Aeneid, the correct values are shown through advice to Aeneas and through his actions, Euripides criticizes Athens not by offering a solution to the problem, but by diagnosing it with symbols and the exaggeration of disorder. Pentheus can be viewed as a symbol for the polis of Athens (Lecture, Dr. Freis, 9/27). As Athens was in the Peloponnesian War, Pentheus was war-mongering without the support of the people. The wise Tiresias says, “A man who influences others with overbearing is dangerous for his city: he lacks reason” (The Bacchae 20). Pentheus was fighting for order and the involvement of all of his people in his kingdom against the chaos of outside forces, just as Athens was fighting and trying to control outsiders instead of merely the members of the polis. Perhaps the violent death of Pentheus symbolizes the lives lost in the Peloponnesian War, which many of the Greeks thought to be pointless (Lecture, Dr. Freis, 9/27).

Both of these works of literature also provide a commentary on the religious values of the time. In The Aeneid, it is shown that the gods are important and should be worshipped. Aeneas states, “Filthy with war, just come from slaughter, I must never touch these sacred things until I bathe myself within a running stream” (The Aeneid in Norton Anthology 1 1083). This reverence is stated clearly, and it shows that Virgil believed reverence to be an important aspect of Roman culture that should not be lost. In The Bacchae, however, Euripides indirectly suggests that the blind following of the gods is foolish, leading to chaos and death. Possibly showing how shallow the worship of gods to such an extreme extent is, Euripides is also hinting that a shift in focus is necessary in Athens, but, once again, his meaning is hidden behind far more extreme events.

As a social commentary, The Bacchae is both more indirect and more radical than The Aeneid. Where The Aeneid states directly what Augustus should do and what role Rome should have in the world, The Bacchae uses symbols and the exaggeration of human emotions and decisions to show what the Athenians should not do. It is radical in that the situations on the play are violent and drastic, whereas in The Aeneid, nothing out of the ordinary happens to convey Virgil's point.