Innocence by Seán O'Faoláin
"Innocence" by Seán O'Faoláin explores the complex relationship between a father and his young son as the father reflects on his own childhood experiences with guilt and confession. The narrative is framed around the father's observations of his son, who is being prepared for his first confession by nuns. While the son views the act as a mere game, the father is acutely aware of the deeper implications tied to sin and understanding that he himself grappled with at a similar age.
Through his reflections, the father recalls a moment of terror from his own past when he falsely confessed to a priest, which marked the beginning of his awareness of deceit and guilt. This moment serves as a stark reminder of the inevitable loss of innocence and the fears that accompany growing up. The father's love for his son allows him to appreciate the child's innocence as a fleeting yet precious phase of life, contrasting it with the burdens of adulthood. The story poignantly captures themes of innocence, guilt, and the passage of time, inviting readers to reflect on their own experiences with these universal concepts.
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Innocence by Seán O'Faoláin
First published: 1946
Type of plot: Wit and humor
Time of work: About 1915
Locale: Dublin, Ireland
Principal Characters:
The narrator , the father of a seven-year-old boy about to have his first confessionThe old Augustinian priest
The Story
A father reminisces about what happened to him forty years earlier when, after confession, for "the first time I knew that I had committed sin." The occasion for this recollection is the sight of his seven-year-old son being prepared by nuns for his first confession: The father knows that his son does not really believe in the practice—it is "a kind of game" between the nuns and the priest. The father recognizes that his boy, who often calls his father "A Pig," is "a terrible liar," given to tantrums. However, the father's love allows him to understand and value the son's childishness.
Given hindsight, the father knows that someday his boy "will really do something wicked" and will be overcome with fear. He recalls how he experienced terror when, as a boy, he falsely confessed to an old and feeble priest that he had committed adultery. It was the priest's reaction to this confession that generated the terror that the narrator knows his son will one day feel: "Then horrible shapes of understanding came creeping toward me along the dark road of my ignorance"—the priest had mistaken him for a girl. To escape, he was ready to tell any lie: "I was like a pup caught in a bramble bush, recanting and retracting," desperately seeking the words of absolution and penance.
The father recollects vividly his fear and guilt, his sense of being polluted: "I knew that from then on I would always be deceiving everybody because I had something inside me that nobody must ever know. I was afraid of the dark night before me." He realizes now how the innocence of his son resembles "that indescribably remote and tender star" that he glimpsed in his isolation. This insight converts his son's mischief into a precious sign of a necessary but now past and irretrievable stage of spiritual development.