Department of English

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

 

First Confession

(1951)


Frank O'Connor

(September 17, 1903 – March 10, 1966)

 

 

"First Confession" Notes

This short story was first published as "Repentence" in Lovat Dickson's Magazine in 1935, under its current title in Harper's Bazaar in 1939, and later revised and collected in Traveller's Samples: Stories and Tales in 1951, with a few other published variations.


  

175  porter: a dark beer
  • (Oxford Dictionaries)
    1 a person employed to carry luggage and other loads, especially in a railway station, airport, hotel, or market.
    British a hospital employee who moves equipment or patients.
    a person employed to carry supplies on a mountaineering expedition.
    North American a sleeping-car attendant.
    2 [mass noun] dark brown bitter beer brewed from malt partly charred or browned by drying at a high temperature: a nice pint of porter
    [count noun]: the company produces a bottle-conditioned porter
    [originally made as a drink for porters]
  • (Beverage Testing Institute)
    Porters are red-brown to black in color, medium to medium-full bodied, and characterized by a flavor profile that can vary from very subtle dark malts to fully roasted, smoky flavors. Being a centuries old style, there are differences of opinion with regard to what a "true" porter was actually like and there can be wide variations from one brewer’s interpretation to the next. Roasted malt should provide the flavoring character, rather than roasted barley as is used with stouts. Stronger, darker versions and lighter more delicate versions are equally valid manifestations of the style. The influence of hops can often be notable in the richer craft brewed examples of the style. Although Porter was the drink of the masses of the 1700s London, it is not a significant factor in the British market today, despite the production of a few outstanding English examples. In the US it is enjoying new found popularity among US craft brewers and many fine US examples are produced.


176  fastidious:

176  sergeant-major:

176  steering:

176  bread-knife: a long knife with serrated edge for cutting bread


176  flaking: to flake in Irish slang means to beat, to thrash, to hit

176  heart-scalded: disgusted

176  first confession:

176  Communion:

176  the other place: Heaven

176  half-crown: a coin worth two shillings and sixpence; no longer used


178  butter wouldn't melt in her mouth: Nora is using a demure or virtuous sounding voice when confessing to the priest.

180  biretta: a stiff, square cap with three or four upright projecting ridges

priest in biretta, NYPL
  • a square cap with three ridges on top worn by clergymen especially of the Roman Catholic Church (Merriam-Webster)




181  begor: short for begorrah or begorra; wow; Irish form of the English exclamation begad, or "by God!"

181  roaring:

181  Jay: short for Jesus

182  trams:

182  sour puss: Nora had an unpleasant resentful expression on her face when she saw the priest accompanying Jackie out of the church.

182  Hail Marys:

182  bullseyes: round, hard candy





      

"Repentance" (1935)
"First Confession" (1939)
"First Confession" (1951)
Micky had to explain what sort of woman his grandmother was, that she drank porter, took snuff and went about the house in her bare feet. It was all made infinitely easier because the priest never once took his eyes off Micky's face, and at eery few words interrupted with a sympathetic "Tut-tut!" or "Well! well!" As he seemed to be so interested and understanding, Micky thought he might as well tell him the whole thing; how he had planned to come behind her while she was eating a meal of potatoes and hit her over the head with a hatchet. They had a discussion about the hatchet. The priest thought a knife would have been better, as there would be a danger that the old woman would scream. Micky admitted that he hadn't thought of that, but this wasn't quite true, as he had thought of it vaguely, but had rejected it because he couldn't imagine himself running a knife into her. (68–69)








     "And why do you want to kill her?"
     "Oh, God, father, she's a horrible woman!"
     "Is she now?"
     "She is, father."
     "What way is she horrible?"
     Jackie paused to think. It was hard to explain.
     "She takes snuff, father."
     "Oh, my!"
     "And she goes round in her bare feet, father."
     "Tut-tut-tut!"
     "She's a horrible woman, father," said Jackie with a sudden earnestness. "She takes porter. And she ates the potatoes off the table with her hands. And me mother do be out working most days, and since that one came 'tis she gives us our dinner and I can't ate the dinner." He found himself sniffling. "And she gives pinnies to Nora and she doesn't give no pinnies to me because she knows I can't stand her. And me father sides with her, father, and he bates me, and me heart is broken and wan night in bed I made it up the way I'd kill her." (118)
     He seemed a bit shaken by that all right, because he didn't say anything for a while.
     "My goodness," he said at last, "that'd be a shocking thing to do. What put that into your head?"
     "Father," I said, feeling very sorry for myself, "she's an awful woman."
     "Is she?" he asked. "What way is she awful?"
     "She takes porter, father," said I, knowing well from the way the mother talked of porter that it must be a mortal sin, and hoping it might make the priest see my point of view.
     "Oh, my!" he said.
     "And snuff, father," said I.
     "She's a bad case all right, Jackie," he said.
     "And she goes round in her bare feet, father," said I. "And she know I don't like her, and she gives pennies to Nora and none to me, and my da sides with her and beats me, so one night I was so heart-scalded I made up my mind I'd have to kill her."
     "And what would you do with the body?" he asked with great interest.
     "I was thinking I could cut it up and carry it away in a barrow I have," said I.
     "Begor, Jackie," said he, "do you know, you're a terrible child?"
     "I know, father," said I. (I was thinking the same thing myself.) "I tried to kill Nora too, with a bread knife, under the table, only I missed her." (12–13)

 




it had been published and paid for, but it still continued to haunt me. After ten years I realised what was wrong with it. It was too spread out in time. After all, it's a story of a small boy who goes to Confession and confesses that he had planned to kill his grandmother. It should have been more concentrated. So I rewrote it, confining it to an hour instead of to months. I also published that, and once again felt that I had been a clever man and recognized my own weaknesses before the damage had gone too far. But then...I realised that I had made a still greater mistake. Instead of saying "I planned to kill my grandmother" what I had said in effect was that Jackie had planned to kill his grandmother. I knew the consequences of that change of person: I knew the grandmother was going to go down the drain, and the priest who heard the boy's confession was going to go down the drain, and that nothing would remain but whatever impression they had managed to leave on that small boy's highly excitable imagination. But it had to be done...I rewrote it again, and...I have never wanted to touch that story since.
--Frank O'Connor, "One Man's Way," 157.




 

      

Study Questions

  • O'Connor tells Michael Longley in a 1963 interview that he is a "very fast" writer, getting a story down in a matter of hours. But he also says that "then I polish endlessly." For this short story that process of relooking at written work took as long as ten years. That was how much time it took him to realize, as he relates in the essay "One Man's Way," that he made the "greater mistake" of attaching a wrong point of view to an earlier publication of the story. In this later version that we are reading, with the switch to first person point of view, what problems was he able to fix? Compare, for example, the same scene from three published stories above. In what ways does O'Connor's use of the first person allow for vivid characterization and more effective storytelling?

  • How reliable is Jackie as a narrator? What are some things that he misreads or is misguided about?
  • Nora "had ways of tormenting [Jackie] that Mother never knew of" (177). What does Nora do to torture her brother? How is it painful for him?
  • When is Nora being sincere and when is she not? How can you tell?
  • Jackie is very repetitive about how Gran is to blame for every bad thing in his life. Does this change?
  • Among Jackie's list of sins, which seems to weigh on his conscience the most?
  • Jackie the narrator is "scared to death of confession," particularly of bad confession, since he feels pressured to make one and is in complete empathy with "the fellow in Mrs. Ryan's story." Is Jackie's dreaded first confession good or bad? What role does the priest play in the outcome of the confession?
  • Trace the descriptive terms associated with the grandmother and with Jackie from the beginning of the story through the end. What do you find?
  • For a story not about her, the grandmother turns up quite frequently. What is she doing in the narrative?
  • What does the wait—"You'd better wait now till I'm finished with these old ones." (180)—give the priest and Jackie?

 


 

Review Sheet

 

Characters

Jackie – the narrator; seven years old ("a fellow confessing after seven years")
Nora – Jackie's sister (176); "sucked up to the old woman for the penny she got every Friday out of the old-age pension" (176); "Nora let on to be very indignant (she wasn't, of course, but she knew Mother saw through her, so she sided with Gran)" (176)
grandmother, Gran – "my father's mother" (175); "had a fat, wrinkled old face" (175);
Mother – "to Mother's great indignation, [Gran] went round the house in bare feet" (175); "Mother came in from work and made my dinner" (176)
Father – "Father gave me a flaking; Mother interfered, and for days after that he didn't speak to me and Mother barely spoke to Nora" (176)
Mrs. Ryan – "It was an old woman called Ryan who prepared us [seven-year-old boys] for these [first confession and Communion]" (176); "She was about the one age with Gran; she was well-to-do, lived in a big house on Montenotte, wore a black cloak and bonnet" (176)
Bill Connell – "the sergeant major's son" (176)
young priest – "the astonished face of a young priest looking up at me" (179)

Setting

Jackie's house –
Sunday school –
church – "I remember that steep hill down to the church" (178); "hurling me through the church door" (178)
        confession box – "The next time, the priest steered me into the confession box himself" (180)



Vocabulary


humor
comic, comical
irony, ironic
overstatement

Charater, Characterization 
foil
personality
direct presentation of character
indirect presentation of character
show v. tell
consistency in character behavior
motivation
plausibility of character: is the character credible? convincing?
flat character
round character, multidimensional character
static character
developing character
direct methods of revealing character:
Plot
Freytag's Pyramid
beginning, middle, end
scene
chance, coincidence
double plot
subplot, underplot
deus ex machina
disclosure, discovery
story
conflict, internal conflict, external conflict, clash of actions, clash of ideas, clash of desires, clash of wills
protagonist
antagonist
suspense
mystery
dilemma
surprise
ending
artistic unity
time sequence
exposition
complication
rising action, falling action
crisis
climax
anti-climax
conclusion
resolution
denouement
flashback, retrospect
foreshadowing

Point of View 
third-person point of view
intrusive narrator
unintrusive/impersonal/objective narrator
limited  point of view
omniscient point of view
editorial omniscience
neutral omniscience
selective omniscience
limited omniscient

second-person point of view

first-person point of view
self-conscious narrator
fallible, unreliable narrator
first person observer
first person participant
innocent eye


 

 

Sample Student Responses to Frank O'Connor's "First Confession" 


 

Study Question: 

 

Response 1:

 

 

 

 

 

Sanithatai Tavornlertamorn

2202232 Introduction to the Study of English Fiction

Acharn Puckpan Tipayamontri

July 2, 2007

Reading Response 1

  

Learning Fear, Learning Joy

 

The difference between hell and heaven, one might say, is that one is associated with fear and the other joy. Jackie’s seven years’ experience of his religion in Frank O’Connor’s “First Confessions” is, on one hand, defined by those like Mrs. Ryan who “talk[s] to us of hell” which “ha[s] the first place in her heart” (176), and, on the other, by those like the young priest who inspires joy (180). While Nora seems like “the raging malicious devil” (178), evoking anger and fear, the young priest, despite his irreverence (“Begor” 181), is a man of god.

Throughout the story we see Jackie’s fear mounting to a climax at the moment of meeting with the priest, after which the description that is full of terms like suffered (176), mortified, shocking, scared to death (177), bitterly (178), and lost gives way to an uplifting set of words: joy (180), relief, and confidently (182). The contrastive scenarios seem to be a critique of much of Catholic indoctrination, teaching people to be afraid rather than to be assured. Why would the Catholic church and its associates teach fear instead of joy when, as the story shows, the latter is so much more effective? One method turns up haunting tortured ghosts trying to remedy withheld sins, and the other, joyful, method? It results in a full account of sins, sincere regret, a clear conscience. All in all, a good confession.

 


Works Cited


O'Connor, Frank. “First Confession.” Collected Stories. New York: Knopf, 1981. 175–82. Print.


 

 

 

 

 

            

 

 

 


Links

 


Media
  • Frank O'Connor's "First Confession," by Scoil Oilibhéir (2012; video clip of performance adapted from the short story)

  • Frank O'Connor's "First Confession" (audio clip of O'Connor reading an earlier version of the story, 13:06 min.)


  • Frank O'Connor, "The first story of mine" (video clip of O'Connor talking about and reading from "Guests of the Nation," 4:27 min.)

  • Richard Ford, "O'Connor's Voice," The Lonely Voice, RTÉ (video clip, 0:41 min.)

 


Frank O'Connor

 



 

Reference

O'Connor, Frank. "First Confession." Collected Stories. New York: Knopf, 1981. 175–82. Print.



Further Reading






 

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Last updated September 1, 2014