Catholicism in Paddy Clarke (pg.47-48)

Paddy Clarke lives in small catholic community. His family is very religious as shown throughout the novel as he confides in the priest and looks up to him like a role model. The audience is introduced to Paddy’s simple outlook informed by his Catholic Church education proclaiming, “the best story I ever read was about Fr. Damien and the lepers”. Here, Paddy confides his attitude towards the priest and intensifies the story as the ‘best story ever’ indicating father Damien has influenced his opinions and attitudes in a positive way. Books influence Paddy’s behaviour as he continues to say “I needed some lepers” showing how his imagination in the inner world is encouraged due to books. The fact he read a book about father Damien demonstrates he has grown up in a catholic background surrounded by religious texts that have interested him throughout his life. His education has broadened from reading e.g. the low frequency word ‘lepers’ is used in the correct way by Paddy, which shows he has matured through his learning of the church and is intrigued to find out more.

As Paddy continues to ask questions about the story, his meandering memories are revealed from to episode to episode emphasizing the child like nature he has as an inquisitive young child. He moves onto talking about bread and moves onto what he thinks about church and religion. Humour is brought into the novel here as he says, “I said one hail Mary and four Our Fathers”. Unless talking about something boring, Paddy uses quite formal language ‘because I preferred’ with complex sentences to show his curiosity and interest. He offers his preference to the reader by adding this tag on that refers to his passion of becoming involved with church and using what he’s learnt in his explanations. The formality of this sentence suggests Paddy may have learnt these terms from an older person such as the priest, for example ‘preferred’ is not typical of his idiolect and reinforces his love for learning and exploring new ideas.

In relation to Paddy’s language being too formal, Doyle furthermore emphasizes this in the next passage. His syntax is too formal to be heard from a child of ten but rather learnt from adults or influenced by books. Although paddy may not understand the true meaning of leprosy, his low frequency lexis for example ‘young missionary’ and ‘edified’, portrays his eagerness to learn more information to try and understand the concept of his ‘best ever story’. The small details Paddy illustrates do not reflect his own dialect or accent, but can be identified as those similar to an adult’s literary term. However, in contradiction Paddy’s true dialect is reflected through his unusual lexis later on when he observes the lepers “the lepers were hanging around watching him just kept watching for ages”. This declarative sentence invites Paddy’s frequent informal dialect from a child such as ‘hanging around’; a high frequency term used by children to describe someone who was standing doing nothing. Since he does not consume the literary skills as an adult, he sometimes misses out conventions of speech that he has not learnt about yet.