On the Left Side
Sins are inevitable. People make sins every day without them even knowing it. But when they do, they tell their sins to God and God will forgive them. That is not how life works to all people who believes in God. God may see past a sin but that is not the case for some people. Some people cannot see past a sin and that is what we see in this short story from 1991 On the Left Side. This short story deals with almost a whole town of hypocrites who has supported a project, which was to send someone to Burundi, some state in Central Africa, to set up and run a medical mission. The choice landed on Sister Philomena O’Halloran. After twenty years of work, she sent a young African back to the hometown, Conn, in Western Ireland, and the reception was shocking as they easily could see, from his looks, who the mother was. The narrator is a woman who has also sinned by getting a baby with a man outside a marriage, just as Sister Philomena O’Halloran. “The right side of the church is filled to bursting, while only ten people – myself and nine other sinners – sit on the left.” (p.1, l.2). After Father O’Rourke and as good as the rest of Conn had dropped their investments in Sister Philomena O’Halloran’s mission, the narrator were still managing to raise money, in a fond she had raised herself, and sent them to Sister Philomena O’Halloran, but it were not as much as it used to be. The narrator is mad on the way Father O’Rourke is keeping Friday outside and how Friday is being treated by Father O’Rourke. Just as Friday arrived with the train to Conn to spend Christmas with his benefactors, Father O’Rourke was suspicious and out-asked him with stupid questions instead of just welcome him with good manners. We can also see in the narrators tone in the beginning that she is mad, as she describes the half with heat as “The right half.” (p.1, l.16). She writes it in