The Discussion of Doubt in John P. Shanley's play Doubt: A Parable - Essay Example

The fear of doubt being seeded within the community is the basis on which Father Flynn acts in relationship to the accusations leveled against him. Sister Aloysius acts on her doubts about Father Flynn by choosing to make assumptions that are against his activities. Whether or not Father Flynn acted inappropriately sexual with the boy in question is not the point of the play. The play develops a discussion about the power of doubt and the way in which it creates change when it is indulged and spread.

The play Doubt: A Parable was written by John P. Shanley as a discussion about the topic of doubt, leaving answers unwritten and having no resolution other than to see the power of doubt as it tarnishes and works as a destructive force. The play has two nuns, a priest, and the mother of a boy who is the subject of an accusation about Father Flynn. The boy’s voice is not represented in the play. The mother represents her son as a victim in his daily life and that in placing this accusation, the nun will only further the victimization that the boy is experiencing.

Despite these cautions, the nun does pursue her beliefs in relationship to the priest who ultimately leaves before any type of public storm erupts. The young nun, Sister James, can be seen as a bridge between truth and rumor, her doubts never fully developed either against Father Flynn or Sister Aloysius. The truth is not relevant as the issue of doubt is explored through the reactions of the characters to its existence within their situation. Shanley states that he set his book in 1964 because it was a time in which “not just me, but the whole world seemed to be going through some kind of vast puberty” (Shanley vii).

Furthermore, he describes the faith with which he, his community, and the nuns who ran the Catholic church school where he attended classes as having a social contract in which religion was “a shared dream we agreed to call Reality” (Shanley viii). He speaks of the time period as having a sense of security in the knowledge that what they believed was real and kept them safe. In describing doubt, however, he opens up the changes that come from discovering doubt among the threads of belief.

This is how he developed his play. Doubt is a living thread of thought that acts like a parasite destroying the security held within belief. He states, however, that “Doubt requires more courage than conviction does, and more energy; because conviction is a resting place and doubt is infinite – it is a passionate exercise” (Shanley ix). His discussion of doubt is placed in the courage that it takes to act on it despite the consequence. The discourse of doubt begins with Father Flynn arguing that skepticism is as powerful as faith as it will galvanize a community just as effectively as does faith.

During his first sermon he states at the end that “Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty” (Shanley 2). Disbelief in an idea, a person, or a conviction has as much power as does belief. There are many ways in which doubt plays a role in the play, creating a framework through which the concept of doubt is discussed. Doubt occurs in the beginning of the play as the progressive nature of the priest is placed against the traditional values of the nun. Doubt breeds through the compassion that is displayed by the priest towards the