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James Joyce's short story “The Sisters” converges around a central lack or enigma which the text presents. This is emphasized by the frequent use of ellipses—themselves representing the impossibility of naming that which is missing, that which by the end of the text is still left in question with the indeterminacy of the closing ellipsis. The text resists the precise filling of the gaps which it presents. It tantalizes the reader by seeming to give clues. But this is only a false ‘seaming’ because the fabric of the text covers over, hides, represses the enigma at its center. By taking a closely critical approach to the text, to the words and letters of the text, we will be led to a specifically psychoanalytic reading which will serve to break open the unconscious effects of the text.
In the first paragraph of “The Sisters,” the boy narrator, who is figured in the text as “I,” or “the youngster,” gives the reader three words strung together by association: “paralysis,” “gnomon” from Euclid, and “simony” from the Catechism. In the conjunction of these three words, the central problem (lack or enigma) of the text is played out.
“Paralysis” is “a disease or affection of the nervous system, characterized by impairment or loss of the motor or sensory function of the nerves, especially of those belonging to a particular part or organ thus producing partial or total incapacity of motion, insensibility, or functional inactivity of such part.” That is, it is “a condition of utter powerlessness, incapacity of action, or suspension of activity; the state of being crippled, helpless or impotent.”1
The word “gnomon,” which falls between “paralysis” and “simony,” in the text, lies hidden, secreted between them, is defined as “that part of a parallelogram which remains after a similar parallelogram is taken away from one