Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Corrigan

What did you think of Corrigan and his religious convictions/charitable quests? He never moralized to the people he was "working" with. He never really encouraged them to seek a different life. He just offered them various small comforts and a place to use the bathroom and helped them with various errands (like appearing at court dates). Most importantly, I guess, he offered them the feeling that someone cared about them and didn't judge them, the comfort that they had somewhere to go, someone to turn to. His religious charity seemed to consist in asking himself, "What might this person really need right now to feel connected to humanity?" And the answer would be not a lecture, but a hot cup of coffee, or, in the elderly, racist curmudgeon's case, a tryst with the hookers.

And then there's his relationship with the immigrant mother — a chance for love and connection for himself. Why was it hard for him to give into that? Did he think it would detract from his "mission"? That it would make him selfishly concerned with his own happiness?
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9 comments:

Erin said...

Excellent questions. I wondered the same thing about his motivations as I was reading. He wasn't exactly a traditional priest, and I wondered why the chastity vow would've been such a big deal to him. Maybe it's like you say, he didn't want to be concerned with his own worldly happiness. Or if he had a wife and family he wouldn't be able to take as many risks as he did in helping out the prostitutes.

8:18 PM, January 19, 2010
kc said...

It was admirable that he felt he had to live among the people he was "helping," that he didn't covet material possessions, that he was consistently capable of putting others before himself. And in the end he didn't have to resolve his internal conflict between living that life and living a life that included personal happiness for himself. His death precluded that, but it would have been interesting to see how that played out. He had been closely identifying with homeless people and the "underworld" since he was a little boy; it's kind of hard to imagine that he would settle down into a nuclear-family type of life where his concerns would become so narrowly focused.

1:38 PM, January 20, 2010
kc said...

There's also a nice contrast between Corrigan and the man who killed him. Corrigan was a selfless missionary type and the driver was a self-absorbed artist type. The artist thought everything he touched could be rendered valuable by attaching a neat theory to it. "These paintings that I left out in the rain are really awesome because they represent blah blah blah!" In reality, they're just stupid and cynical and self-important, and their value to humanity isn't a fraction of the value of giving a shivering streetwalker a hot cup of coffee.

Why do you think the author had some dillhole like that be the killer of Corrigan?

1:49 PM, January 20, 2010
Erin said...

There's definitely an interesting contrast between the two men. I'm not sure why the author did it, other than it did set up in some ways the importance of the wife's reaction and her eventual romance with Ciaran.

5:17 PM, January 21, 2010
cl said...

I wondered, because the story ended from the point of view of one of the twins, if we were supposed to assume Corrigan had accomplished his mysterious mission by dying in that wreck with Jazzyln, that the twins would have turned out a similar way (turning to prostitution) if she had raised them to adulthood. But that's kind of awful and judgmental, and not, I think, the author's POV ... like I don't think that would be in keeping with the book. Does that make sense?

12:29 PM, January 25, 2010
cl said...

Maybe more of what I mean is that while he tried to help in little ways, Corrigan just decided God wanted him someplace at the right place and right time and that doing so would somehow be part of God's plan. Versus some sort of evangelistic approach.

12:30 PM, January 25, 2010
cl said...

I don't understand the reservations about that relationship. He had some mysterious rule book he followed on his spiritual path that didn't answer to the conventional expectations of a priest. I like what both of you said about how it would distract him from his calling or keep him from taking the same risks.

12:38 PM, January 25, 2010
kc said...

Yeah, good point, cl, about God's plan. I think Corrigan had a notion, too, that suffering is everywhere. You don't have to travel to some Third World location.

3:00 PM, January 25, 2010
kc said...

Also! Nice tie-in. Our next book has some food for thought on Christianity and the traditional Catholic vows of poverty and chastity!

3:03 PM, January 25, 2010

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