How might one use particular words or phrases (e.g. "loss," "angst," "happiness," etc.) to sum up the story "The Sisters" from James Joyce's The...

James Joyce's story "The Sisters" (from his collection of
stories titled Dubliners) contains a number of keywords or
concepts.  Some of these include the
following:

• “no
  hope”: this phrase refers to the dying priest, but it is also relevant to
  the gloomy tone of the entire
  tale.


• “dead”: this word
  foreshadows the death of the priest, but death is also a major theme of this story and
  of Dubliners as a
  whole.


• “paralysis”: this
  word refers to the strokes suffered by the priest but also suggests the entire
  atmosphere of mental and emotional paralysis found in the story as a
  whole.


• “maleficent and
  sinful”: these terms suggest how the narrator thinks of the term
  “gnomon,” but they also foreshadow some of the gloomy moral implications suggested later
  in the tale.


• “peculiar
  cases”: this term is used by another character to describe the dead
  priest, but it is also relevant to the whole baffling, curious, puzzling nature of the
  narrative.


• “piously”: this
  term refers to conduct by one of the narrator’s aunts, but it also implies the
  importance that conventional religious attitudes play in the work as a
  whole.


• “anger”: the narrator
  at one point refers to his anger, and anger is indeed one of his chief emotions in this
  tale.


• “dark”:
  this word refers to the literal darkness of the narrator’s room at night,
  but this story is also figuratively dark in various
  ways.


• “confess”: this word
  is used repeatedly to refer to the narrator’s dream of the dead priest, but it is also
  relevant to the larger story because it foreshadows the priest’s behavior in the
  confessional and also because it implies the existence of unsettling
  secrets.


• “taught”: this word
  refers explicitly to the boy’s relationship with the dead
  priest:

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he had taught me a great deal. He had studied in
the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to pronounce Latin properly. He had told
me stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me
the meaning of the different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments worn
by the priest.

At the same
time, the word “taught” suggests that the boy is more educated (and more self-conscious
about his education) than some other characters in the story but also that he may have
learned from the priest in ways he does not yet fully
understand.

• “complex and
  mysterious”: these words refer explicitly to “certain institutions of the
  church,” but they are also relevant to the whole tone and atmosphere of the
  story.


• “intricate
  questions”: this term refers explicitly to the questions raised by the
  institutions and doctrines of the church, but it might just as easily apply to the kinds
  of questions raised by Joyce’s own
  story.


• “uneasy”: this term
  refers literally to the boy’s initial response to the priest but it also seems relevant
  to readers’ possible responses to this
  story.


• “mourning”: this word
  refers literally to mourning for the dead priest, but it also seems relevant to the
  entire story’s emphasis on death and
  loss.