First Confession

Drawing on the author’s hardscrabble childhood in early-20th-century Ireland, Frank O’Connor’s “First Confession” chronicles the experience of seven-year-old Jackie, who must ready himself for the emotional and spiritual challenge of his first confession in the Catholic Church. The story was first published as “Repentance” in 1935 but heavily revised in later editions. This guide follows the version most reprinted today from O’Connor’s 1951 collection Traveller's Samples: Stories and Tales. O’Connor (1903-1966), who published more than 150 works, achieved critical prominence and a wide and appreciative readership on the strength of his short stories, realistic and often comic narratives that reflect the joys and sorrows of Ireland’s working class.

Seven-year-old Jackie is preparing, as all Catholic children his age do, for the sacrament of First Communion. After dutifully studying and struggling to memorize the complex theology behind the sacrament, the child receives the body of Christ for the first time in the form of a wafer offered during Mass. Before receiving First Communion, however, the child must make First Confession by visiting a priest in a tiny closet-like room in a church and revealing any sins the child has committed.

This act of confession is what Jackie faces and fears. Although he has reviewed his conscience using the protocols his catechism teacher provides, he is terrified that his soul is burdened with sins that he may not even know he has committed. An old woman responsible for preparing children for First Communion tells them about the horrors of hell. She challenges the children to hold their fingers even for a few seconds over a candle flame and imagine the pains of a fire that never ends. She warns them that every sin must be confessed to the priest for God will know what they withhold. She never mentions heaven or the rewards of God’s mercy. “She may have mentioned the other place as well,” Jackie says, “but that could only have been by accident, for hell had the first place in her heart” (Paragraph 4).

The arrival from the country of Jackie’s paternal grandmother has upended the routine and domestic quiet of his family. Jackie finds his grandmother embarrassing—Gran is loud, seldom wears shoes, dresses carelessly, eats with her fingers, and perpetually totes an open bottle of beer. He dreads having his friends see Gran. Meanwhile, his sister Nora sidles up to the old woman and curries her favor in return for the pennies that Gran gives her.

After enduring Gran’s repellant behavior for days, Jackie snaps and refuses to sit at the table for dinner, disgusted by the stew Gran prepared. When Nora attempts to force Jackie to the table, he threatens her with a bread knife. When their parents return, Nora tells them what Jackie has done. Although Jackie’s mother is sympathetic (she does not like Gran either), his father beats him and sends him to his room.

With this incident on his mind, Jackie faces his confession. “I was scared to death,” he says (Paragraph 8). He is uncertain what to tell the priest about the attack. Nora taunts him saying, “Do you remember the time you tried to kill me? And the language you used to me?” (Paragraph 11). His catechism teacher accompanies Jackie to the church along with Nora who continues to remind her brother of the magnitude of the sins he must confess. Arriving at the church, the catechism teacher directs Jackie into line behind Nora, who goes in and emerges just minutes later with a beatific smile, “looking like a saint” (Paragraph 17).

Jackie steps into the darkened closet and the confessional door closes behind him. He is unsure what to do. There is a shelf designed, he remembers being told, for adults to rest their elbows in prayer during confession and a tiny window through which he will talk to the priest when the priest slides open the little divider between them. Panicked and suddenly confused, Jackie believes the shelf must be where he kneels. “It struck me as a queer way of hearing confessions,” he says, “but I didn’t feel it my place to criticize” (Paragraph 19). He struggles to climb up on the tiny shelf, but he falls with a loud clamor. A young priest emerges from the other side of the confessional to check on him. The priest is amused by Jackie’s attempts and patiently instructs him just to wait until everyone else has gone to confession, and he will then show him where to kneel. Nora comes charging out of a pew and strikes her little brother hard on the ears as a reprimand for being such a “caffler,” crude slang for an unruly and misbehaving child. The priest admonishes her before returning to the confessional.

When it is finally Jackie’s turn, he quietly begins to share his sins with the priest, how he dislikes his grandmother and even thought about killing her, how he fended off his sister with the bread knife, and how his father and sister always take the grandmother’s side. To Jackie’s surprise, the priest asks about the circumstances, and Jackie reluctantly tells the truth about his embarrassment over his grandmother’s boorish behavior, how his friends taunted him about his family, and how his sister shamelessly flatters the old woman in return for pennies.

The young priest admits he might have been inclined to similar actions in those circumstances, but he cautions the boy that killing someone would lead to being arrested and hanged. The two chat amicably for a while and, finally, the priest tells Jackie that his reactions were both understandable and forgivable. For his penance, Jackie must say three Hail Marys, a relatively short prayer, to secure absolution.

After the confession, the young priest walks Jackie home and gives the boy a few pieces of candy, much to Nora’s consternation. Nora cannot believe how easily Jackie had been absolved. What good does it to go around pretending to be good? “‘Tis no advantage to anybody trying to be good,” she says. “I might just as well be a sinner like you” (Paragraph 73).