Short Fiction · Chapter
My Uncle Sosthène explained
The narrator describes his uncle Sosthène, a freethinker and Freemason who despises the clergy.
What happens
The narrator describes his uncle Sosthène, a freethinker and Freemason who despises the clergy. After a heavy Good Friday dinner that leaves him incapacitated, the narrator plays a prank by fetching a Jesuit priest to visit his uncle. The priest stays all night, and the next day the uncle, weakened and confused, accepts the priest's care and even pins a religious image to his bed curtain.
Themes in this chapter
Illusion vs. Reality
The narrator's prank creates a false reality of the uncle's deathbed conversion, which the uncle accepts as genuine.
Obsession and Delusion
The uncle's obsessive anti-clericalism and the Jesuit's deluded belief in a divine revelation both drive the comedy.
Characters to notice
- Guy de Maupassant
The narrator and nephew of Sosthène; a skeptical freethinker who orchestrates the prank on his uncle.
- Monsieur Parent
Uncle Sosthène, a freethinker and Freemason who becomes the victim of the narrator's joke.
Key passages
“My uncle Sosthène was a freethinker, like many others, a freethinker from sheer stupidity.”
The narrator dismisses his uncle's freethinking as mere foolishness, not genuine conviction.
Opens the story with a cynical assessment of the uncle's character.
“I told him in a breathless voice that my uncle, the freethinker, had been taken suddenly ill. Fearing it was going to be something serious he had been seized with a sudden fear of death, and wished to see a priest and talk to him; to have his advice and comfort, to make up with the Church, and to confess, so as to be able to cross the dreaded threshold at peace with himself.”
The narrator lies to the Jesuit, claiming his uncle has had a change of heart and wants to confess before dying.
The pivotal deception that sets the prank in motion.
“At six o'clock the Jesuit left, with a very happy and satisfied look on his face, and we saw him go away with a quiet step.”
After spending the entire night with the uncle, the priest departs looking pleased.
Highlights the unexpected outcome of the prank.