Experience
The film Doubt, directed by John Patrick Shanley,
and the play Molly Sweeney, written by Brian Friel, are both stories that
explore how our prior experiences shape our biases, perceptions, and views on
life. In both works knowledge and experience influence the main character’s
judgments, behaviors, and feelings, which ultimately determines how they
respond to the challenges put before them.
The following quote from Molly Sweeney
speaks to this idea. This is spoken during Frank’s monologue where he explains
philosopher Bishop George Berkeley’s views on sight. "That most of us are
born with all five senses; and with all the information they give us, we build
up a sight world from the day we are born -- a world of objects and ideas and
meanings. We are not given that world, he said. We make it ourselves -- through
our experience, by our memory, by making categories, by interconnections"(17). Berkeley
believes only through experience and “living” can one create their own world.
Molly, in Molly Sweeney, has been blind since she was 10 months old and can’t remember ever being able to see. At the beginning of the play she is somebody who is totally happy with her universe, she is confident, self-assured and a vibrant part of her local community. She has no sense of being deprived by her blindness and often thinks that what she experiences through her heightened sense of touch and smell is far greater than what sight could ever bring her. However after the operation a once confident Molly seems to start to crumble. She struggles with learning how to act in the world of sight. Her experience without sight and her naivety to the sighted world is something that worked in her favor. She made her “world” without sight, which ultimately defined who she was as a person. Being able to “see” at the end of the play causes her to be caught in the middle and forces her to create a new world for herself. With her experience as a blind person this is made all the more difficult. Dr. Rice sums up her tragic end in his final comments towards her “In those last few months it was hard to recognize the woman who had first come to my house...how self-sufficient she had been.”
This shot from Doubt is of Sister
Aloysius in her office when she is explaining her suspicions of Father Flynn and
that she believes he is conducting an inappropriate relationship with Donald
Miller. She believes her suspicions to be true because of prior experience with
these situations. Aloysius confidently stands with her hand on her chest
(possibly touching a cross) blanketed in the light from the window expressing
her certainty. Her demeanor clearly expresses her intent to convict Father
Flynn of wrongdoing.
Sister
Aloysius’s experience has completely shaped what she perceives to have happened
between Donald Miller and Father Flynn despite not having any concrete
evidence. She is prejudiced and biased to believe that he is guilty. However,
her experience in dealing with a matter like this helps her to find out the
truth. Manufacturing a lie to prompt a guilty reaction out of Father Flynn is
clearly a tactic that comes from experience and knowledge about this kind of
situation. This is in sharp contrast to Sister James who has no prior
experience with these situations and perceptions of the matter are unclouded.
She is naïve and wants to believe the best in people this is demonstrated in
her ability to be swayed by Father Flynn’s pleadings.
In Molly Sweeney the experience of
being blind affects her negatively when she is thrust into the world of sight.
However Sister Aloysius’s intuitions and prior knowledge of men like Father
Flynn help her solve the crime. In both cases experience affects the
characters’ approach and feelings toward a situation. Both works suggest that
it is almost impossible enter a situation without prejudices and judgments
based on prior experience.
