Mr and Mrs Dillon Character Analysis

Mr and Mrs Dillon are Joe and Leo Dillon’s parents. The narrator notes that Mr and Mrs Dillon piously attend eight o’clock mass every morning—an unusual amount of religious devotion even in late-19th-century Dublin—on Gardiner Street. To a reader who knows Dublin well, the detail that they go to Gardiner Street for mass communicates that the Dillons go to a Jesuit church (the Jesuits are an order of Catholics unique in their piety and in their social and intellectual pursuits). Attending a Jesuit church suggests that the Dillons may not only be going to be pious, but also to seek upward social mobility.