Brooklyn

by

Colm Tóibín

Father Flood Character Analysis

An Irish priest who now lives in Brooklyn, Father Flood meets and plays golf with Rose while visiting Enniscorthy on vacation. A kind and temperate man, he insists that he knows Mrs. Lacey, so Rose invites him over for tea the following day, though her mother doesn’t remember having met him. Nonetheless, he’s gracious when he arrives and eventually insists that Eilis should be making more money than she makes at Miss Lacey’s grocery store. Going on, he says that he could help her migrate to Brooklyn, where she could work in his parish and enjoy more economic opportunities. As this conversation continues, Eilis comes to realize that this is why her sister invited Father Flood to the house in the first place. In the coming weeks, Father Flood makes good on his promise to help Eilis move to Brooklyn, assisting her with the various paperwork and documents she needs to complete in order to obtain a visa. He also secures a job for her at a department store called Bartocci’s and finds her a room in a house owned by an Irish woman in his parish named Mrs. Kehoe. When Eilis finally arrives in America, Father Flood even helps her overcome her homesickness by enrolling her in night classes at Brooklyn College, where she studies bookkeeping and corporate law. A deeply empathetic man, Father Flood later has to tell Eilis that Rose has died in her sleep, and he helps her arrange her return to Ireland.

Father Flood Quotes in Brooklyn

The Brooklyn quotes below are all either spoken by Father Flood or refer to Father Flood. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Time and Adaptability Theme Icon
).
Part One Quotes

Although she knew friends who regularly received presents of dollars or clothes from America, it was always from their aunts and uncles, people who had emi­grated long before the war. She could not remember any of these people ever appearing in the town on holidays. It was a long journey across the Atlantic, she knew, at least a week on a ship, and it must be expensive. She had a sense too, she did not know from where, that, while the boys and girls from the town who had gone to England did ordinary work for ordinary money, people who went to America could become rich. She tried to work out how she had come to believe also that, while people from the town who lived in England missed Enniscorthy, no one who went to America missed home. Instead, they were happy there and proud. She wondered if that could be true.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Rose Lacey, Eilis’s Mother (Mrs. Lacey), Father Flood
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

Until now, Eilis had always presumed that she would live in the town all her life, as her mother had done, knowing everyone, having the same friends and neighbours, the same routines in the same streets. She had expected that she would find a job in the town, and then marry someone and give up the job and have children. Now, she felt that she was being singled out for something for which she was not in any way prepared, and this, despite the fear it carried with it, gave her a feeling, or more a set of feelings, she thought she might experience in the days before her wedding, days in which everyone looked at her in the rush of arrange­ments with light in their eyes, days in which she herself was fizzy with excitement but careful not to think too precisely about what the next few weeks would be like in case she lost her nerve.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Rose Lacey, Eilis’s Mother (Mrs. Lacey), Father Flood, Miss Kelly
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two Quotes

It was only when he came to the chorus, however, that she understood the words—“Má bhíonn tú liom, a stóirín mo chroí”—and he glanced at her proudly, almost possessively, as he sang these lines. All the peo­ple in the hall watched him silently. […] And then each time he came to the chorus he looked at her, letting the melody become sweeter by slowing down the pace, putting his head down then, managing to suggest even more that he had not merely learned the song but that he meant it. Eilis knew how sorry this man was going to be, and how sorry she would be, when the song had ended, when the last chorus had to be sung and the singer would have to bow to the crowd and go back to his place and give way to another singer as Eilis too went back and sat in her chair.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Father Flood
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Three Quotes

Rose, she knew, would have an idea in her head of what a plumber looked like and how he spoke. She would imagine him to be somewhat rough and awkward and use bad grammar. Eilis decided that she would write to her to say that he was not like that and that in Brooklyn it was not always as easy to guess someone’s character by their job as it was in Enniscorthy.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Rose Lacey, Tony, Father Flood
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Brooklyn LitChart as a printable PDF.
Brooklyn PDF

Father Flood Quotes in Brooklyn

The Brooklyn quotes below are all either spoken by Father Flood or refer to Father Flood. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Time and Adaptability Theme Icon
).
Part One Quotes

Although she knew friends who regularly received presents of dollars or clothes from America, it was always from their aunts and uncles, people who had emi­grated long before the war. She could not remember any of these people ever appearing in the town on holidays. It was a long journey across the Atlantic, she knew, at least a week on a ship, and it must be expensive. She had a sense too, she did not know from where, that, while the boys and girls from the town who had gone to England did ordinary work for ordinary money, people who went to America could become rich. She tried to work out how she had come to believe also that, while people from the town who lived in England missed Enniscorthy, no one who went to America missed home. Instead, they were happy there and proud. She wondered if that could be true.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Rose Lacey, Eilis’s Mother (Mrs. Lacey), Father Flood
Page Number: 27
Explanation and Analysis:

Until now, Eilis had always presumed that she would live in the town all her life, as her mother had done, knowing everyone, having the same friends and neighbours, the same routines in the same streets. She had expected that she would find a job in the town, and then marry someone and give up the job and have children. Now, she felt that she was being singled out for something for which she was not in any way prepared, and this, despite the fear it carried with it, gave her a feeling, or more a set of feelings, she thought she might experience in the days before her wedding, days in which everyone looked at her in the rush of arrange­ments with light in their eyes, days in which she herself was fizzy with excitement but careful not to think too precisely about what the next few weeks would be like in case she lost her nerve.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Rose Lacey, Eilis’s Mother (Mrs. Lacey), Father Flood, Miss Kelly
Page Number: 29
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Two Quotes

It was only when he came to the chorus, however, that she understood the words—“Má bhíonn tú liom, a stóirín mo chroí”—and he glanced at her proudly, almost possessively, as he sang these lines. All the peo­ple in the hall watched him silently. […] And then each time he came to the chorus he looked at her, letting the melody become sweeter by slowing down the pace, putting his head down then, managing to suggest even more that he had not merely learned the song but that he meant it. Eilis knew how sorry this man was going to be, and how sorry she would be, when the song had ended, when the last chorus had to be sung and the singer would have to bow to the crowd and go back to his place and give way to another singer as Eilis too went back and sat in her chair.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Father Flood
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Three Quotes

Rose, she knew, would have an idea in her head of what a plumber looked like and how he spoke. She would imagine him to be somewhat rough and awkward and use bad grammar. Eilis decided that she would write to her to say that he was not like that and that in Brooklyn it was not always as easy to guess someone’s character by their job as it was in Enniscorthy.

Related Characters: Eilis Lacey, Rose Lacey, Tony, Father Flood
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis: