Innocence
Early in the play Sister Aloysius describes the enthusiastic young teacher, Sister James, as a “very innocent person”. She believes that “innocent teachers are easily duped”, so counsels her to be more “skeptical” about the motives and behaviour of her students, and perhaps of the adults as well. Sister James has doubts about looking “at things and people with suspicion”; it feels for her as if she’s “less close to God”. It certainly sounds like a less Christian view of others. However Sister Aloysius has a darker view of humanity, borne from experience: “If I could…I would certainly choose to live in innocence. But innocence can only be wisdom in a world without evil.” Even more than that she feels it is her duty to seek out evil, even at the expense of her own innocence: “When you take a step to address wrongdoing, you are taking a step away from God, but in His service.”

Sister James’s hopeful view of people is not easily supplanted. She cannot conceive that anyone who had done something wrong and was confronted by it would not be repentant. Sister Aloysius advises her that she “must try to imagine a very different person than yourself” – someone not as innocent. But when Father Flynn explains the reason for his meeting with Donald Muller, she still readily accepts his account and even challenges Sister Aloysius in her persistent suspicion.

By the end of the play, Sister James, has been disabused of her innocence. She has withdrawn somewhat from the children in her class, uncertain how to relate to them. The truth about Father Flynn’s behaviour remains uncertain, but the possibility of his evil and his lying have been deeply unsettling for her. As Father Flynn himself said to her: “The truth…tends to be confusing and have no clear conclusion”. She confesses that she can’t sleep at night: “Everything seems uncertain”. She has been expelled from the garden into the real world of doubt and confusion.