SOURCE: “Caradoc Evans and the Forcers of Conscience: A Reading of ‘A Father in Sion,’” in The Anglo-Welsh Review, Vol. 81, 1985, pp. 79–89.

In the following essay, Davies and Harris consider stylistic aspects of Evans's “A Father of Sion.”

“It is not by confining one's neighbour that one is convinced of one's own sanity.”

Dostoievsky, Diary of a Writer.

“A Father in Sion”¹ treats of manners and hypocrisy in an introverted, capelcentric community, where individual conscience is violated and social esteem gained by self-pronounced religious justification. Here all discourse is dominated by stilted, manipulative rhetoric, which seeks to preclude any other form of self-expression or response. Sadrach, an elder of Sion and father of eight, provides the title for the story. In pursuit of esteem and gratification he destroys his family. The story's poetic effect derives from the intermingling elements of its art: from its style, its biblical allusions, the...