Leonard Cohen The Sisters of Mercy Notes and Questions PDF

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Leonard Cohen The Sisters of Mercy Notes and Questions...

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Leonard Cohen: The Sisters of Mercy

Some notes on Cohen’s themes and style— Cohen often fuses the religious and the secular. The Sisters of Mercy has a clearly religious reference in terms of the Catholic nuns who would serve the community. Love, in many of Cohen’s works, is presented in complex and imperfect terms. Human beings are often presented as flawed but beautiful all the same as the title of his novel Beautiful Losers would suggest.

Questions for the song: Stanza 1: What is the tone in the opening stanza? What point does he make about the “sisters”? Why do you think he addresses the reader directly as “you”?

Stanza 2: What problem does he identify here? What condition do we find ourselves in? Stanza 3: What kind of relationship can you identify here? Is the relationship referred to sexual, spiritual or both? What is the effect of the relationship on the speaker? Stanza 4: What images/symbols are present in the final stanza? What do they suggest? What is the tone at the end? What is the song’s message of hope?...