I seem to be unable to organize my thoughts in any productive way, so I'm going to throw together some observations and call it a post.
1. This has stopped some in the later story, but early on Joyce repeated words and phrases a lot. I'm not sure what he was getting at with this. Maybe he was just trying to capture the feel of a child's stumbling, undeveloped voice. For several examples: "Suddenly he became aware of something in the doorway. A skull appeared suspended in the gloom of the doorway" "breath had made him feel a sick feeling", this explanation seems to cover it, but for the repeated phrases (like "little drops of water in a fountain slowly falling in the brimming bowl" which appears again though slightly altered), I bet there's another explanation (though I have no idea what it is).
And actually, I realized today in class that the word repetition continues to an extent, it's just more elegant, so I haven't noticed it.
"He was alone. (...) He was alone and young and wilful and
wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish
waters and the sea-harvest of shells and tangle and veiled
grey sunlight and gayclad lightclad figures of children and
girls and voices childish and girlish in the air"
2. Stephen's coach tells him to run with his arms straight to his sides, which Stephen questions immediately. However, when he's practicing abstinence from any sort of comfort what so ever after he's been scared back into piety, he mentions that he holds his arms straight by his sides "like a runner". Just a little throw back to something mentioned earlier in the book. If I had to read into it I would say that this shows that at this point in the story he lacks the ability to question things that he once (rightly) questioned. Although that may be stretching it.
3. After studying ellipses in physics, Stephen writes the words "ellipsoidal fall" (referring to the earth's orbit) in a poem. So at least he's learning something in college.
4. Stephen's development reminds me a little of the development of the narrator's in "Invisible Man" in the sense that he's trying to make sense of the world and his place in it and in the process switches between extremes quite a bit. The narrator first respects white authority, running along like he's supposed to, just like Stephen respects the authority of the church in the beginning of the book. Then they snap back dramatically: the narrator joins the communists, and Stephen surrounds himself in sin, before rejecting this way of life for a more moderate(? not sure if this is the right word), individual state devoted to art and thought. I can relate to the narrator's thought process more than Stephen's though. Stephen's is a lot more emotional and poetic and less intellectual and grounded in real issues. My opinions have developed more or less like the narrator's.
Also, they both lead weirdly solitary lives. I don't think I know anyone with so few personal connections. Neither character seems to feel any strong feelings towards anyone else. (I'm discounting Stephen's weird connections with girls he barely knows.) The narrator barely keeps in touch with his family and has no friends that last him through the book and Stephen seems to always be at a distance from his peers and family as we have mentioned extensively in class.
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Friday, January 23, 2015
Portrait of the Artist, thus far, has been a novel about the language arts. We know that, since it's sort of autobiographical, and the title calls the main character an artist, Stephen will most likely end up as an author.
We can see the influence that literature has on him very early in the book.
It begins with the story Stephen's father tells him about... well, I'm not really sure, but it's certainly a story, and it presumably has some importance in Stephen's life, because Joyce takes the time to write about it. This first section also ends with a little rhyme told to him by Dante about apologizing and eye-picking, which seems to have worked itself into his brain.
As we learn more about Stephen, one thing becomes apparent: he's a nerd. Instead of playing sports, he just shuffles back and forth on the court, the "fellows" don't like him, and he's a good student. Maybe the idea is that he has to escape the depressing realities of his real life, I'm not sure, but as is often true of fictional nerds, he spends much of his life in his imagination. And, if his inspiration for his imagination isn't coming from real life, it's probably coming from the stories he consumes. We see evidence for this in the way he thinks about his own actions. In his mind, his life is all very dramatized. Like we mentioned in class, he compares his bravery in telling on the pandier, to the heroic acts of the men in historical tales.
Each chapter has its own story arc, which I suspect is partly due to Stephen imposing the pattern he has observed in literature onto the events in his life. He puts himself in the position of a story's protagonist and seeks out a great resolution or revelation because that's what's supposed to happen. Nothing (not the kids cheering for the rector instead of him, or the fact that the chance encounter with a magical female figure isn't all that random or magical) can ruin his idea of these little happy endings. Stephen feels a deep, romantic connection between himself and Emma at the party, and when the night doesn't turn out like it ought to, he has to write the proper ending in a poem.
Stephen has also obviously thought harder about poetry than his classmates, because he picks the controversial Byron (obviously his own decision) as his favorite instead of a more popular poet. We can see that he really connects with Byron's emotionally laden, romantic style in the flowery language that is used in the book at this time, and the fact that he will soon deviate from the church for the sake of passion or love or maybe just rebellion. The poetry foundation describes Byron's hero as "defiant, melancholy, haunted by secret guilt", which is a good description of Stephen in this section of the novel.
And, after all this deviation, he doesn't feel guilty till he reads (emphasis on reads here) that his sin would offend the Virgin Mary, and that it might multiply into all the others. At which point, he becomes obsessed with the souls in purgatory, which are no more than abstractions to him, and so, in a sense, like the characters in a story. I dunno, the last ones are stretching it a bit, but I do think that stories have an unusually large effect on his development.
We can see the influence that literature has on him very early in the book.
It begins with the story Stephen's father tells him about... well, I'm not really sure, but it's certainly a story, and it presumably has some importance in Stephen's life, because Joyce takes the time to write about it. This first section also ends with a little rhyme told to him by Dante about apologizing and eye-picking, which seems to have worked itself into his brain.
As we learn more about Stephen, one thing becomes apparent: he's a nerd. Instead of playing sports, he just shuffles back and forth on the court, the "fellows" don't like him, and he's a good student. Maybe the idea is that he has to escape the depressing realities of his real life, I'm not sure, but as is often true of fictional nerds, he spends much of his life in his imagination. And, if his inspiration for his imagination isn't coming from real life, it's probably coming from the stories he consumes. We see evidence for this in the way he thinks about his own actions. In his mind, his life is all very dramatized. Like we mentioned in class, he compares his bravery in telling on the pandier, to the heroic acts of the men in historical tales.
Each chapter has its own story arc, which I suspect is partly due to Stephen imposing the pattern he has observed in literature onto the events in his life. He puts himself in the position of a story's protagonist and seeks out a great resolution or revelation because that's what's supposed to happen. Nothing (not the kids cheering for the rector instead of him, or the fact that the chance encounter with a magical female figure isn't all that random or magical) can ruin his idea of these little happy endings. Stephen feels a deep, romantic connection between himself and Emma at the party, and when the night doesn't turn out like it ought to, he has to write the proper ending in a poem.
Stephen has also obviously thought harder about poetry than his classmates, because he picks the controversial Byron (obviously his own decision) as his favorite instead of a more popular poet. We can see that he really connects with Byron's emotionally laden, romantic style in the flowery language that is used in the book at this time, and the fact that he will soon deviate from the church for the sake of passion or love or maybe just rebellion. The poetry foundation describes Byron's hero as "defiant, melancholy, haunted by secret guilt", which is a good description of Stephen in this section of the novel.
And, after all this deviation, he doesn't feel guilty till he reads (emphasis on reads here) that his sin would offend the Virgin Mary, and that it might multiply into all the others. At which point, he becomes obsessed with the souls in purgatory, which are no more than abstractions to him, and so, in a sense, like the characters in a story. I dunno, the last ones are stretching it a bit, but I do think that stories have an unusually large effect on his development.
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