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.
I think the word repetition is a really good way to show the stumbling, not-quite-put-together nature of the inner monologue. I know I don't go around checking if my thoughts are nonrepetitive; it just makes sense to use the same word twice without fishing for synonyms. Joyce's use of repetition strikes me as very realistic and, like you point out, it can kind of help us see where his subconscious is, when he uses phrases we've heard before. I thought the thing about walking with his arms straight "like a runner" was especially hilarious.
ReplyDeleteI like your connection of Stephen to the narrator of Invisible Man because as in Invisible Man -- and probably many other novels -- I thinking coming of age is ultimately about going through disillusionment after disillusionment, rejecting one ideology after another to ultimately take aspects of them and create one's own reality. The use of Joyce's irony in undermining Stephen's epiphanies also speaks to the simultaneous ecstasy and lack of complete resolution Ellison depicts in the narrator after each "revelation." Also, Invisible Man is a somewhat solipsistic novel. The other characters in the novel represent specific ideologies for the narrator and there is the same self centered sense in this novel; Davin, Mercedes, etc. hold this same symbolic meaning for Stephen. We never really see other characters as they truly are because a lot of it is Stephen projecting his perception onto them. In this sense we see how Stephen craves connection with others but is never fully able to do so. Consequently, I'm hesitant to read this as simply a "lack of empathy" that many have been criticizing Stephen for because I believe Joyce's primary purpose is to illustrate this perpetual exile of Stephen's consciousness.
ReplyDeleteEvery time I read this novel, I notice more and more little echoes of earlier phrases and repetitions of whole sentences, with slight variation--it creates both the sense of a tightly woven whole, where these invisible threads link all the different moments together into an aesthetic structure, and also the sense of a musical composition, with themes and motifs and snatches of melody recurring in new contexts, tying them to the earlier moments. It is *definitely* a book that rewards rereading and close scrutiny.
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