TRY to trace what Stephen thinks and feels, sees, hears, smells through this. Read first WITHOUT the footnotes.
This is the most intimidating piece of work in the textbook yet. I just wanted to mention that. It’s all for the footnotes, which are necessary and I did my best to avoid them at first. I was too confused by that though, but I tried not to concentrate on them.
The imagery is interesting and it makes things feel sort of strange and dreamlike. It starts off that way at least. He’s walking on a beach, “I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.” He sees these sights and these colors, “Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs.” He closed his eyes to better take in the sounds there, “his boots crushing crackling wrack and shells.” In doing this his mind wonders if the world might have left him or if he might find himself suddenly over a cliff were he to open his eyes again. He takes in the sounds still, “Crush, crack, crik, crick.” I liked that he didn’t simply take one word and repeat it, instead he expressed the variety of the noises with his words. He imagines others walking on this stretch of sand. The visit to his aunt and uncle is choppy, you can tell he sees it clearly, but he doesn't linger long on what they might be thinking, but then how would he know truly? The imagined version of his uncle doesn't seem very sympathetic at times and is rather flighty to me, but again, this is what Stephen is imagining. You can tell who he sees as the primary person in that house, though later he refers to it as "aunt Sara's."
He gets lost in his own thoughts so easily, thinking about Virgin Mary having no naval, how he’ll never be a saint or how his family thinks so at least (his uncle most likely), books named by letters. He almost entirely misses his aunt’s home altogether. The jumping here throws me off. I can’t follow him easily. I can’t tell what he’s dealing with and what he is just thinking.
On that first remark, you read (or posted on) this AFTER Finnegan's--is this really more intinidating than that?
Not given how much you get of what's happening here--good job!
How does this compare for you to Woolf's stream of consciousnes in "The Mark on the Wall?"
It might help to realize that Stephen is a sholar of languages ad philosophy who teaches in a boys' school and is a lapsed Catholic--all like the young Joyce!
I hope you read the whole novel later on (there are several guides to it)--it's not all like this, and as you see, Joyce's use of language is AMAZING, and often amazingly BEAUTIFUL.
Showing posts with label James Joyce. Show all posts
Showing posts with label James Joyce. Show all posts
Friday, April 16, 2010
Finnegan's Wake
Click on the link below to hear Joyce reading the first part of the passage from Finnegan's Wake in our book. Read along, and then tell us what you think.
This would have been entirely lost on me without the recording. I’ve had awful issues with Ulysses that I’m hoping to work out. This whole section caught me by surprise. I thought I wasn’t in for this sort of trouble after reading The Dead, which I liked a lot. When he reads it, there is this beautiful flow to much of it. You can see the conversation of it and the words that look like nonsense, “Lord help me, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me!” When you hear him speak it aloud, you hear “Lord help me, Maria, full of grace, the Lord is with me!” which makes far more sense. He also threw in a couple different lines I noticed from what we have. I understand it’s a parting for the topic, assumedly a death considering the title. The writing is stream of consciousness, and not as lucid as we read with Woolf at all. He jumps about, but it’s interesting to see the words inserted for the spoken word to sound as he wished it to.
As I told Ash and Erica, few, if any, "get" this work, and most think Ulysses, let alone Dubliners, is more coherent.
Finnegan's IS stream-of-consciousness, but the mind in which it takes place is that of the whole of humankind, and its theme is the history of the world: the "novel" opens, "Rivverrun past Eve and Adams."
Good catch on the punning nature of the writing--and many of those puns are in other languages: scholars have identified over 80!
This would have been entirely lost on me without the recording. I’ve had awful issues with Ulysses that I’m hoping to work out. This whole section caught me by surprise. I thought I wasn’t in for this sort of trouble after reading The Dead, which I liked a lot. When he reads it, there is this beautiful flow to much of it. You can see the conversation of it and the words that look like nonsense, “Lord help me, Maria, full of grease, the load is with me!” When you hear him speak it aloud, you hear “Lord help me, Maria, full of grace, the Lord is with me!” which makes far more sense. He also threw in a couple different lines I noticed from what we have. I understand it’s a parting for the topic, assumedly a death considering the title. The writing is stream of consciousness, and not as lucid as we read with Woolf at all. He jumps about, but it’s interesting to see the words inserted for the spoken word to sound as he wished it to.
As I told Ash and Erica, few, if any, "get" this work, and most think Ulysses, let alone Dubliners, is more coherent.
Finnegan's IS stream-of-consciousness, but the mind in which it takes place is that of the whole of humankind, and its theme is the history of the world: the "novel" opens, "Rivverrun past Eve and Adams."
Good catch on the punning nature of the writing--and many of those puns are in other languages: scholars have identified over 80!
Thursday, April 15, 2010
The Dead
What is the significance of the title to "The Dead"? How does this title relate to the story? Base your response on a CLOSE reading of the story, as well as the parts of the intro to Joyce in the text that have to do with Dubliners and with Joyce's attitude toward Ireland.
The story goes between people and the way it starts it seems like it will mostly follow two sisters, Julia and Kate, and their niece Mary Jane that are all living together and throwing a Christmas party. They’re anxious for the coming of two people, their nephews Freddy and Gabriel. This is when we meet the man that the story truly takes stick in, Gabriel Conroy.
He seems like a good man, well liked, who means well, but he doesn’t seem to be fully aware of himself and his actions. He missteps in asking in speaking to Lily, a servant of the house, when he suggests they’ll be going to her wedding one day and she responds negatively about all men. Really, asking her such a thing is rather presumptuous and rude if others had known. Then he gives her money for Christmas, which she finds far too rich for her position.
While dancing, he is teasingly accused of being a traitor by Miss Ivors because he writers a literary column in The Daily Express. The situation embarrasses him, though it’s mostly unnoticed by other party go-ers. Gabriel sees no issue in his writing a literature column because he feels it has nothing to do with the politics of this paper and everything to do with his own love of literature and the reward of free books along with his small pay. Yet he stills keeps his writing a secret, letting this column be printed under his initials and not his actual name. Obviously he knows there’s some sort of deeper implications there. In those of tumultuous times, given the opinions of the Irish on Ireland and the British, it’s impossible for him to not think he’d be judged in some way for his writing for this paper as opposed to something solidly Irish. When the same woman suggests that he and his wife vacation in Ireland, their own country, he comments that he’s tired of his country. She pushes for a reason, but he has none or at least cannot give one. Then when his wife brings up talking to Ivors and he tells her about the suggestion of vacationing in their country, his wife loved the idea and he still did not.
His later toast speech that he delivers also touches on the topic of rebellious Irish. Gabriel saw, as Yeats saw, a reemergence of passion in this new generation that was coming to be. However he went into how he found it misdirected and feared it would take away from the hospitality and humanity of the generation he includes himself within. He must have scanned for Ivors before speaking on this as he felt quite specifically that it applied to her. Gabriel finds himself in the norm, so he thinks. He also says how while they all come with sadness and pasts, that he “will not linger in the past” for the night. Not to say that he commonly thinks of his past sorrows.
After he sees his wife in her tender thoughtful state as she mourns the man the song made her think of, Gabriel doesn’t know what she’s thinking about, but is inclined to want to protect her. When she tells him finally, it’s a shock. While he’d been thinking of all their sweet loving times, she was mourning this boy. He’d never thought of her past, never contemplated their might be more than just their time, or that she’d ever dreamed of another. It also says something that in their marriage with two children, he had never before heard of this other man. It makes him realize that he’s never felt so strongly about another women in his life, and he knows he’s missing out. Though Gabriel made earlier mention of his dislike of the direction of the passion of the new generation, that meaning in rabblerousing as we see personified in Molly Ivors, he longs for the passion they show (seen in his wife crying herself to sleep over the boy who died for her) and knows it’s not something he can capture, much like he will not be the sole inhabitant of his wife’s heart.
Nice summary of the story and of Gabriel vis-a-vis his fellow Irish, but it doesn't answer the prompt. Why do you think Joyce tited this story "The Dead?"
You're on track, in part, with the mention of Gabriel's realization (of his lack of passion), but what of the decison he takes at the end to venture "westard"--i.e., to the Aran Islands?
The story goes between people and the way it starts it seems like it will mostly follow two sisters, Julia and Kate, and their niece Mary Jane that are all living together and throwing a Christmas party. They’re anxious for the coming of two people, their nephews Freddy and Gabriel. This is when we meet the man that the story truly takes stick in, Gabriel Conroy.
He seems like a good man, well liked, who means well, but he doesn’t seem to be fully aware of himself and his actions. He missteps in asking in speaking to Lily, a servant of the house, when he suggests they’ll be going to her wedding one day and she responds negatively about all men. Really, asking her such a thing is rather presumptuous and rude if others had known. Then he gives her money for Christmas, which she finds far too rich for her position.
While dancing, he is teasingly accused of being a traitor by Miss Ivors because he writers a literary column in The Daily Express. The situation embarrasses him, though it’s mostly unnoticed by other party go-ers. Gabriel sees no issue in his writing a literature column because he feels it has nothing to do with the politics of this paper and everything to do with his own love of literature and the reward of free books along with his small pay. Yet he stills keeps his writing a secret, letting this column be printed under his initials and not his actual name. Obviously he knows there’s some sort of deeper implications there. In those of tumultuous times, given the opinions of the Irish on Ireland and the British, it’s impossible for him to not think he’d be judged in some way for his writing for this paper as opposed to something solidly Irish. When the same woman suggests that he and his wife vacation in Ireland, their own country, he comments that he’s tired of his country. She pushes for a reason, but he has none or at least cannot give one. Then when his wife brings up talking to Ivors and he tells her about the suggestion of vacationing in their country, his wife loved the idea and he still did not.
His later toast speech that he delivers also touches on the topic of rebellious Irish. Gabriel saw, as Yeats saw, a reemergence of passion in this new generation that was coming to be. However he went into how he found it misdirected and feared it would take away from the hospitality and humanity of the generation he includes himself within. He must have scanned for Ivors before speaking on this as he felt quite specifically that it applied to her. Gabriel finds himself in the norm, so he thinks. He also says how while they all come with sadness and pasts, that he “will not linger in the past” for the night. Not to say that he commonly thinks of his past sorrows.
After he sees his wife in her tender thoughtful state as she mourns the man the song made her think of, Gabriel doesn’t know what she’s thinking about, but is inclined to want to protect her. When she tells him finally, it’s a shock. While he’d been thinking of all their sweet loving times, she was mourning this boy. He’d never thought of her past, never contemplated their might be more than just their time, or that she’d ever dreamed of another. It also says something that in their marriage with two children, he had never before heard of this other man. It makes him realize that he’s never felt so strongly about another women in his life, and he knows he’s missing out. Though Gabriel made earlier mention of his dislike of the direction of the passion of the new generation, that meaning in rabblerousing as we see personified in Molly Ivors, he longs for the passion they show (seen in his wife crying herself to sleep over the boy who died for her) and knows it’s not something he can capture, much like he will not be the sole inhabitant of his wife’s heart.
Nice summary of the story and of Gabriel vis-a-vis his fellow Irish, but it doesn't answer the prompt. Why do you think Joyce tited this story "The Dead?"
You're on track, in part, with the mention of Gabriel's realization (of his lack of passion), but what of the decison he takes at the end to venture "westard"--i.e., to the Aran Islands?
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