This is the blog -- the electronic home -- for Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition for the class of two-thousand eleven at Gloucester (MA) High School.
“In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again the heavy grey face of the paralytic. . .. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something. I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again I found it waiting for me. . .. I wondered why it smiled continually. . .. But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin.”
While earlier in the story Old Cotter has expressed disapproval with how the boy’s relationship with Reverend Flynn kept him from his peers, what I found troubling was not that the boy did not spend time with friends of his own age, but what his relationship was with his so-called “friend” the priest. The boy was not saddened by Flynn’s death, rather he felt freed, though his frequent visits to the priest had been voluntary. As far as their interaction went, the boy would go to learn the complexities of the Church, drawn by a fascination with duties so grave he wondered how any would dare undertake them. He would bring the priest snuff, though uneasy at first by Flynn’s paralytic leer, yet in all of this there is no mention of the boy’s affection. Rather, it seems that in visiting the priest, the boy took on a priest-like role in his own mind, as though elevated to such superiority that he could deign Cotter a “tiresome old fool.” It is this that I see in the quote above: the boy’s soul is in a pleasant and vicious region where he is able to pardon the sinner. It is no friend, but a face, an “it,” a simoniac that he absolves. Having such power is perhaps what is pleasant about the region he dreams, and I wonder if the viciousness he mentions is within the power to refuse absolution, or in the persistence of the waiting face. I wonder what the boy’s feeble smiling has to do with absolving sin. Also, I find something very unnerving about a continual smile brought on by a guilt-born trauma. Still, I’m plagued with wonder as to why it is called “The Sisters.”
“All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. . .. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.”
I do not see the tragedy of this quote the same as that of a romance. That she gave him no sign of love or recognition does not cause my heart to break for Frank. Rather, it causes some profound sense of loss for the hope of something different for Eveline. Here is paralysis if there is any at all: she is drawn between a sense of duty to care for her father and a sense of fear of being trapped with her mother’s fate. In the end, it is as though she has no control; she is a helpless animal, overwhelmed to passivity by the enormity of leaving the life to which she is accustomed. It is sad that the most she could do was to entertain the idea of something new, sitting in unaccustomed parts of the theater with Frank, becoming excited with the idea of “having a fellow.” It is sad also that the reason this was the most she could do was that though she wanted respect and a house of her own, she did not want to be foolish. No, this story was never about love.
“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”
The boy is quite a romantic, enjoying religion, romance and especially detective stories. Clearly this is written by a disillusioned narrator, however (“her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood”). To him, she is almost supernatural – he envisions her a form created in the light, always an image. He goes on a quest, as it were, to bring her something from the carnival, and reflects upon his state of mind that saw everything but that related to Mangan’s sister as “ugly monotonous child’s play,” saying that then innumerable follies laid waste in his mind. It seems that all the time after he has received his quest, he is suspended out of reality, and even separated from Mangan’s sister until the task is completed. The morning of the Bazaar, he is not able to wait at the window to see her head to school, and when he returns home, what he sees when staring at her door is only her imagined figure. The story begins to draw towards the narrator’s conclusion in this quote as his uncle comments when giving him bazaar money that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” This instance trivializes all of the narrator’s agonizing, which when paired with the description of his ride to the bazaar in which his surroundings are improvised adds to the meretricious scene at the carnival, and causes the boy’s anguish. But what was he able to do? I have a feeling that there is so much more to this story than what I have picked up, so much more cause for the boy's anguish and anger at the end. What is behind his self-image as someone having been "driven and derided by vanity?" What does the deceased priest have to do with the story?
“She felt a soft wet substance with her fingers and was surprised that nobody spoke or took off her bandage. . .. Maria understood that it was wrong that time and so she had to do it over again: and this time she got the prayer-book.”
I should say that the title makes this quote quite damning. Not only did Maria choose clay, meaning death, the first time, but she chose its replacement the second time. Despite the prayer-book’s meaning that she will join a convent within the year, the title reminded me that the book was simply standing in for the clay. In a way, for Maria, the book is more sad. She is one of the lovely people who will never get married due to no fault of their own, and though she shyly denies it in the story, she really does want a man to love her. This is why she sings the first verse of I Dreamt that I Dwelt twice, and why she blushed when asked if she was buying a wedding cake. The idea that fate will not allow Maria to be married is in a way a pronouncement of death to her. I see Joyce’s use of superstition in this quote as well as in the story as a whole. On one level, it is as though the supernatural boding of ill is what makes her life hopeless, but on another level that I found more powerful, it is evident that the games of chance are not to blame. Multiple times throughout the story, Maria laughs, and each time she does so, the tip of her nose nearly meets the end of her chin. While the story shows that Maria is loved by those who know her, each time she is described laughing it is as though everyone in the room cannot help but notice her strange, even ugly features. This is why Maria is not loved.
Oops. That last post was on my sister's account. Take Two: Joyce, (22) An Encounter
“My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamed of my paltry stratagem. I had to call the name again before Mahony saw me and hallooed in answer. How my heart beat as he came running across the field to me He ran as if to bring me aid. And I was penitent; for in my heart I had always despised him a little.”
I had difficulty relating the end of this quote to the rather disturbing incident with the old man. For what is he penitent? Why is he ashamed of his "paltry stratagem" of assumed names, and is there something more than their differences in taste and intelligence that causes him to despise his friend? What is Joyce saying about the boy's feeling of penitence? Is this a good or bad thing, or is it even relevant? Anyhow, Caroline, I didn't know if you had any thoughts on the matter. I mean, I've noticed shame come up a whole lot in the stories, and think it is often unnecessary or that it is somewhat forced on the characters, and says a whole lot about the interpersonal separation prevalent in Dubliners. And does gnomon significant for the quality of what the shape is missing, or for what is left? Does it have anything to do with a sundial, or is it parallelism, or is it the similarity of the shape missing and the whole? Where did you see simony in the later stories?
Caroline and Elizabeth,
“In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw again the heavy grey face of the paralytic. . .. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something. I felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and there again I found it waiting for me. . .. I wondered why it smiled continually. . .. But then I remembered that it had died of paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve the simoniac of his sin.”
ReplyDeleteWhile earlier in the story Old Cotter has expressed disapproval with how the boy’s relationship with Reverend Flynn kept him from his peers, what I found troubling was not that the boy did not spend time with friends of his own age, but what his relationship was with his so-called “friend” the priest. The boy was not saddened by Flynn’s death, rather he felt freed, though his frequent visits to the priest had been voluntary. As far as their interaction went, the boy would go to learn the complexities of the Church, drawn by a fascination with duties so grave he wondered how any would dare undertake them. He would bring the priest snuff, though uneasy at first by Flynn’s paralytic leer, yet in all of this there is no mention of the boy’s affection. Rather, it seems that in visiting the priest, the boy took on a priest-like role in his own mind, as though elevated to such superiority that he could deign Cotter a “tiresome old fool.” It is this that I see in the quote above: the boy’s soul is in a pleasant and vicious region where he is able to pardon the sinner. It is no friend, but a face, an “it,” a simoniac that he absolves. Having such power is perhaps what is pleasant about the region he dreams, and I wonder if the viciousness he mentions is within the power to refuse absolution, or in the persistence of the waiting face. I wonder what the boy’s feeble smiling has to do with absolving sin. Also, I find something very unnerving about a continual smile brought on by a guilt-born trauma.
Still, I’m plagued with wonder as to why it is called “The Sisters.”
“All the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her into them: he would drown her. . .. She set her white face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition.”
ReplyDeleteI do not see the tragedy of this quote the same as that of a romance. That she gave him no sign of love or recognition does not cause my heart to break for Frank. Rather, it causes some profound sense of loss for the hope of something different for Eveline. Here is paralysis if there is any at all: she is drawn between a sense of duty to care for her father and a sense of fear of being trapped with her mother’s fate. In the end, it is as though she has no control; she is a helpless animal, overwhelmed to passivity by the enormity of leaving the life to which she is accustomed. It is sad that the most she could do was to entertain the idea of something new, sitting in unaccustomed parts of the theater with Frank, becoming excited with the idea of “having a fellow.” It is sad also that the reason this was the most she could do was that though she wanted respect and a house of her own, she did not want to be foolish. No, this story was never about love.
“Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.”
ReplyDeleteThe boy is quite a romantic, enjoying religion, romance and especially detective stories. Clearly this is written by a disillusioned narrator, however (“her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood”). To him, she is almost supernatural – he envisions her a form created in the light, always an image. He goes on a quest, as it were, to bring her something from the carnival, and reflects upon his state of mind that saw everything but that related to Mangan’s sister as “ugly monotonous child’s play,” saying that then innumerable follies laid waste in his mind. It seems that all the time after he has received his quest, he is suspended out of reality, and even separated from Mangan’s sister until the task is completed. The morning of the Bazaar, he is not able to wait at the window to see her head to school, and when he returns home, what he sees when staring at her door is only her imagined figure. The story begins to draw towards the narrator’s conclusion in this quote as his uncle comments when giving him bazaar money that “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” This instance trivializes all of the narrator’s agonizing, which when paired with the description of his ride to the bazaar in which his surroundings are improvised adds to the meretricious scene at the carnival, and causes the boy’s anguish. But what was he able to do? I have a feeling that there is so much more to this story than what I have picked up, so much more cause for the boy's anguish and anger at the end. What is behind his self-image as someone having been "driven and derided by vanity?" What does the deceased priest have to do with the story?
“She felt a soft wet substance with her fingers and was surprised that nobody spoke or took off her bandage. . .. Maria understood that it was wrong that time and so she had to do it over again: and this time she got the prayer-book.”
ReplyDeleteI should say that the title makes this quote quite damning. Not only did Maria choose clay, meaning death, the first time, but she chose its replacement the second time. Despite the prayer-book’s meaning that she will join a convent within the year, the title reminded me that the book was simply standing in for the clay. In a way, for Maria, the book is more sad. She is one of the lovely people who will never get married due to no fault of their own, and though she shyly denies it in the story, she really does want a man to love her. This is why she sings the first verse of I Dreamt that I Dwelt twice, and why she blushed when asked if she was buying a wedding cake. The idea that fate will not allow Maria to be married is in a way a pronouncement of death to her. I see Joyce’s use of superstition in this quote as well as in the story as a whole. On one level, it is as though the supernatural boding of ill is what makes her life hopeless, but on another level that I found more powerful, it is evident that the games of chance are not to blame. Multiple times throughout the story, Maria laughs, and each time she does so, the tip of her nose nearly meets the end of her chin. While the story shows that Maria is loved by those who know her, each time she is described laughing it is as though everyone in the room cannot help but notice her strange, even ugly features. This is why Maria is not loved.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOops. That last post was on my sister's account.
ReplyDeleteTake Two:
Joyce, (22)
An Encounter
“My voice had an accent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamed of my paltry stratagem. I had to call the name again before Mahony saw me and hallooed in answer. How my heart beat as he came running across the field to me He ran as if to bring me aid. And I was penitent; for in my heart I had always despised him a little.”
I had difficulty relating the end of this quote to the rather disturbing incident with the old man. For what is he penitent? Why is he ashamed of his "paltry stratagem" of assumed names, and is there something more than their differences in taste and intelligence that causes him to despise his friend?
What is Joyce saying about the boy's feeling of penitence? Is this a good or bad thing, or is it even relevant? Anyhow, Caroline, I didn't know if you had any thoughts on the matter. I mean, I've noticed shame come up a whole lot in the stories, and think it is often unnecessary or that it is somewhat forced on the characters, and says a whole lot about the interpersonal separation prevalent in Dubliners.
And does gnomon significant for the quality of what the shape is missing, or for what is left? Does it have anything to do with a sundial, or is it parallelism, or is it the similarity of the shape missing and the whole?
Where did you see simony in the later stories?