In the comments box post any questions, observations, and comments still lingering after the student-lead discussions (Monday, October 20 and, for D-block, Tuesday, October 21). You are evaluated during these discussions and may feel that your contributions during class did not adequately convey your understanding of the novel. If so, post comments.
D-Block (Write quick summaries for Tuesday to ground our analysis.)
E-Block (Write quick summaries for Wednesday to ground our analysis.)
* Examined parallels between the end of chapter 1 (falling, soft, grey) and chapter 2 (swoon, soft, dark).
* Thought about a few of the various moments in chapters 1 and 2 where women, intimacy, and sexuality are issues--and how this is related to other aspects of his identity: church and father specifically. More to be examined here.
* Discussed significance of Mr Tate (jokingly, with "a short loud laugh" 68) accusing Stephen of heresy and of Stephen's fight w/ mates over Tennyson and Byron. Linked this to Stephen's outsider status.
* Note: re: Courtland's comments: This is what I get for making inferences without the text in front of me. I re-read the red/white rose (Lancaster/York) passage (page 9) and noticed that Stephen (not just the narrator) is aware of the link between his face and the colors: "Stephen felt his own face red" and later "He thought his face must be white". Here as elsewhere Stephen obsesses with aesthetics (beauty: the colors are "beautiful to think of") and imagination (green rose) over practicality (the contest at hand) and identification (he is a white rose but identifies w/ the other colors as much as with the white).
* Much more to be said. The summaries will help.
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8 comments:
Brian Hand
I'm not sure what E block talked about today (Monday) but this is what I thought of chapters 1/2. Im citing from a different edition.
The beginning of this book starts with simple language and senses, paralleling Stephen's limited experiences and associations. It seems that these simple associations are wet=bad, dry=good, cold=bad, warm=good. These associations are based in part on the "cold" feeling when Stephen "wet the bed" (1) and the "cold and slimy water" of the "square ditch" Stephen is pushed into. (7) This particular association immediately sets off a chain of stream-of-consciousness that reminds Stephen of the "hot" and "lovely warm smell" of the "jewelly slippers" of his Mother (7). As Stephen begins to mature, he begins to learn that certain moments can transcend these simple senses and associations. In Chapter 2 for example, he notes that the pressure of the lips of a woman is "softer than sound or odor" (108).
Again, in the beginning of the novel, his simple association is that "His mother had a nicer smell than his father" (1). As he beings to develop, the sophistication of both his language and his ideas increases. He notes that his "father's words" are "powerless" (95) and is "dejected by his father's voice" (98). I believe his ideas will only further develop and mature as he does because I assume his relationship with his father is essential to the novel.
I just realized that I was referring to Stephen as if he were the narrator, so it would be the narrator that is noting this and the narrator's language that is developing with Stephen.
After reading chapter 2 I really thought that it made a good connection with the first chapter in multiple ways. I saw a few mirrored "scenes" which really emphasized points. For example, in the first chapter we are taken from the imaginitive and fantasy part of Stephen's mind to see that he is still a real person going through things that everyone does when he imagined what his funeral would be like. The same was shown in chapter two when he was on the train with E.C. and was trying to decide if she wanted him to touch or kiss her. He is still thinking imaginitively and in senses, but it gives us a connection to the character as a real person. Also in terms of reality, Stephen is learning more about the real world as he did in the first chapter during the Christmas dinner as well as in the second chapter with his family going through a financial crisis. Through these experiences he is realizing that while he may be able to escape some realities through imagination (the rose team contest, the universe list), some things you simply have to face. Almost as a foil, Stephen's father is trying to escape reality through alcohol, and because the two are going through opposite experiences, it negatively effects their relationship.
While chapter 2 brought Stephen to a greater sense of reality, we still found connections with his inner artist when he obsesses over the black tights E.C. wears and when he imagines himself as a character in Monte Christo. As he gets infatuated with prostitutes, it almost gives a "tortured artist" feel, where he was frivelous with his money, became broke, and then put his confusion about his new life into multiple temporary relationships of a kind which he had never experienced before.
I really like what B. Hand had to say about Stephen's associations becoming more sophisticated. I think I felt that too subconsiously but didn't know how to put it into words. Though I do agree that Stephen's associations are simple, I don't think they're quite as simple as cold=bad. On page 31, Stephen describes Eileen's hands as "white and thin and cold". We know that he has only positive connotations early on. It might also be possible that Stephen's associations get increasingly complex through chapter one.
But I'm getting off track. I wanted to talk about the part in ch. 2 when Stephen gets a lot of prize money for an essay he wrote. At this time, he is feeling insecure. When he was living in Blackrock, he didn't seem to be aware that his family was having financial problems. He was ashamed that his father wasn't a magistrate like the other boys' fathers but he felt secure at home. Now that he is in a poorer situation in Dublin, he begins to understand that things are changeable and there will not always be security. This is traumatic to him because it is crucial to children to have security. He feels he is living in "squalor" and he wanders the streets as "if he really sought someone who eluded him" (57). He is young and like the boys in LOTF, he is trying to externalize an issue that is internal. He is searching for security and reason among the chaos he senses at the fringe of his life.
When Stephen gets the prize money and then spends it all on extravagances and runs his own "bank" on page 86, he thinks, "How foolish he had been! He had tried to build a breakwater of order and elegance against the sordid tide of life without him and to dam up, by rules of conduct and active interests...the powerful recurrence of the tide within him" (86).
He also seems to have tried to use the money to bring himself closer to his family but it seems the attempt was futile. "He saw clearly, too, his own futile isolation. He had not gone one step nearer the lives he sought to approachnor bridged the restless shame...that had divided him from mother and brother and sister" (86). Maybe I wasn't reading close enough but I haven't seen any hints that he wasn't close to his mother and siblings until this point. But it seems as though he feels quite alone. It may be that he is beginning to feel more alone because he is becoming an adolescent and doesn't understand his sexual awakening. This chapter reminds me of Grendel a lot because chaos is lurking just behind the corner. It also reminds me of Spring Awakening (a musical and play about the sexual awakening of teenagers in 1890 Germany that I like) because he is trying to deal with his sexuality because no one has explained it to him and his sexuality's realtionship to his faith.
OK this was really long. Sorry guys. There was just a lot I wanted to talk about.
I had an edit for my past post. I meant to say in the beginning of my post that Stephen has only positive connotations about Eileen so in this instance the "cold" is good. I was just typing so fast I typed the wrong thing.
So I really liked what Isabel was saying because I have a weird habit of not thinking of Stephen as a real person because there are times when the narrator is talking about something and I think it is him, but it isn't, so I usually end up disregarding him as a real person throughout the novel. I would just like to add to what Isabel because I completely agree with him being a real person, but it is in relation to how he over-compensates for being a real person in the chapters that follow. After letting his passions take hold at the end of chapter 2, Chapter 3 focuses on Hell. As previously discussed, religion is a really large part of who Stephen is, whether he is able to reflect upon that or not. After eating a healthy meal Stephen feels "...he had sunk to a state of a beast to lick his chaps after meat..." This is the essential idea of the whole third chapter in relation to Stephen's actions with the prostitutes. Of course he is hungry, and of course he licks his lips, but he does not see it that way. He just continues to inflict shame unto himself without really changing his future actions. He is mad at himself for his animalesque behavior, yet he will eat again, and he will lick his lips again. It is in that, where Stephen sees his faults, acknowledges the shame in them, but does not really change them that he is human.
I didn't really want to interrupt the flow of the ch2 discussion so here are some of my observations. I haven't read the blogs previous to this, so I'm sorry ahead of time if I repeat anything that anyone said and if you said it before i did, i give you FULL credit. And if i get this completely wrong just ignore me because this book made no sense to me.
In the beginning of CH 2 on P55 in the Barns and Noble edition of Portrait i noticed that while Stephen was remembering going around in the milk truck his observations were very specific. instead of thinking about his running he thought of the details of bringing milk to different houses "he waited to catch a glimpse of a well scrubbed kitchen or of a softly lighted hall and to see how the servant would hold the jug and how she would close the door." I don't know how he got to thinking of this, but somehow he connected his not going to Clongowes
and his trainers flabby face to his fathers financial trouble.Stephens lack of focus on the real, live action world is a characterization of his artistic personality.
On page 56 Stephen happily separates himself from the "children at play" and the kids at colongowes. Here Stephen realizes that he likes to be different. This foreshadows his meeting with his inner self in Ch 4. It says on page 56 "he wanted to meet [the image of his soul]...a premonition...told him that this image would...encounter him. They would be alone, surrounded by darkness and silence." Later in CH 4 he meets this figure "he would fade into HER eyes." This woman toward the end of the book is simply his own persona confronting him and "transfigur[ing]" him into, well an artist. Here it is only a "premonition" but I thought it was cool that this was basically telling us what was going to happen a little later. I liked that.
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