Thursday, October 30, 2008
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Chapter 5)
In the comments box post any questions, observations, and comments still lingering after the teacher-lead discussion (Thursday, October 30). 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.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
I would like to talk about the importance of poetry in this chapter. On page 157 experiments with language and writes a short verse. Although the lines he comes up are interesting in their sounds they are completely devoid of meaning. The narrator reflects (echoing Stephen’s perspective) saying, “Did anyone ever hear such drivel? …Who ever heard of ivy whining on a wall?”
Stephen is captivated by language – the same page talks about him contemplating random signs until they had been “emptied of instantaneous sense until every mean shop legend bound his mind like the words of a spell” – but he isn’t quite able to exercise it effectively.
Later in the chapter he is fantasizing about Emma when he writes a villanelle. This effort is thoroughly composed and inspired and utilizes interesting language. This event obviously echoes his first attempt to write a poem for Emma. It seems that Stephen’s best writing comes as an expression of his innermost desires or most intimate experiences. His penchant for language gives him the opportunity to create art. However, it is his self-analytical, reflective nature that actually gives him the ability.
Mr. Cook said at one point that good writing contains both beauty and truth. I think this chapter demonstrates this perfectly. It is the combination of beautiful language and truths that Stephen mines from his own experience that allow him to create art.
Michael McGovern
I would like to expand on something that we touched on a little in class. In one of our disscusions, a couple people said that Davin represents the loyal Irishman while Stephen is trying to break away from Ireland's hold on him. I beleive that this shows that Joyce uses Davin as a foil to Stephen. On page 159 when Davin is first being described, he is shown as a true Irishman. Stephen also calls him a "tame goose" which shows how loyal Davin is to Ireland. Stephen on the other hand, has a non traditional Irish name and talks about how he always wants to break free from Ireland. On page 180, Stephen says to Davin, "You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets." This varies greatly from Davin’s beliefs about Ireland. On page 179 when Stephen says he does believe in the Irish cause, Davin answers him, “They died for their ideals Stevie, Our day will come yet, believe me.”
The comparison between the two continues when Davin tells Stephen a story about how he refused to go into a strange women’s house who invited him in. This varies greatly from how Stephen dealt with women earlier in the book when he slept with prostitutes. The fact that Davin was able to resist the temptation of women while Stephen wasn’t shows how different they are.
By making these two characters so different from eachother, Joyce is able to highlight Stephen’s nature. He is able to use Davin’s nationalistic, moral behavior to contrast Stephen’s rebellious and immoral deeds. By using Davin as a foil, Joyce is able to clearly show the reader all of Stephen’s beliefs and make Stephen’s artistic, rebellious nature clear.
I agree with Alex that Stephen is captivated by language. In fact he seems to neglect the normal demands of society to pursue that interest in language. On page 153 of the Barnes and Noble Edition, Stephen's father says, "Is your lazy bitch of a brother gone out yet?" His father has no problem using vulgar words about his son. The most interesting part though is Stephen's response. I would expect him to either be angry with his father or simply not care and walk out the door. He instead says, "He has a curious idea of genders if he thinks a bitch is masculine." Even when his father is insulting him using vulgar words, he dissects the meaning of the words. His reply to his father is that if he was going to insult him then he should have used a correct word. For Stephen analyzing language comes before everything.
Chapter five is all about Stephen leaving. One way we can see this is in how he compares to Davin, as mentioned in Michael’s comment. He wants to break free from Ireland. His separation from his current life can also be noticed in the current relationship he holds with his family. He had always seemed a bit different from them but it now seems like his family might actually reject him. His father calls him a “lazy bitch” and the family rushes him out of the house. As he leaves he hears their voices as “offending and threatening to humble the pride of his youth.” Then he seems to even be different from his friends. They’re all talking about universal brotherhood and Stephen seems distant from them. When asked about the idea he responds, “The affair doesn’t interest me in the least. You know that well.” He doesn’t have the same ideas as they do, nor does he have the Irish pride most of them share. Also, by this point in the story he has already separated from the church. This distance from his family, friends, and religion show how he begins to break free from Ireland.
I wanted to talk about Stephen's condescending attitude as he matures into an artist. In chapter five, Stephen is infuriated when people he perceives as intelligent (his professors and fellow university students) do not live up to his expectations. A student during a lecture on page 170 asks a question that is either perceived as dumb, rude, or a waste of time to Stephen. (I wasn't quite sure, but all three are negative to say the least.) The narrator implies that Stephen is terribly annoyed that he has to even sit in the same room as the other student. I wasn't sure what a "sharp Ulster voice" meant on page 170, which describes the voice of the questioner that Stephen later thinks of. Page 171"The voice, the accent, the mind of the questioner offended him and he allowed the offence to carry him towards willful unkindness, bidding his mind think that the student's father would have done better had he sent his son to Belfast to study and have saved something on the train fare by so doing." Another example. On page 166, the dean does not recognize the word 'tundish', which upsets Stephen for the rest of the book. Stephen is convinced it's an English word, and is surprised and offended that an intelligent English man does not know a word from his own country. Page 167 "The little word seemed to have turned a rapier point of his sensitiveness against his courteous and vigilant foe. He felt with a smart dejectioin that the man to whom he was speaking was a countryman of Ben Johnson." On Page 224, he again mentions 'tundish', this time in his diary, and how he finds it proven to be an English word. "What did he come here for to teach us his own language or to learn it from us. Damn him one way or the other!" It's funny how annoyed Stephen is that a professor doesn't know something htat he does. It's a great example of how Stephen finds the University boring, and not what he needs in order to become an artist. But I think through this episode, and Stephen's fixation on the tundish, Joyce is making a joke of how artists feel they are more genius than everyone else, and offended when someone else's intelligence does not meet their expectations. Or, maybe Joyce isn't making a joke of it- and actually feels that way. Either way, as Stephen has become more confident in his ability and need to leave Ireland in order to make art, he becomes more condescending. Whether or not the narrator/Joyce is implying that being condescending is a necessary part of being an artist is up to the reader I guess.
Sarah Johnson
B&N
Alex and Naomi’s comments on Stephen’s poetry and lingual habits are very insightful, and I’d like to further the argument of Stephen’s obsession with language. He is always playing with it in his head, like we discussed in class with “sea-dappled clouds”, and when Courtland pointed out his use of the word “ellipsoidal” from his lecture. Stephen loves hearing language, thinking about it, tasting it, and then testing it. He listens to people around him and talks to them, even when they don’t care in the same way he does. In chapter five, he has several deep literary conversations, one in particular with Lynch, where he discusses a need for “new terminology and a new personal experience” (186) as they debate the definition of beauty. This acknowledgment is stately so matter-of-factly for Stephen, but as Lynch, who doesn’t care so much, says, ”you will tell me about the new personal experience and new terminology some other day. Hurry up and finish the first part”. This contrast proves Stephens obsession. He is painfully and acutely aware of language; he plays with it and manipulates it.
We are to assume sometimes that the narrator is interpreting Stephen’s thoughts. This is amazing to me, since his thoughts are often along the lines of “Eyes, opening from the darkness of desire, eyes that dimmed the breaking east” (207). Regardless of whether he is influenced by his reading or if that is an original thought, it’s what Stephen cares about! This elegant poetry is just another thought for Stephen. That is what is so important about him. He has ideals, and he has opinions, but he is in love with words. When Cranly asks him if he has ever felt loves for anyone, Stephen, doesn’t have much of an answer, but when he hears a “tone of closure” (literary device) in Cranly’s voice, his reaction is immediate. He has to keep the conversation going. He’s afraid to lose the words.
Sarah Johnson
B&N
When I was reading chapter 5, I came across a passage which took me by surprise. I’ve noticed this thing about Portrait, where everything is implied. The things we conclude about Stephen are surmised from selective details. Mostly our inferences are stemmed from some pattern we notice. This is why the directness of the passage on page 219 was so startling to me. I realized right away that it was probably important, since it was stated to clearly. Here we see Stephen and Cranly discussing their existence, and futures, and fears, etc, etc. Stephen asks if Cranly remembers something they spoke of once. Cranly says “to discover the mode of life or of art whereby your spirit could express itself in unfettered freedom”, and I was thrilled to have such a direct assertion of Stephen’s intentions. A quote, a tangible conversation we see they have truly had. This was something to hold on to. Then, at the bottom of that same page, Stephen himself fleshes out the simple statement. He explains that it isn’t so simple as expressing himself, he doesn’t want to “serve that in which I no longer believe.” This is so important to Stephen. He has a foundation in staying true to his beliefs: he told the rector about the unjust priest in chapter one; he refused priesthood despite the dangers of rejecting the Lord; he refused to “admit” to Heron and the other bullies that his favorite poet was not the best; he refuses to sign the petition for universal peace that he didn’t believe in; he refused to take communion in Easter just to make his mother happy. Stephen is unwilling to live a life he doesn’t believe in. And here he truly asserts that for himself. He wants to express himself “as freely as I can and as wholly as I can”, but that comes second to his refusal to serve in that which he does not believe.
What Sarah and Alex and Naomi (a little “Portrait” style listing) touched upon earlier in the post was Stephen’s obsession and even thirst for words and language. I think that this all very important but it can be said for every other section as well, the interesting thing in Part 5 is that we finally hear Stephen’s thoughts in first person, and not just what we imply from vignettes of experiences filtered through a narrator. These journal entry like paragraphs finally give us privy to Stephen’s thoughts and feelings, and how they go into creating his art. This is an epic change from the rest of the book and rather puts into view the complete evolution of Stephen from the beginning to the end of the book, and throws him into his own right as an artist. Before Stephen’s art was rather a mystery to the reader, we never really experienced it head on, but just simply mere allusions to it. In the last few pages of Part 5 we get to see how Stephen creates and thinks without any sort of intermediary.
Meghan Ciaramitaro
D Block
Within A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce rarely states that Stephen is actually an artist. With this being a strong motif, one would expect it to be repetitive, like most of Joyce’s writing. One passage that does this justice is in chapter five. The dean is lighting a fire when Stephen approaches asking, “Can I help you?” (185). The dean tells him to wait a moment because “there is an art in lighting a fire” (185). After a long pause Stephen speaks, “-I am sure I could note light a fire,” the dean retorted with, “-You are an artist, are you not, Mr. Dedalus?” (185) Joyce adds this in to remind the reader of Stephen’s talents. The dean plays with Stephen’s mind and he questions him. He continues by saying, “the object of the artist is the creation of the beautiful. What the beautiful is is another question… can you solve the question now” (185). Together the two start the fire while contemplating its beauty and terror. Stephen uses his artistic intellect to reveal the beauty in satisfying nature; “It satisfies the animal craving for warmth, fire is a good.” (186) He then says, “In hell however, it is an evil,” this shoes the terror in an object, so simple and filled with beauty. Joyce uses this scene to show the strength of Stephen’s artistic mind.
B&N Classics Edition
I wanted to build on what others had said about Stephen's obsession and playfulness with language and his need to free himself from the restrictions of his religion, upbringing, nationality, etc. In the novel, Stephen is constantly playing with languages, playing with words to get different effects like "ivory ivy". During his discussion with Cranly in chapter five, Stephen's "love" passes by (I wasn't sure if this was still Emma or not). When she does, he falls into revery and recalls a line of poetry by Nash, "Darkness falls from the air" (207). This line of poetry leads him to fantasize and compose his own poetry of thought, "A trembling joy, lambent as a faint light, played like a fairy host around him" (207). Later, he realizes that he misquoted the line of poetry and that it is actually "Brightness falls from the air" (209). He then berates himself for not remembering the line correctly. "He had not even remembered rightly Nash's line. All the images it had awakened were false. His mind bred vermin. His thoughts were lice born of the sweat of sloth" (209). It seems as if even though Stephen is trying to free himself from his "nets", he is still struggling against them. I believe that an artist has the right to take work from another artist and make it their own. But although Steven has begun to see the power of his own invention, there is still a priest's voice in his head saying, "You didn't remember the quote right, how dare you skewer Nash like that?" He is so hard on himself that he believes all the "images it [the line] had awakened were false" which the reader can see is untrue from the beautiful pictures he imagines spurred by his "messed up" line.
I agree a lot with Michael's post. I drew some similar conclusions regarding the comparison of Stephen and Davin within Ch. 5. As Michael said (and I suppose we said once in class?) Davin appears as the near stereotypical Irish nationalist which may be in contrast to Stephen's character. I do however believe that Stephen does retain some nationalist pride, but he is more hesitant to express it. Unlike Davin he must consider what it means to be a nationalist, rather than blindly believe in a cause because he is expected to. "One time I hear you talk against English literature. Now you talk agaisnt the Irish informers. What with your name and your ideas. . . are you Irish at all?" (pg 178). I think this quote from Davin summarizes his lack of a deep thought process. To him, you are either a die-hard nationalist or a supporter of the English. However, Stephen contemplates what it means to be a nationalist and does not jump on the "bandwagon". "This race and this country and this life produced me. . . I shall express myself as I am." (pg 179). Stephen can weigh his choices rather than be strictly black or white (he is in the "grey" area- Courtland's motif). The first quote I supplied above from Davin also implies how much of an outsider Stephen is (based on his name as well as his beliefs). However, this claim does not bother Stephen as he chooses to be a maverick and remain uninfluenced by the status quo.
Rose Pleuler
D Block.
Citing the (off)white book, mostly on page 247, while referring to different things.
The last scene before Stephen's journal entries gave me an enormous swell of victory for Stephen. One thing that I thought about when he was expressing himself to Cranley was that Stephen's words seemed not so directed at Cranley, but at the church, and God.
After Cranley reveals more about himself then he intended to when he talks about being alone and friendship, Stephen asks him, "Of whom are you speaking?" When Stephen asked this, I realized that a similar question can be applied to what Stephen had just finished saying, but the question is, "to whom are you speaking?"
One enormous indicator that Stephen's outburst is really directed at the church is when he states, "I will not serve that in which I no longer believe..." It's already been placed in the text that the phrase "I will not serve" can be connected to Satan's fall from heaven, so my mind immediately comes to Stephen's refusal to serve the church as a priest. Stephen's strong words, "I will not serve," are what he was aching to tell the church, tell God, but he came to express this to Cranley.
More telling words from Stephen that show me he is revealing his thoughts about refusing the church are when he says, "You have made me confess the fears I have." Although Cranley did have Stephen confess his fear, I see how Stephen is thinking of the church once again. He had confessed his skins after feeling so violently guilty about it that he made himself physically ill. After he had confessed, he still thought he had to constantly punish himself (punishment of the senses,) and it seems that Stephen doesn't believe that any of the confession or punishment made things right between he and God, so this statement seems very accusatory and bitter toward the church.
He continues to proclaim, "I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another or to leave what I have to leave. And I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a great mistake, even a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too." (I know I shouldn't quote a whole two sentences completely, but the words are just too powerful to me, I needed to include them.) To me, these words are full of conviction and I'm proud and relieved and a little emotional that he can finally express this belief. By referring to his eternal mistake, he's rejected the idea that confessing his sin made it okay that he had slept with a prostitute in the first place. He doesn't pardon himself the way the church, or God, is supposed to. He doesn't need to, he has some how risen above it. He proclaims his doomed sort of freedom proudly to Cranley. It's a bittersweet triumph because for all Stephen is finally able to express, he still believes that his mistake is eternal.
Rose Pleuler
D Block.
Citing in the (off)white book, mostly pages 181 to 183.
Michael's already talked about Davin confiding in Stephen in telling him about his experience with a woman inviting him into her home, using the difference in Davin's reaction to the situation to compare to Stephen's - I want to talk about the significance of this scene in a different light.
Although Stephen has rejected the idea of being a priest and doing what priests must do, Davin still chooses to confide in him a private story about an encounter that troubled him. This seems to say that although Stephen has made a decision about what he wants to DO, this does not necessarily apply seamlessly to the person that Stephen wants to BE.
The comparison of Davin's story to a confession can be found when Davin states that he has "never told it to a living soul and [Stephen is] the first person... [he] ever told it to." Although Stephen rejected the church, he is still trusted to hear such a personal story. The fact that Davin trusts Stephen with his story is important to Stephen as a writer, because writing often requires the exhibition insight into people's lives (like later, when Stephen exhibits insight into Cranley's thoughts,) and this shows that Stephen has not completely closed himself off to personal, empathetic contact with other people.
It also interests me that Stephen thinks about what it would be like to hear confession (in Chapter 4) but when he hears Davin's confession, he is haunted by the image of it. Davin being unaware of how close an anecdote of that nature would be to Stephen's heart, he believes that Stephen is the person that can be trusted with unburdening Davin's thoughts about this woman. Stephen had thought that hearing confession would give him power, but with hearing Davin's story, this does not seem to hold true.
Emily Castro
I just read Alex R's post, and I agree with him completely in that this final chapter really does highlight Stephen's obsession with words and language. In the very beginning of the chapter on page 153 (B&N), when Stephen's father calls him a lazy bitch, Stephen does no react defensively, and he shows no sign of offense, but rather his reaction is simply to ponder his father's choice of language. I think this exemplifies that sometimes Stephen hears people, but he does not always listening, because he is too infatuated with the words too comprehend what certain words mean in the context of when/how they are spoken.
Also, what I find most intriguing about Stephen's obsession with language is the difference in his writing when he is inspired and when he is not. On page 157 Stephen is fooling around with words and rhythms in his head ; The ivy whine upon the wall...Ivy, ivy up the wall." As the Narrator says, this is just meaningless word dribble. Stephen comes up with such purposeless and unimaginative poetry because he is not inspired. Later on in the chapter however, Stephen writes the villanelle, which is blatantly inspired by Emma, a woman. I think it's interesting that Stephen's efforts are most fruitful when they are fueled by desire. This also speaks to the passage in chapter four about the senses. In this passage I think Joyce implies that in order to be an artist one must actively employ all of the human senses, and this assertion is corroborated by the villanelle that Stephen writes when he is dreaming of Emma.
Post a Comment