William Blake’s Influence on Joyce’s Ulysses
Stephen Dedalus is a poor schoolteacher. Poor in the sense that he lives in a one-room tower and eats nothing all day, sure, but poor mainly in the sense that he is a rotten instructor.
You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
Tarentum, sir.
Very good. Well?
There was a battle, sir.
Very good. Where?
The boy's blank face asked the blank window. [1]
He grills his students in much the same way his first teachers drilled him; stands before them inspiring fear and boredom. He understands the schoolroom and its small miseries. The form is tried and true: the catechism, call and response. Cochrane replies automatically to Stephen's barked interrogatives but his mind is elsewhere. The window, the unknown. Our hero Stephen's sympathies lie that way too:
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess, I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and one livid final flame. What's left us then? (Joyce 20).
These are not the well-measured words of a history instructor. Actually, they're largely the words of William Blake. The "daughters of memory" figure in "A Vision of the Last Judgment", "Fable or Allegory is Form'd by the daughters of Memory." [2] Stephen muses on the figure of Pyrrhus, the Tarentenian general who won a foolish victory and died a foolish death (Gifford 30). Write faster. I mean it. Fast! The Tarentines succumbed to the Romans in the end, overcome by their greater numbers. The Battle of Asculum drained them financially. Hardly romantic stuff. But Stephen imagines ...
... middle of paper ...
...thetically (and with great enthusiasm).
[2] This connection was made by Frank Gifford in Ulysses Annotated. Maybe I ought to properly cite it later (30).
[3] I will deal with this later.
[4] This information is basically culled from the short editor's introduction to the piece on Blake in The Critical Writings of James Joyce. There is no credit, however. I'll deal with this later too. That's the kind of thing it's ok to wait until Friday to do.
[5] James Joyce. "[William Blake]". The Critical Writings of James Joyce, ed. Ellsworth Mason, Richard Ellmann. New York: Viking Press, 1959 (221). Hereafter cited parenthetically.
[6] Maybe this has something to do with the fact that Joyce was lecturing in Italian. Just a possibility.
[7] Joyce gets most of his information on Blake's life from The Real Blake by Edwin Ellis (London, 1907).
Two brothers, Lyman and Henry, had very little in common other than their blood. One day they decided to catch a ride to Winnipeg. The car was introduced while these two were doing some sightseeing in the city. They spotted the red Oldsmobile convertible. Lyman, the storyteller, almost made the car a living thing when he said, "There it was, parked, large as life. Really as if it were alive." (461) The brothers used all of the money they had, less some change for gas to get home, to buy the car. The car's significance was the bond that it created between the brothers. The purchase of the vehicle brought these two together with a common interest: the car. Once the bond was formed, the brothers became inseparable, at least for a while. The boys spent the whole summer in the car. They explored new places; met new people and furthered the bond that the car had created. When they returned from their trip, Henry was sent to war. He left the car with Lyman. While Henry was gone, Lyman spent his time pampering and fixing the car. Lyman saw the car as an extension of Henry. Lyman used the car to maintain an emotional bond with his brother who was thousands of miles away.
...who endures pain. His brother, Lyman, suffers from many of the same things as Henry. Lyman also experiences post-traumatic stress. Although Lyman seems to acknowledge this stress in a rather different way than Henry, it is there all the same. Just as Henry tries to give the red convertible up to his brother, Lyman does the same in the end, and pushes it right back to him. The red car represents a bond between the two brothers, and with Henry gone, Lyman can not bear to have it around anymore. Unfortunately, getting rid of the car does not take care of Lyman's pain. Even a long time after Henry's death, Lyman still experiences post-traumatic stress. Only now he has a tragedy of his own to endure.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin introduces the reader to the life of Edna Pontellier, a woman with an independent nature searching for her true identity in a patriarchal society that expects women to be nothing more than devoted wives and nurturing mothers.
We first meet Edna on her way back from a swim with Robert Lebrun, as Chopin begins to establish Edna’s burgeoning transformation in the context of her relationship with Robert and to the sea. While Robert and Edna’s relationship develops, Edna becomes increasingly dissatisfied with her marriage to Léonce Pontellier and her traditional roles as wife and mother to her two children, Rauol and Etienne. Edna learns to swim, takes up painting, befriends Madame Reisz, an eccentric old woman that plays the piano, and moves into her own house. After Robert leaves for Mexico, she engages in an affair with Alceé Arobin, until Robert returns and they affirm their love for one another. However, Robert, afraid of the social repercussions of their affair, leaves town. As a result of losing Robert, failing to find fulfillment in her life without a man, and failing to reconcile her roles as a good and faithful wife and mother while becoming an artist and falling in love, Edna commits suicide by drowning herself in the sea.
Throughout Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, the main protagonist, experiences multiple awakenings—the process in which Edna becomes aware of her life and the constraints place on it—through her struggles with interior emotional issues regarding her true identity: the confines of marriage vs. her yearning for intense passion and true love. As Edna begins to experience these awakenings she becomes enlightened of who she truly and of what she wants. As a result, Edna breaks away from what society deems acceptable and becomes awakened to the flaws of the many rules and expected behavior that are considered norms of the time. One could argue that Kate Chopin’s purpose in writing about Edna’s inner struggles and enlightenment was to
In Kate Chopin’s novella, The Awakening, Edna Pontellier’s behaviors appear to be symptoms of depression rather than the actions of a strong woman in search of liberation. This conclusion, however, is not entirely apparent until the end of the novel. Throughout the story, Edna does things to lead the reader to believe she is being strong and overcoming the burdens of living in a patriarchal society. However, a strong woman who is truly overcoming adversity is not going to commit suicide.
Because of Robert, Edna realized that she was not happy with who or where she was and decided to drastically change everything that she was accustomed to. If Edna Pontellier had never met Robert Lebrun, she may never have realized how unhappy she was, and, in turn, may never have chosen to end her life.
Written in the first person by Lyman Larmartine, The Red Convertible follows a typical dramatic development. The story begins in with an introduction of the narrator's life. Almost simultaneously the reader is introduced to older brother Henry Junior and the shiny red Oldsmobile convertible they bought on the spur of the moment together. The rising action of the story begins when the two take off one summer on a road trip that ends them in Alaska. When they arrived home, it was conveniently just in time for Henry to be drafted for the army. Just months later in early 1970 Henry was fighting in the Vietnam War and Lyman was had the red convertible in his possession. More than three years later, Henry finally returned home three years later only to be a much different person than the one that had left. Henry was distant and lackadaisical for the most part, never really caring about anything. Lyman knew there had been only one thing in the past that really cheered him up, and would do whatever it would take to have Henry back to his old self. Lyman took a hammer to their prized possession one night and soon showed Henry the car. Henry then was angered by the way the car was treated and was soon spend all his days and nights consumed by repairing the car. The climax of the story begins when Henry finally finished refurbishing the car and posing in front of it with Lyman for one last picture followed by a trip to Red River like in the good old days. When they arrived at the river, Henry confessed that he had known what Lyman did to the Olds, and was thankful for it, then offered to give his portion of the car to him. Just when the reader believes the old Henry has come back to life, he dives into the river and is sucked down with the strong current.
In The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, Edna Pontellier is a married woman with children. However many of her actions seem like those of a child. In fact, Edna Pontelliers’ life is an irony, in that her immaturity allows her to mature. Throughout this novel, there are many examples of this because Edna is continuously searching for herself in the novel.
A key symbol in this story is the red convertible. The vehicle as a whole symbolizes the strong bond that was once held between the brothers. The color red has many different meanings. In some Native American cultures the color red means beauty, faith and happiness but sometimes it means blood, violence, and energy. Within the story there were two brothers that loved each other dearly. They had love for each other and everything was great between them. One day Henry lost his job and his brother Lyman had already had money saved up and they went to Winnipeg to get away and there they saw the car, the red convertible. Since both of the brothers were so close, they decided to buy the car. Both brothers loved the car just as much as they loved each other. The color of the car symbolized the love these two had for each other because the color was bright and vibrant and the car represents the strength of the actually bond between these two. After they made their trip to Alaska the car needed repairs. At the same time Henry was called to serve his country. When the car needed repairs, so did the relationship between the brothers. When Henry returned, he was not well and suffered from PTSD.
The relationship of brothers usually lasts forever, but in Louise Erdrich’s short story “The Red Convertible”, the relationship of the main characters Lyman and Henry takes a turn. Erdrich takes her audience through the experiences these brothers face and how they must come to terms that their relationship has changed. Knowing that it will most likely never be the same both Lyman and Henry try to fix their relationship until eventually one falls because of the experiences he faced in life. While Lyman may think the red convertible will save his and Henry’s relationship, Erdrich makes it clear that it will not through the characterization of the brothers, the plot of the story, and the symbolism she uses to tell her story.
The Red Convertible, written by Louise Erdrich, is a short story written in the first person perspective of a Chippewa Indian named Lyman. It portrays the story of his brother, Henry, who joins the Marines and fights in the Vietnam War. Before recruiters pick up Henry, Lyman describes him and his brother’s road trip in their brand new red Olds. Lyman explains Henry’s characteristic during their joy-ride as friendly, joking, and fun. Returning from their road trip, Henry leaves for Vietnam. When he returns, Henry is not the same joyful man that he once was before he had left. Louise Erdrich’s short story, The Red Convertible, follows the life of Henry who is as funny joking guy. Although war has changed him, and it was not for the best. Louise Erdrich’s theme for The Red Convertible is that war can devastate peoples’ lives.
In writing about the experience of reading Ulysses, one critic has commented that "it's rather like wearing earphones plugged into someone's brain, and monitoring an endless tape-recording of the subject's impressions, reflections, questions, memories and fantasies, as they are triggered either by physical sensations or the association of ideas" (Lodge 47). Indeed, the aural sense plays a crucial role throughout much of the novel. But in the "Wandering Rocks" section especially, one experiences a sort of sensory overload as one is presented with nineteen vignettes of one hour in the life of Dublin's denizens which, while seemingly disparate, are skillfully connected events.
Givens, Seon, ed. James Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism. New York: 1948. 2nd ed. 1963.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce, exemplifies the model of art it proposes as it also offers the reader on how to read that very art. Following the main character, Stephen Dedalus, through life, Joyce uses Stephen’s immediate perception to convey how an artist views the world. The reader witnesses Stephen encountering everyday aspects of life as art—the words of a language lesson as poetry or the colors of a rose as beautiful. Through Stephen’s voyage and words, Joyce introduces the theory that “beauty” as a label for an object is not born from the actual physical object itself, but rather lies within the process one goes through when encountering the object. Joyce’s theory is also experienced by the reader as he or she encounters Stephen’s perceptions as well as the beauty of the poetic language and vivid description within Joyce’s narrative. The rhythmic patterns and stylistic sentences create a multitude of authorial voices that blend at various points in the novel involving Joyce, Stephen, and the reader.