Dublin in 1904 was a bustling city, with all kinds of shops and commerce which brought the goods of the world to its doors. And yet, at the same time, it was home to some of the darkest and dingiest slums of its day, corridors of hopelessness from which many never fully emerged. Joyce himself had travelled through at least two of its social classes, thanks to the wavering fortunes of his father; he'd enjoyed both a middle-class home and a semi-private education at Clongowes Wood Academy, and far poorer quarters along with the cold water and thrashings at the O'Connell School operated by the Christian Brothers. The Jesuits were intellectual in bent, and Joyce much preferred them; the loss of his place there and return to dismal life in Dublin were hard on him.
But the change did Joyce a favor; having been dislocated from his class and his comrades, he experienced a crisis of faith with his religion, and was thus better prepared than most to see Ireland in a multi-dimensional way, and to be drawn into the European modernist movement. Unlike other writers of his generation, he never gravitated to the nationalism of the Young Ireland movement and its successors, and had nothing but disdain for the attempt at the revival of Irish Gaelic literature and culture (at one point in "The Dead," the main character pointedly objects to the notion that Irish is "his" language). One can readily imagine Joyce, his eyesight poor and always growing poorer, peering through thick-lensed spectacles at the plight of the people about him, whose lives were strictly circumscribed by poverty, strict Catholic morality, and the consciousness that Ireland was a subjugated nation, claimed by the English and with her harps on its flag.
There is nothing supernatural in these stories -- only the extreme inner consciousness of loss, of the fragility of beauty, of the fleeting nature of life's few pleasures. In Araby, we follow a desperately shy and isolated young man through his day, and into the night on a trolley in a doomed attempt to find a fitting gift for the girl he loves but can barely speak with. In Clay, we play a little game -- a game about destiny, family, and (yes) death. And in The Dead, we come full circle, looking within and without the walls of polite Dublin society, and witness the emergence of a newly urgent sense of identity that, though certainly Irish, rejects the cultural conventions of "Irishness."
I enjoyed the three short stories, "Araby", "Clay", and "The Dead" that are found within James Joyce’s Dubliners. All three stories seemed to display a sense of loss amongst the main characters.
ReplyDeleteIn "Araby", the unnamed narrator falls in love with the older sister of his friend Mangan. The promise of the bazaar gives the narrator feelings of joy, love, elation, and hopefulness. However, his love for Mangan’s sister is put in competition with his uncle’s lateness and Dublin trains. When he arrives to the closing bazaar he is disappointed that his desire for her is unrealistic. The narrators change of heart leads him to simply give up, losing his hope. I felt myself longing for the narrator to go after Mangan’s sister, and to not give up.
To me, "Clay" seemed very uneventful. The title, Clay, is related to Maria’s selection of the clay during the Halloween game. In this game, the clay is symbolic of death. This symbolism of death could perhaps be interpreted as a metaphorical early death rather than a literal death. Maria lives an uneventful, detail oriented life with few experiences in which she is dying from lack of excitement and real living.
In "The Dead", Gabriel Conroy insists that, people must not linger on the past and the dead, but live and rejoice in the present with the living. However, he realizes this division between the living and dead is false upon hearing of Michael Fuery’s memory.
Overall, I enjoyed all three short stories.
The three short stories are all quite different in what they represent -- Clay seems to focus on death, whereas The Dead is more of a focus on life (and acceptance thereof, of death). However, the one story that doesn't seem to fit this theme is Araby.
ReplyDeleteAraby is, in effect, a one sided love story. While this seems like it would go up hill, the entire story reads as though the narrator is slowly giving up hope. His hopes to fulfill the love he has never come to fruition, as we find out toward the end. In fact, at the very end we effectively see him believe his love to be completely out of reach, and comes to give up on this. The gift that the narrator seeks to find is -- in my interpretation -- that he leaves her alone. Overall, we are left with a feeling of longing and dread, as that dismal train that the narrator was in becomes the grave for his innocent love.
I'm in the middle of reading "The Dead". I find that some of the sentences are not written in proper English. for example on page 225 it reads " He could hear two persons talking in the pantry". shouldn't it read "he could hear two people speaking in the pantry"?
ReplyDeleteActually, that's a very common Irish English idiom. As with other varieties of English around the world, there's nothing improper about it, though it may sound a bit strange to our ears.
DeleteEdward Cummins
ReplyDeleteThe very interesting, definable characteristic that interconnects all of these readings that were assigned are that all of the stories are reflective of the harsh treatment of the English and truly turbulent times that they lived in. For centuries, the English oppressed the Irish constantly rubbing dirt into their wounds. Hope was all but lost and this is clearly reflective in all of these readings. As I read Araby, it seemed to suggest the ending would be indicative of a typical love story but it ended as it began, depressing and full of hopelessness. He has it already grinded into his mind as a young child that fortune is the only to sway people’s hearts and that from his social circle, a fulfilling life cannot be attained. In Clay, despite having a very respectable life, she became a slave to the tedious repetition of her job and not finding any fulfillment. Regardless of being so attentive, mindful of her job and her life, it still engrained negative feelings and unfulfilled expectations of her life. The Dead reflects those in a somewhat higher social tier in life. Gabriel uses money to distance himself from the troubles of life as indicated by his interaction with Lily giving her a holiday tip to end the awkwardness of the conversation. In the last few stories money could have maybe been a temporary fix but this story shows that despite money, you can’t appease everyone and escape the realities of the current world. Disdain was shown towards the English for their mistreatment of the Irish and trying to be different and distance himself from his own ancestry was also not much of a viable option. He was still stuck in the mud. Despite very different people in different walks of life and ages, all the stories still elude to the fact that this was a very tough time to live in and not much hope was derived from this era in Irish history.
The Joyce stories were a hard read for me. I impulsively want to label them as “depressing”, but I don’t think that’s a fair descriptor. I think they’re actually very relatable. Reading Araby gives me the same feeling I have walking through a low-rent antique shoppe. The items are lifeless and yellowed and browned but still somehow cry out to you trying to tell their stories, but they don’t quite accomplish that because as you get closer you notice the chips and imperfections are too great for them to be at all desirable. The memories they possess, like the hopes of Joyce’s characters, are all overshadowed by the crushing weight of impending death and the futility of human existence.
ReplyDeleteI read Gabriel’s crowd-pleasing reenactment of the horse circling the statue of King William, as he stomped around the hall at the Morkan house in his galoshes, as a nod to the aimlessness of his own life. Despondency and futility are reoccurring themes throughout these stories, and though they are uniquely Irish (as Joyce admits to being driven in part by bitterness and resentment toward England and toward the Catholic Church), they also speak to a universal human need for affirmation and meaning.
Anthony Maselli
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteAraby, Clay, The dead
ReplyDeleteI must admit, I had to reread most of the material because it was a little difficult to understand at first.
To me Araby, was a mixture of things, from the dead priest in a dreary, stuffy house to a boy who was longing/lusting for love. At the end of the story it states that he was filled with anger and anguish. I feel that part of his anger was the fact that he had to wait for his uncle to give him money to go to the bazar, his uncle gave him money, but not enough to be able to get in and purchase a gift. I also feel as though; he was trying to buy love by purchasing a gift for this girl. I feel the lack of funds made him angry at the world.
Clay:
Clay I feel as though Maria just had a string of bad luck. Or as we say, she woke up on the wrong side of the bed. She lost the plum cake, repeated versus in the song and touched the clay. To her touching the clay meant death. This could simply just be a myth that she believes in.
The dead:
Describes a holiday gathering. Fun filled, meals, drinks music etc. Towards the end Gabriel goes on to describe how he barely knew his wife. What stuck out to me however, is how he describes life and death. He describes his aunt Julia as pretty much old, decrepit, turning gray and that soon he will be sitting in that same house giving his condolences trying to figure out what to say. If you ask me, living to old age might be a luxury, I guess if you were to see it from the point of view of a young person that might be starring death in the face.
As for the movie the Dead, it truly resembled the book. It helped to clarify a few things, as well as take us back in to that era. Many times I have read a book, then watched the movie and many things are cut out, however, that is not the case with “The Dead”. The music was nice expect for Julia’s signing.
I found that I instantly related to the narrator in Arby, and maybe more of us can in the same way; growing up in a small town, I had heart-aching crushes on older kids based solely on sight, never a conversation. I was also so struck of the description of how he thought of her in all sorts of moments throughout his day; isn’t that what love feels like? I’m also left wondering whether their conversation about going to Araby truly existed; it seemed like a fabrication of his desires and a dream-like state. I felt such strong frustration for him as he was forced to wait for his uncle, with everything riding on the excitement of the evening at the bazaar and his uncle just so casually running so late, altering his entire fate. We are at the whims of our guardians as youth, and especially when in love it becomes so burdensome and maddening. I’m still so curious what happened at the end; why he did not buy something for his beloved. I’m left assuming it was out of his price range. So much emotion to empathize with in this story, I’m drawn right back into my youth.
ReplyDeleteI had a harder time connecting to Clay, but could certainly relate to the desire for simple pleasures within poverty. The importance and excitement of a night out, of just so much money to spend on whatever you’d like, of cakes and wine and songs. These are the simple pleasures of life, and in a way it felt really good to get a glimpse of her night off, spent in celebration. The song she sang got my heart; it held this longing for what life could be like if they had wealth to enjoy.
I had a hard time with "The Dead." The film version I found insufferably boring; not to be crude, but the story was all about the subtleties of relationship and social standing at a dinner party. It didn't make for an engaging cinematic experience. It felt like the beginning of a play whose plot takes a turn to maybe include some magic after-hours, or scandal, but I guess it falls right in line with Joyce's style. He focuses on the subtle, internal experience, and certainly the more depressed aspects of life in Dublin in the early 20th century. I'm happy for having read and experienced Joyce, as it was always a reference from my Irish elders (not by blood, perhaps explaining my delay).
DeleteI felt that Joyce's work was much better than the film adaptation, but in fairness to the film it was a difficult story to adapt. The story gives us a much better insight into the characters, whereas the film version forces the viewer to closely pay attention to the mannerisms of the actors. I think that the actors were believable and had accurate portrayals of their characters, but overall the film lacked an interesting central conflict to keep the viewers engaged.
DeleteI also had a hard time with "The Dead" I normally adore period pieces - "Pride and Prejudice", "Sense and Sensibility" and especially " A Christmas Carol" - but this I struggled with. All 3 Joyce stories were far too figurative and the meaning was hard to grasp.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to sign this posting. Apologies. SSteere
DeleteAll three of theses stories had an overall theme of being trapped or limited by their surroundings. That moo matte how much the main characters wanted to leave their dull Irish lives they couldn't. We see in The Dead Gabriel almost break through this barrier but because of his surroundings we see exactly why he can not leave his old life behind. The community attaches to him and makes him feel almost guilty for what he has. Its like modern day artists who came from rough beginnings almost feel inclined to help their neighborhoods or where they came from. Than in the story The Clay we see how this one woman day was made by just a small marble cake something that in our society we would overlook but to her made all the difference pf her day. Its these types of things that make these stories so powerful because it sheds light onto other cultures and communities around the world. Ryan Vandette
ReplyDeleteOverall, I found the three stroies from The Dubliners enjoyable. I particularly like the imagery and discription that Joyce put into his work. His ability to paint pictures in your mind is what I enjoyed most while reading. I found the desperation of the man in Araby wanting a woman he could not have relatable. It reminded me of other love tales that I have read such as Looking for Alaska and the Notebook. Similarly, in both, men are pawning after woman who are out of their reach. I also enjoyed the end message I took away from Araby. To me, it emphasized that money and gifts will not buy you love and happiness. Despite his best efforts, the man would not be able to truly be with the girl he wants because she is off to be a nun and perhaps age differences. I also enjoyed pairing the film with the story The Dead. Personally, I try to read books that are often turned into movie so that I can compare the two. In this case, the movie helped me understand the story better. It brought the text to life for the reader. While watching, it felt as thought it was just a short clip from a bigger movie. The cast was well picked and portrayed their characters to par.Though slightly boring and uneventful, I found both the film and story to be a interesting combination.
ReplyDelete-- Erika M.
With the younger generations, I think it's beginning to change, however, in the past, Ireland has been a very bleak place to live, and It that shows within Joyce's stories. All of his stories share a theme of bleakness and death that maybe characterize how he felt when he lived there.
ReplyDeleteI can see how the three stories come full circle. The first story of Araby is the love story which is pretty light hearted compared to the others. Young love is so innocent when kids have a 'crush" and we think its cute because at a young age you don't necessarily understand the deeper side of having relationships. The we moved on the the story Clay, which had content that was more serious than that in Araby. Death in not something that people are typically willing to talk about or ever prepared for. That is why its so important to try to be light hearted and willing to living your life to the fullest. In the story The Dead is how we come full circle. The Dead tells the story of how we should live our lives and be appreciative of the life we do have.
ReplyDeleteI found the three stories very interesting. In Araby were given great descriptions of what life was prior to death by the introduction of how things looked old aged and yellowed. The odd collections of books that a priest kept. I found it interesting that it ended up being more based on a love the main character couldn't have. I honestly thought by the introduction it would be similar to the other two short stories in the relation to referencing to death. In the Clay I had to read it a couple times I honestly didn't catch on at first that the Clay symbolized death and for Maria , it could mean a early death is to come. I also found that The Dead was a particularly hard read. I didn't find it the least bit interesting and I had a hard time figuring out what exactly the point of the story was I had to reread it. These stories are a very different feel than what we read last week in Kwaidan.
ReplyDelete