Some of my thoughts...

James Joyce’s A Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man

When I began reading A Portrait of An Artists as a Young Man, I was a bit worried. The stream of consciousness style (including a lack of dates and chronological order) was, at first, difficult to immerse myself in. As the pages turned, I became more and more involved in the individual experiences of Stephen Dedalus as well as how those remembrances were triggered and less in whether or not those experiences created a linear timeline.

It is evident from the first half of the novel that James Joyce’s has written a bildungsroman; although, the tone of the book is not very “happy.” We see Stephen grow from a timid young man, who admires all aspects of his family, to an almost cold cynic, who can see through his own father’s happiness. He often refers to the power of just one word- that, in turn, leads him to an entire conclusion or scene. The title clues us into these beginnings of an artist. There are many important themes in A Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man: nationality, religion, family, self, etc. The book evolves from the contradictions, the push and pull of each, against an individual. The formation of Stephen Dedalus as both an artist and a man arises from these opposing forces.

Trippingly on the Tongue

A response to questions about Act III p. 1589

I remember repeating the paragraph at the beginning of Act III Scene II almost everyday. I was enrolled in Scene Study and my teacher Mr. Burns used this particular speech as warm up for the entire class (which consisted of just four students). It is not something that easily rolls off the tongue but I am sure that was one of his reasons for choosing it as a daily vocal exercise. The next reason would be its clear direction for “good” Elizabethan acting, according to Shakespeare of course. In the first paragraph (in much more flowery and description language) Hamlet tells his actors to:

1. Pronounce the speech and to emphasize each letter and secondly to make sure the audience can hear you.

2. Do not over-emphasize your actions but make them natural.

3. Do not over-emphasize a speech but also make it believable.

In Shakespeare’s opinion there is nothing worse than over-played theater. “It out-Herods Herod.” Hamlet goes on to say, “Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion by your tutor.” In opposition to the previous paragraph, this speech is softer. It delights in the beauty of theater. Hamlet relays this message with such passion that leaves an impression on the audience. Clearly, Shakespeare thought Elizabethan theater needed some improvement and Hamlet was the perfect character to express that. Hamlet is dependent on the players’ performances in order to observe his step-father’s true guilt. It is of the up-most importance that the players do not make this play a “mockery” but truly convince Claudius of his wrong-doings (if any were committed). This scene helps to advance the play because we see how central this “play-within-a-play” is to the main plot line. The king’s reactions will either prompt Hamlet to take his revenge or prompt Hamlet to let go of his father’s death. The play is the catalyst of Hamlet's plan.

Tension and Drama

What makes Oedipus a drama?

Oedipus the King is drama because it allows the audience to experience a completely alien situation while making them feel empathetic to the characters involved. Drama is both entertaining and involving, the audience is a part of the story but only for a short while. All of Greece could attend the theater. In fact, tickets were distributed to all citizens no matter what their wealth or age might be. Oedipus is similarly relatable to every member of the audience because it is so outlandish. Oedipus is “the man surest in mortal ways and wisest in the ways of God.” He saved his city from the sphinx. He is at the apex. Oedipus is noble, wise, strong, wealthy and royal.

“This is the king who solved the famous riddle
And towered up, most powerful of men.
No mortal eyes but looked on him with envy…”

The higher Oedipus sits, the farther he has to fall and it seems no one could sit higher than Oedipus. It is both the King’s grandiose stature and human qualities that entice the audience. Oedipus is proudly arrogant. The Greek’s would often use this aspect of someone’s nature as the tragic flaw; it is called hubris. He quickly angers, accuses, judges and abuses his powers as king when his reputation is threatened. He orders Teiresias to give him the fateful knowledge against Tieresias’s better judement, “you are bound to tell me.” When Tieresias concedes, only after Oedipus accuses him of the crime, Oedipus denounces his claims as lies. He proceeds to accuse his brother by marriage, Creon, of treachery. In every way, he looks for an alternate explanation for the truth he wished to blind himself from. Only when all his options are exhausted does he accept the truth the gods have given him. Then he indeed truly blinds himself from the evil of it.

“Most pitiful is this man’s story:
His fortunes are most changed, his state
Fallen to a low slave’s
Ground under bitter fate.”

From the loftiest of heights to the basest of lows, Oedipus’s disgrace makes for a dramatic exit.

Sophocles’s use of dramatic irony also serves as a defining aspect of this play. There is something interesting about beginning a story at its end. Sophocles creates a similar effect in his rendition of the traditional tale of Oedipus. The story of Oedipus’s misfortune must have been common knowledge for the audiences of 425 B.C.; the story is mentioned in passing in Homer’s Odyssey. In short, the audience knows the fate of the Oedipus before any actors take to the stage. This previous knowledge allows Sophocles to emphasize the details he, himself, has created for the drama and to create gripping dramatic irony. At points during the prologue, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Whoever killed King Laois might – who knows? – Decide at any moment to kill me as well. By avenging the murdered king I protect myself.” Oedipus’s ignorance proves to be slightly comedic. The prologue is littered with these promises of avengement. This irony creates tension for the audience that the characters in the play do not know yet. Because of tension cause by both the irony and Oedipus’s flaws, Oedipus can truly be considered a drama. (543)

Coping

In Elizabeth Bishop’s poem “One Art,” the author attempts to convince herself that the art of losing can be mastered, which eventually contrary to her original goal, leads to an acceptance of her disaster. We all have different ways of dealing with loss and grief but this poem offers insight into one person’s dealings with grief. “One Art” is Elizabeth Bishop’s response to the question of how to cope.

The poem is an emotional progression. Elizabeth builds upon examples where she has been able to cope. This poem lists in consequential the things that are most important to the speaker just as Natasha Tretheway does in her poem “White Lies.” She begins with daily losses, the door keys. Each one of us has experiences the exasperated search for lost keys. It is annoying but bearable. Next she moves on to names and places, things that are more personal. She still could cope. The author builds her confidence as she lists things she was able to overcome. She does this in order to be able to list the one thing she feels is destroying her.

Originally, I felt that the last stanza was an afterthought, an unexpected aside because of the dash’ however, I was wrong. The last refrain is the most significant; it is pitted against the majority of the poem to the left of the dash. The last refrain is more personal. Twice the author uses parenthesis to insert intimate comments: a memorable characteristics of her lover “the joking voice, a gesture I love,” and note to herself “Write it!” The last stanza is also a shift in subject. The first part of the poem is reflective where as in the last stanza the poem gains an audience, a “you.” It is in the last stanza the author attempts to overcome the loss of her lover and it is here she falters.

“One Art” is written in the villanelle style. A villanelle consists of nineteen lines with a repeating refrain. “One Art” follows this pattern… mostly. The poem has nineteen lines and a repeating refrain but Bishops slightly shifts the last refrain. Her changes to the traditional villanelle style emphasize the poem’s emotional shift in the last refrain. Instead of repeating the line,” The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” she utters, “The art of losing isn’t too hard to master.” In the culmination of her attempt to defend herself from grief, she realizes that this overwhelming feeling truly is a disaster. The last line symbolizes her final acceptance of the grief when she instructs herself to (“Write it!”). This directive aimed at the author herself leaves me with a burning image of the two words like disaster.

It is as if she is forcing herself to accept the reality of situation even after she spent the remainder of the poem attempting to convince herself that she would okay, that she could overcome her loss. As someone who is clearly experienced in the art of losing, as demonstrated by her long list, she cannot master loss this time, losing anything and everything does not compare with the loss of her lover. Through writing she discovers this. What began as a way of defensive coping turned into acceptance. By writing the two words like disaster, the author knows them to be true. It is because of these two words that the poem feels genuine and true. The author engages the readers very intimately by allowing them a glimpse into her own life. She makes us believe that contrary to the repeated refrain during the first few lines of poem, the art of losing is hard to master. So the question is, is losing ever easy?

A difference in perspectives

J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darknes are undeniable similar in many aspects. Each tells the story of a seemingly prosperous man of high social standing succumbing the enticing thralls of nature. In each, nature or the native ways are portrayed by feminine counterparts, and both have surrendered their part in their own society. Their disobedience is seen as threatening. Waiting for the Barbarians and the Heart of Darkness differ in their perspectives.

The Heart of Darkness is narrated, mostly, by Marlow, who is only a witness to the fall of Kurtz. It is Kurtz, the well-respected, most prosperous trader of the region who falls victim to the whims of the wilderness. We see the story through the eyes of someone who has not yet undergone the mental changes associated with the native ways but is currently beginning to question his own ideals. Marlow himself begins to feel the tug of the wilderness upon him. By having Marlow tell the story, readers can more easily associate with the story. It is the it-can-happen-to-them-but-it-will-never-happen-to-me complex. Nature swallows whole the character of Kurtz but leaves Marlow only partially scathed destines to bear Kurtz’s testimony. This narration is only a partial upheaval. Readers can choose to see the destruction of to ignore it and enjoy a good adventure story.

This is not the case in J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians. As stated in Douglass Kerr’s article, “Three Ways of Going Wrong: Kipling, Conrad and Coetzee,” “the story is not circumscribed by and processed through the lawman’s gaze and memory. The means of narration are in the hands of the transgressor…” The perspective shifts from the witness to the “victim.” It is the Magistrate himself who undergoes a personal revelation. He relinquishes his peaceful life in order to become that “One Just Man,” even in the face of certain failure. His narration is all the more startling. We, as readers, witness both the gradual and drastic shifts in his psyche and his suffering. We cannot ignore the implications of the words on the page. Unlike Conrad’s novel, Waiting for the Barbarians cannot be read for anything other than what it truly is purely because of the perspective. (369)

Questions for Waiting for the Barbarians

Earlier in the story we see the narrator’s sympathy for the prisoners and his outrage because of their mistreatment, but his opinion shifts. The colonel sends him many prisoners to hold; some are not barbarians. At first, they are a curiosity and a pleasure. Both the town and he are entranced. “Then, all together, we lose sympathy with them.” (p. 19). Their differences that were once endearing and tolerable become disgusting and intolerable. He wants them gone just as his people do. He wants peace but at what cost?

 

“It would be best if this obscure chapter in history were terminated at once, if these ugly people were obliterated from the face of the earth and we swore to make a new start, a new empire in which there would be no more injustice, no more pain. It would cost little to march them out into the desert (having put a meal in them first, perhaps to make the march possible), to have them dig with their last strength a pit large enough for all of them to lie in (or even to dig it for them!), and leaving them buried forever…. But that will not be my way…. I struggle with the old story, hoping that before it is finished it will reveal to me why it was that I thought it was worth the trouble.” Waiting for the Barbarians (p. 24) If he wants a quiet life then why is anything worth the trouble?

 

            Lastly, if the Empire is able to formulate an opinion and have it be known as truth, why does the Colonel need to search for the “Truth?” Is it all a mirage, the torture and the abuse, just props needed to convince the public that there truly is a rebellion upon them. The Empire has evoked a feeling of hysteria among its citizens. “The is no women living in the frontier who has not dreamed of a dark barbarian hand coming from under the bed to grip her ankle…” (p. 8) The magistrate does not believe but the incommunicado of the prisoners has a evoked a feeling of disgust towards the barbarians, almost enough to have them “buried forever.” It is a mirage to promote unity? (372).

My Initial Reactions to J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians

The magistrate is both observant and knowledgeable of his small town on the edge of the empire. He demonstrates his awareness of the “native ways” in the very first page of the book.  He considers himself a simple with simple and attainable desires. “ I am… a responsible official in the service of the Empire, serving out my days on this lazy frontier, waiting to retire…. I have not asked for more than a quiet life in quiet times.” (p. 8) But we witness his realizations that perhaps he is not as ordinary as he originally judged himself to be. Observing is much more convincing than listening.

Not only do readers better trust the narrator because of observations but also the narrator is more distrusting of the Empire due to observations. The Empire has evoked a feeling of hysteria among its citizens. “The is no women living in the frontier who has not dreamed of a dark barbarian hand coming from under the bed to grip her ankle…” (p. 8) The rumors spread but the faster they spread the more closely they resembled the truth. The magistrate is not swayed. “Show me a barbarian army and I will believe.” (p. 8) He is not fooled. The employees of the Empire are renamed “devotees of truth [or] doctors of interrogation” (p. 8) but our narrator is not blinded. The seeing of Truth is a major theme that reoccurs often throughout the novella. (I was reminded time and time again of Big Brother from George Orwell’s novel 1984. Especially when telling with the blurring of truth and programmed public opinion.)

            J.M. Coetzee’s style is very understandable. We have a single narrator relaying a story. It felt as if I was in the magistrate head. We see both his observations and participate in his interpretations. The active voice is predominantly used because our narrator is often describing a situation but during specifically striking scenes the narrator begins to use more complicated syntax and vocabulary. His omission of both names of characters and places is one to note. We had yet to learn the name of even the outpost. (355)