Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Chapter 10 -- It's More Than Just Rain or Snow
Discuss the importance of rain or snow in a specific passage from this novel. Do not use a scene that has already been discussed on this thread unless you offer a significantly different interpretation. In your post, be sure to include specific quotes from the text, with page numbers, to support your conclusions.
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Within James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, the author uses rain imagery in order to create a further depressing mood around the discussion of hell. Father Arnall begins his lecture by talking about the reason God sends people into the world. In his opinion, the purpose remains “to do God’s holy will and to save [their] immortal souls” (Joyce 96) while focusing mainly on the salvation of one’s own soul. In order to save their souls, they must first confess all of their sins or risk God’s wrath when sent to hell. Protagonist Stephen recalls his sinful and frequent visits to brothels as fear of hell fills his heart. He feels “the deathchill touch the extremeties and creep onwards toward the heart” (Joyce 98) as he worries what will happen when he dies and faces His judgment. Stephen understands the only way to escape hell is to confess his shameful sins and repent for his awfulness. As Stephen contemplates confessing all of his sins, “rain was falling on the chapel, on the garden, on the college” (Joyce 102) further adding a bleak outlook to his situation. Father Arnall continues to coerce the students into confessing their sins by explaining the horrors that lie within hell. Not only does he discuss a “storm of darkness” (Joyce 105), but also the fire “specifically designed to burn forever and ever” (Joyce 106). After his talk, “the bleak rain” (Joyce 110) still pours outside, adding negative imagery to the already deplorable situation facing Stephen. As a literary device, the rain not only adds imagery but presents a character shift in Stephen as well. The duration of the rain, “forty days and forty nights” (Joyce 102) alludes to the most famous flood in history—that within the Bible. Such a flood would “destroy but also allow a brand-new start” (Foster 75) for Stephen. At the end of Father Arnall’s speech, one of his classmates notes “it might clear up,” (Joyce 110) which to Stephen means he still has a chance of salvation. He vows to confess and repent for his sins as soon as possible. By adding the rain imagery around Father Arnall’s discussion of hell’s barbarity the importance of salvation, Joyce allows a character shift within Stephen, causing him to confess his sins and amend his life.
ReplyDeleteTo contribute to what Descartes said about how “James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, the author uses rain imagery in order to create a further depressing mood around the discussion of hell,” I would to bring the lack of rain imagery used in the scene where the director ask about Stephen’s interest in becoming a priest. A priest, as viewed through a Roman Catholic lens, is the opposite of what hell is. A priest is a source of piety and self restraint. So when Stephen is asked if he “had ever had a vocation”(Joyce 137), the weather is always going to be nice due to the fact that the “rains imagery of hell” are the farthest from thought. If the author believed that the church was something of a hell, then the rain imagery would reappear, due to Joyce using it around the discussion of hell. Joyce’s support of heaven and the church is present when he talks of the power that the priest have such as “the power to bind and to loose from sin, the power of exorcism….”(Joyce 139). Thus the lack of rain imagery used by Joyce in the scene deciding if Stephen should become a priest is a clear example of a situation when the lack of rain imagery shows the authors personal beliefs.
ReplyDeleteIn HTRLAP, Foster explains how rain and snow are never just rain and snow. Rain has multiple symbolic meanings including cleansing and baptism. This comes into play repeatedly throughout James Joyce’s A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. One such scenario is when Stephen is walking with his friends and a” fine rain” begins to fall” (Joyce 189). After the rain is introduced in this passage, so is the girl of Stephen’s scorn. Stephen scorns the young woman because he fears what sins their relationship could bring down upon him. As he talks with his friends, uncaring of the rain, he sees that the girl “has no priest to flirt with” and more bitter thoughts of her fill his mind (Joyce 190). After the conversation with his friends, Stephen hears the girl and her companions preparing for departure and turns to watch. He see’s the girl and her female companions “holding their skirts demurely” and wonders if “he had judged her harshly” (Joyce 191). Stephen wonders if the girl’s day to day life was one that was simple and involved her praying over rosary beads. The rain that Stephen had stood in had cleansed his opinion of the girl and caused him to ponder his judgment of her. In this case the rain signified the cleansing of the mind.
ReplyDeleteThe chapter “It’s more than just rain or snow” in Foster’s HTRLAP, explains rain and snow are more than just a plot enhancement. They usually add more depth to a particular scene. Rain in a scene can mean one of many things. Rain according to Foster can be clean, restorative, destructive, or ironic. A rainbow or fog also cause rain to have other meanings. In “A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man” Stephen and
ReplyDeleteLynch were having a conversation when the rain began to fall. During their conversation some girls were standing by the door. Stephen takes it upon himself to listen in on a conversation they were having. Stephen was not impressed by what he was hearing, but when the girls walked away and the rain stopped Stephen began to reevaluate. He wondered if he had “judged her too harshly” (Joyce, 191).
The rain in this case was both clean and restorative. During the rainfall Stephen found the conversation impure but after the rain he saw a different side. He saw a purer side. The way he originally judge the girl was less condemning, less like a stain on her. Rain when it is clean is both pure and removes sin and stain. The rain was restoring in this scene as well because the at first all Stephen saw were the negatives in the conversation. Once he reflected he saw the better side of it. His opinion of the girl was restored after the rain. In this case the rain means Stephen’s mind was cleansed and restored once he had a moment to reflect on the girl.
In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Foster claims the weather in novels often signal a shift in attitude or ideologies in the protagonist, and this point holds up in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. As Stephen and his father travel to Cork after the foreclosure of their home, for a moment a noticeable lifting of Stephen’s dismal thoughts occurs. Cork, a “warm sunny city” (Joyce 77) appears to burn away “all the mists of the night’s ill humor from Stephen’s brain” (77), allowing him to listen with an open mind to his father’s words, however briefly. However, upon realizing the ironic and false comparisons Mr. Dedalus makes to compare himself to Stephen’s grandfather, Stephen’s skepticism in his father’s tales returns. As his father weeps at the memory of his own father, the “sunlight breaking suddenly…turned the sky and clouds into a fantastic world of somber masses with lakelike spaces of dark rosy light” (81) signifying Stephen’s resentful thoughts intrude to corrode away the previously tranquil and hopeful ones he had before. Joyce does not want the reader to think their movement to Cork signifies a fresh start for the family, in fact just the opposite. By manipulating the shifts in weather within this scene, Joyce alerts the reader to the consistently brooding thoughts Stephen possesses, and the consistently witless father he disapproves of, without insulting the reader’s intelligence by stating so explicitly.
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