Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Chapter 20--. . .So Does Season
Discuss a particular event that occurs in the novel and the season in which it occurs. Analyze its significance. Do not use an event that has already been discussed on this thread, unless you are offering an alternate interpretation. In your post, be sure to include specific quotes from the text, with page numbers, to support your conclusions.
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James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man begins just prior to Christmas, making it the month of December and winter. Being winter doesn’t just represent the current season, winter is a symbol of Stephen’s family and their death as a close family as he arrives back home after feeling sick for his first Christmas dinner. The argument over politics and religion creates a schism. The season of winter represents death and loss as plants die in the winter just as in the winter Stephen’s family died and only steadily declined as a result of this. His family’s wealth decreased during winter and turned into an embarrassment for Stephen. Coupled with his family’s economic decline, his trust in his family also diminished during winter. Time then progresses to September, fall. This is the transition time from summer to winter as Stephen considers this his “season of pleasure” (Joyce 69) which also takes a turn for the worst as he begins to sin with other woman and fall apart in winter once again. Every winter Stephen seems to fall apart during the season of winter which means that the subliminal meaning behind this season is negative while during summer, he thought of the time as the “season of pleasure” (Joyce 69).
ReplyDeleteOn page 55 of A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Stephen becomes friends with Aubrey Mills. Stephen and Aubrey take a milk car to Carrickmines to play in the cow pasture while the cows are being milked. They begin going there in the summer. The pasture is soon emptied of cows when autumn comes. What remains in the cows place are "foul green puddles and clots of liquid dung and steaming bran troughs." Soon after this Stephen speaks of how “the coming of September did not trouble him” because he was not attending Clongowes, the school he hates. Stephen realizes the reason he is not going is because his father is in some form of trouble (financial). Also, after his friends return to school Stephen loses his childhood to his restless heart and soul, looking at children with annoyance and the realization that “he was different from others.”. In HTRLAP, Foster explains the symbolic meanings behind the seasons in literature. Fall represents "decline and middle age and tiredness and harvest"(Foster 178), which can be found in A portrait of a the Artist as a Young Man. The decline of fall is seen with the cow pasture’s transformation from a place of fun for the boys to a place of disgust. The harvest comes with the fact that Stephen will not be returning to Clongowes. While this information pleases Stephen his maturity allows him to realize he is not returning because he desired it, but because his father is in trouble, showing middle age and decline again. Fall brought the decline of Stephen’s childish games, the decline of his family’s money, and the harvest of not returning to Clongowes.
ReplyDeleteOpening Chapter 3, Joyce sets the atmosphere for the following chapter when he depicts “the swift December dusk [that] had come tumbling clownishly” (Joyce 89).After his first encounter with the prostitute in the previous chapter, Stephen’s mindset alters as he finds himself gripped by a “cold lucid indifference” . Stephen becomes constantly preoccupied with his next lustful encounter causing himself to be unable to focus on his schoolwork. Consumed with the temptation, Stephen possesses a “sinloving soul” (Joyce 89). The placement of Stephen’s change in mindset in the month of December proves no coincidence, however. Just as Foster describes in How to Read Literature Like a Professor, unlike the passion and love that comes with the summer months, winter months, such as December, represent anger and hatred. Thus, through Joyce’s religious and spiritual lens, he writes Stephen’s distraction during the winter, implying it is sinful and wrong. Through the winter months Stephen may indulge in wrongful actions, however because of Joyce’s seasonal placement, this will be just a phase and young Stephen will purge of his clouded morals just in time to be born again for spring.
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned above, Joyce begins A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in the deep months of winter. Thomas C. Forester explains what winter represents through Greek legend. In many versions of the myth, winter begins with the misbehavior of Persephone when she eats from a forbidden garden in the underworld. As a consequence of her actions, Persephone was forced to spend a portion of the year in the underworld, causing darkness and infertility to ravage the earth. One of the first descriptions of the weather that Stephen offers the reader in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is that "the evening air was pale and chilly" (Joyce 6). From here, Stephen begins his cycle through the seasons. Mentioned above, much of his insidious and downright malicious behavior occurs in the winter months. The novel follows Stephen through these periods of misbehavior just to see him through to the end, when the narration switches to Stephen's first person point of view in a diary-like fashion. These sections of the novel, where Stepehen is finally coming into his own as an individual and an artist, are set in the months of March and April, the beginning of springtime. Joyce uses this shift in season to highlight how by the end of Portrait, Stephen has embraced the "beginning of renewed life" (Foster 183) in springtime to finally become the artist he was meant to be.
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