Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Chapters 23 & 24-- It's Never Just Heart Disease...And Rarely Just Illness
Choose a specific illness suffered by a character in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Discuss the significance of the illness as related to plot, characterization or theme. Do not use an example that has already been discussed on this thread. In your post, be sure to include specific quotes from the text, with page numbers, to support your conclusions.
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The illness that Stephen encounters at the beginning of the novel which forces him to return home may seem like a minute detail in the long run of the novel and its plot, however, if it wasn't for this illness, the reader would never discover how Stephen's family is divided. Stephen's return home for his "first Christmas dinner" (Joyce 26) is imperitive to portraying the division within his own family concerning religion and politics. As a result of the fighting, Stephen's dissapointment led to his loss of respect and confidence in authority firgures.
ReplyDeletePrevious comment continued: his illness causes him to visit the infirmary however after this meal, he seems to be cured. This further proving that his illness is not just an illness, instead, it’s a way to reconnect Stephen with his family who he longs to be with yet once he arrives is disappointed. His disappoint which leads to his loss of respect for authority figures and in turn loses his sense of right and wrong when he ventures and experiments with a seducing prostitute. A shortage of money in his family caused a decline and a decline in Stephen’s behavior. While his family lacks money, he decides it is a “season of pleasure” (Joyce 69) as he sins with this woman.
ReplyDeleteIn his chapter concerning the deeper meanings of heart disease and illness, Thomas Foster, author of HTRLLAP, states that the "choice of illness is quite telling...we start looking for its signification" (Foster 212). When Stephen Dedalus goes on a retreat in Part 3 of James Joyce's PAYM, he experiences a mental journey that makes him consider "the state of our conscience, to reflect on the mysteries of holy religion and to understand better why we are here in this world" (Joyce 96). It is not an illness like smallpox, but rather a mental journey where he suffers to ultimately find out what he believes in and who he wants to be. By going through "death, judgment, hell and heaven" in his mind, he tries "to understand them...to derive from them a lasting benefit" (Joyce 96). Stephen imagines what it would be like to be dead, to be judged, and through his dark thoughts the reader discovers that Stephen has sinned. His guilt is shown through his thoughts about judgment day, how "God's turn had come" to punish him for his wrongdoings (Joyce 101). This example of illness here is both what Foster considers "picturesque" and "strongly symbolic and metaphorical" because Stephen is having a struggle within himself (Foster 217). It is a major event in the plot. His conscience is making his way into his thoughts about sins, and later on, his guilt will lead him to confess his sins.
ReplyDeleteIn the first chapter of Joyce’s The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus comes down with a high fever. Now, while pin2wincj suggests this illness reveals the relationships between the Dedalus family, the fever could also be interpreted as further introducing one of Joyce’s many allusions in the story. By dubing his main character Stephen Dedalus, Joyce hints to the Greek myths of Daedalus and his son Icarus, like Jad Nnazy discusses in her allusion post. In order for the Daedalus of legend to escape the Labyrinth he invents wings, allowing him and his son Icarus to hopefully fly to safety. Though, Icarus flies to close to the sun, causing him to melt his wings and fall to his death. During his year at Clongowes, Stephen wakes up one morning to his “yellow [bed] curtains” and a “very hot” bed “and his face and body were very hot” (Joyce 32). Over night, Stephen had contracted a fever, causing his bed to suspiciously resemble the sun. Later in the day, a prefect assists Stephen to the infirmary. Confined to his sick bed, the feverish child begins to think morbid thoughts such as, “you could die just the same on a sunny day” (35), like Icarus accomplishes by melting his wings in the heat of the yellow sun. Therefore, hidden behind the guise of a fever, Joyce alludes to Icarus’s death and the Daedalus legend as a whole, a myth which becomes an important part of the latter section of the novel.
ReplyDeleteLike most major details within novels, and even some of the minor ones, illness alludes to a great deal of literary importance, and this fact holds true in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Since the novel begins at a very specific time, as Stephen begins school, and given the nature of the rest of the book, it seems the novel largely concerns the origin and control of Stephen’s sin—namely lust. When Wells shoulders Stephen into the cesspool, Stephen repeatedly remarks the action “was a mean thing to do; all the fellows said it was” (Joyce 12) and he also comments repeatedly on “how cold and slimy the water had been” (12) and also the “big rat jump plop into the scum” (12) with him. Stephen’s descriptions of falling into the cesspool or ditch seem suspiciously indicative of an encounter with hell, where Wells represents evil pushing Stephen into hell, the discomfort and unpleasantness serves the same purpose as that in hell, and the rat could represent other anguished souls or demons. The sickness Stephen contracts as a direct result of falling into the cesspool then has some relation to hell and evil tainting the boy.
ReplyDeleteJoyce does not clearly define Stephen’s illness, but makes Stephen suffer through strange symptoms. His temperature frequently changes from cold to hot, and while attempting to rest “he felt a warm glow creeping up from the cold shivering sheets, warmer and warmer till he felt warm all over, ever so warm; ever so warm and yet he shivered a little” (14) signifying still a strange switch between feelings of warm and cold. Symbolically, after his encounter with hell, Stephen’s illness transitions him out of childhood and through a stage of confusion, of moral confusion and maturity confusion, signified by the altering feelings of cold and hot. While lying in the infirmary Stephen begins having dark and morbid thoughts, which furthers the idea that Wells pushing Stephen into the cesspool, or hell, brought upon Stephen’s illness, which accelerates him through childhood to adolescence and the sinful behavior which according to Catholicism will bring him full circle back to hell. Thus the unnamed illness Stephen suffers through possesses enormous implications concerning his maturing ways and the onset of sinful thinking and ideas seen later in chapter one and beyond, which Stephen only gains the conviction to overcome because of his previous subconscious understanding of hell.