One aspect of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that we have discussed in class is the way James Joyce organizes the book: chapters often end when Stephen feels excited, powerful, and independent, and new chapters begin with unexciting scenes that contrast with the end of the chapter before. A significant example of this is between the end of Chapter I and the beginning of Chapter II, when Joyce deliberately builds up the final scene of Chapter I to be a climax of the events that have occurred up to that point. While describing Stephen's conversation with the rector and the following moments when he is with the other schoolboys, Joyce repeats the words "faster" and "quicker" to emphasize the rush Stephen gets from question Father Dolan's authority and being celebrated by his classmates. Joyce also includes details like how Stephen bumps into the door on the way out of the rector's office, highlighting the idea that Stephen finds his visit with the rector so important that he focuses on little else. The especially dramatic part of the chapter when the other boys hoist Stephen on their shoulders and repeatedly yell "Hurroo!" adds to the fast-paced, adrenaline-filled emotions Stephen has as well.
In our class discussions, we have speculated whether or not the extreme mood shifts between chapters are meant to undermine Stephen's feelings of independence or epiphany. Chapter II begins with an unglamorous description of Uncle Charles' terrible tobacco, which gives a starkly different vibe from the three-cheers-for-Conmee scene at the end of the previous chapter. Not only is the content less exhilarating, but the language is much more earthly than the sentences near the end of Chapter I. The "reeking outhouse" and "villainous awful tobacco" described at the start of Chapter II are the complete opposite of the happy friends throwing their caps and "smell of evening in the air" Stephen encounters just a page earlier.
Despite the clear shifts in subject and tone across the first two chapters, I don't see the less pleasant scenes of the book as diminishing Stephen's satisfaction at other points. For me, the fact that intense scenes are followed by calmer, less ideal language may even accentuate Stephen's moments of glory. I like Joyce's style of framing the most climactic points in Stephen's life with some of the least exciting scenes because I think it accurately represents real-life scenarios. I find that both Stephen's experiences and my own memories can be described as a few major events that stand out from the duller moments surrounding them. So the dramatic shifts in tone are not just there to weaken Stephen's highest points; they exist to set the most exciting moments apart from everything else and to give glimpses of what Stephen's life is like in the time between the spread-out, climactic moments.
Personally, I do see this as an undermining of sorts but also just as a device to ground the Stephen and his story. Stephen tends to inflate certain moments of his life and occasionally just needs something to bring him back to earth. I think these conflicting moods is representative of art in that the mundane sensory experiences become the foundation for more esoteric high brow art. The high brow is build on top of the low brow.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that you see these contrasts as making his epiphany moments stand out more. It is always a shock to move into such mundane scenes, which is evidence that the preceding scenes are out of the ordinary. However, I also think there is a degree of undermining, since when the story moves into the every day world, his early actions look somewhat silly and melodramatic.
ReplyDeleteThis pattern is especially interesting in the shift between chaps. 4 and 5. In class we talked about how the "down-to-earth" turn at the start of 5 doesn't diminish the impact of the epiphany in 4 at all--in fact it works to "endorse" it in a way, as we see the mire Stephen feels he needs to escape from. Art is about passion and "life," yet at this stage, stuck in Dublin, he's still in a holding pattern, waiting for the chance to (hopefully) "fly."
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