Saffron wrote:

DWill wrote:

Saffron wrote:I've decided to do a little reading about Joyce on my own, to hopefully add to my understanding of what I am reading. Here is something Joyce said about Dubliners, that I've come across several times and does inform my understanding.

"Joyce says that he wrote Dubliners with scrupulous meanness."

Then, by the time he wrote the final story, he had softened somewhat toward his native land and seemed to cut the characters more slack. That's the standard view, anyway. I think his use of 'mean' isn't our typical usage today, conveying aggressiveness or spite. It might be closer to the sense of 'poor in quality or appearance' or 'ungenerous.' The characters do live mean lives as Joyce creates them, but whether he also dislikes them is another matter that has been debated.

I guess I took the phrase to describe that Joyce was writing his characters without consideration of whether or not they would be sympathetic. Creating the characters and the stories through frank descriptions including the grit and the impolite.

I think that's exactly it.

You come to suspect Joyce of having a reason for including just about every detail he does include. I can't for the life of me figure out why the boy finds the dead priest's old bicycle pump buried in the back yard, but it's such a peculiar detail to mention that it must have some significance! Oh, the priest rode a bicycle, was also a "charitable" priest, and therefore was an all-around good, simple guy (and "green") as distinguished from the common priests who tried to be all hoity-toity. Works for me, since I'm disposed to imagine all virtue in bike riding, but is probably bogus.

I loved the religious imagery in the story, where the descriptions of Mangan's sister (what no name; she could have been like Dante's Beatrice) are like iconography.

" She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side of her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease....I may have stood there for an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the dress."

I wonder whether all the religious love was really mixing with sexual desire, only Joyce couldn't make that obvious. Maybe it depends on how old the narrator is, adolescent or preadolescent. In the scene in the priest's old room the boy experiences a climax, of some sort.

If you guys have a problem with his imagery in his poetry and if you can see lack of depth in it... I'd be willing to bet that his stories are much more surface oriented but that doesn't mean some things don't have 'some' significance.

geo wrote:"Soon after that they announce that the lights are being turned out and the epiphany comes I think when the boy just gives up. More importantly, Joyce shows that there is no room for romantic love in the everyday life of the average Dubliner. The drudgery of life and perhaps the domineering role of religion seems to leave no room for it."

I like that. I also want to believe that if someone had cared enough to keep a promise, the boy may have succeeded and there would be love. The story hinges on the broken promise for me, not so much the bizarre.

President Camacho wrote:If you guys have a problem with his imagery in his poetry and if you can see lack of depth in it... I'd be willing to bet that his stories are much more surface oriented but that doesn't mean some things don't have 'some' significance.

Did you mean to post this here? No one has said anything about Joyce's poetry.

The promise was broken, but of course through no fault of the narrator's. I think he would have come away with something if he could have, but he just didn't have enough dough to buy any of the wares he sees. The English have defeated the poor Irish again.

Do you know what the color brown means in the story, if anything? "The other houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces." Mangan's sister also wears brown.

Yes, a post has been made regarding his poetry. Not in this thread but in another.

President Camacho wrote:Yes, a post has been made regarding his poetry. Not in this thread but in another.

Sorry, seems I missed it.

Saffron wrote:

President Camacho wrote:Yes, a post has been made regarding his poetry. Not in this thread but in another.

Sorry, seems I missed it.

I don't know why his poetry came up now. I had mentioned that I thought Joyce's published poetry was far less daring and impressive than the poetic passages in his stories. That was in the beginning of the "Sisters" thread.

I'm only starting Araby tonight. Of the first 3 stories in this book which is your favorite so far?