Exam 3

Channel Firing

Thomas Hardy

Where was the dead soldier placed?

Wagon

"overwhelming question"?

"Do you love me? Do you feel as I do?" (basically asking the girl out )

Epiphany

"He interprets the disappointing circumstances of his journey as a sign of the hollowness of the ideals with which he undertook that quest. He thus connects the frivolous banter among the young people and his own earlier brief conversation with Mangan's sister and thinks that he has perceived the banal reality behind the romantic image. However, his perceptions in each case are unreliable: His immaturity causes him to overreact in each direction. The story, then, shows that the temptations to both the romantic inflation and to the cynical devaluation of experience are but two sides of the same false coin."

Grail

"Similarly, the story can be viewed as a version of the medieval romance. The hero sets forth from surroundings of blissful innocence in pursuit of a distant ideal. In his solitary adventure through dark places, his spirits are buoyed up by the vision of remote beauty with which he hopes eventually to commune. He encounters and overcomes various obstacles and adversaries on his journey, finally gaining possession of the symbol of the truth that liberates him from ignorance and unites him with the beauty he desires."

images

- are intended to contrast with the Latin maxim from which the poem's title is taken: "Dulce et decorum est," that is, "it is sweet and proper," to undergo the agonies of disfigurement and death in the name of patriotism. -are expressed in carefully chosen metaphors; others are simply presented in graphic language that describes the scene as the narrator sees it or remembers it. -1: opening lines, he captures the frustration of the men as they move across the battlefield in a single phrase; "we cursed through sludge" (line 2) suggests the simultaneous activities of moving forward while uttering a continuous stream of obscenities about their fate. To describe the difficulty of some of his comrades who no longer have boots to wear but who must go on about their duties, he says, "[w]e limped on, blood-shod" — graphically depicting the condition of the men's feet by a single compound adjective that captures both the sight and the feeling of this situation. -2: the memory of the man who dies of gas poisoning with such phrases as "the white eyes writhing in his face" (line 19), "the blood/ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs" (lines 21-22). The comparisons, too, are intended to reinforce in readers the sense of frustration and horror these soldiers feel. Owen describes them as being "like old beggars under sacks" (line 1).

T.S Eliot

- does not speak logically or coherently.(in his poem) - Listening to him is more like overhearing one musing to oneself. -

"Eveline"

- extends the theme of escape to the case of a young woman who is not nearly so sophisticated as the protagonist of Joyce's novel and who might understandably fear the unknown world that awaits her. -is relatively young but is "tired," worn down, old before her time, and very much a captive of routine, conditioned by her father's tyrannical ways. She is offered a means of escape and self-fulfillment, but it is not in her nature, finally, to accept it. She is given a choice between life and a sort of metaphoric death: a new life abroad, or a living death in Ireland, tending after a dying family that, presumably, no longer needs her (even though her father, who is "becoming old," depends on her and for that reason "would miss her"), and working in a demeaning and subordinate position at "the Stores." -"Eveline" is an example of naturalistic fiction in which the protagonist, described at one point as a "helpless animal," responds to internal anxieties and environmental forces, particularly the influences of family life and the responsibilities to which she has been conditioned, and of a working life in Ireland, with its impoverishment, as Joyce imagined it. The way that "Eveline" and other stories of Dubliners reflect the details and concerns of everyday life closely observed and raised to significance through art suggests the influence of the Russian writer Anton Chekhov, but Ellmann notes in his biography James Joyce (1959) that Joyce claimed not to have read Chekhov at the time that he wrote those stories.

"chancel,"

- means the space around the altar of a church for the clergy and the choir

About (2 things)

- the loss of innocence -the frustration of first love

Dream

-About the other SOLDIER dying infront of him because he is unable to get his mask on quick enough before the he started to "DROWN" from a gas attack. This dream is brought upon because of the poet's PTSD/ survival guilt -sees the dead soldier's face looking "like a devil's sick of sin" (line 20) — certainly one of the most horrific renditions of distortion and disgust one might imagine.

Latin phrase at the end of the poem? (literal English translation) (migil translation)

-Dulce et Decorum est pro patria mori = sweet and honorable it is for fatherland death ="it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country."

3 mediums

-Eliza= through which Joyce develops Father Flynn's character in the story. -narrator= who recalls his experiences when a boy with the priest -dialogue between Cotter and the boy's uncle= who raise questions and speak negatively about Father Flynn

Frank

-Eveline meets a young man, who has sailed around the world and represents a means of escape for her. -He wants to marry her and take her with him to Buenos Aires, halfway around the world from Ireland. -Although she has accepted his offer of marriage and he has arranged her passage by ship, she has second thoughts on the day of her scheduled departure. - romantic exile, one who has seen the world and has chosen to live far from Dublin. In other words, Frank in the story becomes a reflection of the young Joyce himself. For Joyce, any young Irishman had to choose between living a life of limited opportunity in Ireland and having to scale down one's expectations, adjusting to the dismal realities and traditions of Irish life, or going out into the world beyond Ireland, which Joyce saw as a world of opportunity and promise.

symbolism

-Ex: --romance --Roman Catholicism --the Orientalism popular at the end of the last century. -The various allusions — to Sir Walter Scott, James Clarence Mangan, Caroline Norton's poem The Arab's Farewell to His Steed, the Freemasons, Mrs. Mercer — can enlarge the relevance and appeal of the boy's private adventure for the attentive reader.

Explain the parallels to Guido and Dante that the poem raises?

-First stanza in Italian is between Dante(reader/you) & Guido (Prufrock). -Guido (Prufrock) is hesitant to speak to the (girl) just like Guido is when deciding to answer Dante.

Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" (1681)

-He feels impelled to an: antiheroic stance + compares himself to literary figures - for the sake of denying any resemblance.

Hesiod's Works and Days (c. 700 b.c.e.)

-He feels impelled to an: antiheroic stance + compares himself to literary figures - for the sake of denying any resemblance.

1st image

-Occupies: the entire first section of the poem -Mixes: sight and sound -Begins: The deceptive calm of the opening lines is undercut by the grating surf on the beach. -emphasizes nouns and verbs and their emotional impact -14th line = "an eternal note of sadness," that there is any indication that the reader will be exposed to anything more than a simple description, that in view of what follows one shall have to reorient oneself to the significance of the initial description.

images

-Show: --sadness --melancholy -desolation --reinforced- with an often subtle but evocative use of sound and syntax -lines 7 through 14 = reflects not only the actual repetitive sound of the scene but perhaps also the confusion and lack of certainty in the poet's own mind

time and place:

-The Joyce family lived on North Richmond Street in 1894, and the young James (then twelve years old) attended the actual Araby bazaar held between May 14 and 18 of that year. -All the --historical, --geographical, --cultural references in the story are true to life.

short summary (Araby)

-The little boy lives with his aunt and uncle on a dead-end street in Dublin, in a house formerly occupied by a now deceased priest. The boy is impressed and somewhat mystified by the moldy books — a historical romance, a pious tract, and a detective autobiography — and other reminders of the previous tenant. -examine the hazards of the various stages in life, and "Araby" marks the end of childhood and the beginning of adolescence. This protagonist begins his story as a boy amid his peers, full of childish energy and short-lived attention. -dramatizes the painful deflation of that dream: the human limitations of his uncle and aunt and the natural limitations of time and space all conspire to thwart the boy's search for fulfillment. He is therefore emotionally disposed to interpret the material elements of his adventure (the adult admission fee, the falling coins, the extinguishing lights, the casual talk of fibbing) as the signs of the end of the childish idealization of human values. From such a point of view, this is a story of initiation, marking the rites of passage from the Edenic domain of home to the uncertain terrain of adult life. -rest of the story dramatizes the painful deflation of that dream: the human limitations of his uncle and aunt and the natural limitations of time and space all conspire to thwart the boy's search for fulfillment.

Dulce et Decorum Est

-Wilfred Owen -graphically depicts a central irony of death on the modern battlefield: No matter how noble the cause may be, the individual soldier can expect nothing but misery in combat and an ignominious end should he be unfortunate enough to become a casualty.

Awaken

-[before this] he attempts to take refuge in literature and dreams, but they solace him only fitfully, -[becaz of this he] -Lacking the talent for such unself-conscious distractions, -[becomes aware] to the oppressive reality of his life. [an action after sleeping]

"epiphany"

-a term borrowed from theology and applied to a moment of unexpected revelation or psychological insight. -NOT: --conventionally dramatic --explained to the reader. -THIS- occurs in the boy's consciousness when he overhears the petty and incomplete conversation at the bazaar. -He believes himself to have been self-deluded: He has placed too much faith in Mangan's sister and the values she represents. -His early religious training and ignorance of human relations have caused him to adore a mere petticoat.

Judgment Day

-according to Christian belief, will see the destruction of the world as humans know it, the resurrection of the dead, and their assignment by God, along with those still living, to eternal bliss or eternal torment.

uncle

-agrees with Cotter that youngsters should focus on physical activities.

Irony

-always involves: --a gap: The initial somberness and spookiness created by guns shaking coffins, the disturbing of the dead, and the awakening of dogs who then proceed to howl in a "drearisome" manner is undercut by the distinctly unthreatening details of the mouse, the withdrawing worms, and, most of all, the drooling cow. --discrepancy of some sort. having cow in the same line that sees the entrance of God.

self-reflection

-avoided — by busying itself superficially with culture (the chatter about Michelangelo), gossip, and social amenities.

Arnold's 3 personal search found in his poetry

-calm -objectivity -somewhere firm to stand

William Shakespeare's Hamlet (c. 1600-1601),

-comparison with Hamlet is particularly ironic. -is an indecisive man who muses and delays, but he ultimately acts when sufficiently pressured. -Prufrock has no prospect of such pressure: no ghostly father, no enormous wrong to rectify, not even an Ophelia — only a languid lady friend who will not take him seriously. -He feels impelled to an: antiheroic stance + compares himself to literary figures - for the sake of denying any resemblance. -If put in Prufrock's position, to ask out a girl:... who can assert himself and win the admiration of the woman and her friends.

short summary (Eveline)

-demonstrate - the squalor and spiritual impoverishment of typical Irish lives, then "Eveline" is unquestionably in keeping with this general intent.

Poem (Dulce et Decorum Est)

-depict: the helplessness of men caught in a gas attack. -4 irregular verse paragraphs - is the vividness of Owen's imagery. -

"you"

-disappears early; after line 12 ("Let us go and make our visit"), Prufrock is entirely self-absorbed. -intimates that the "_______" of the poem is not Prufrock's ladylove but a confidante — in effect, the reader — who will accompany him on a visit to some sort of evening party or soiree.

"We"

-first-person plural -might be thought of as a single individual speaking for his companions as well as for himself -are all dead and buried in a graveyard situated beside a church. -

boy

-first-person point of view, the story is a convincing representation of the voice of an observant, impressionable, naïve young boy -This protagonist begins his story .... amid his peers, full of childish energy and short-lived attention. -becomes even more consuming at the mention of the bazaar. -He now connects his attitude toward the transcendent with the popular mystique of the Orient, each with an awakening sexual longing. HOWEVER- The girl cannot be possessed (because of her "retreat"), and in the compromise — the material gift — lie the seeds of the destruction of the dream. -He is therefore emotionally disposed to interpret the material elements of his adventure (the adult admission fee, the falling coins, the extinguishing lights, the casual talk of fibbing) as the signs of the end of the childish idealization of human values.

Humankind wants (2) things in life?

-force -meaning to life ==which the modern world with its science and commercialism cannot supply.

3rd (last important extended) image

-in an attempt to say metaphorically what he perhaps cannot express directly. -The calm of the opening lines is deceptive, a dream. -Underneath or behind is the reality of life — a confused struggle, no light, nothing to distinguish good from evil, friend from foe; it is the result of the thought suggested by the sound of the surf. -makes clear that one is not viewing this battlefield as from a distance; one is in the middle of the fight.

"love song"

-ironies of the poem -from the lips of a person with a decidedly unromantic name

Poem (Dover Beach)

-is a dramatic monologue of thirty-seven lines, divided into four unequal sections or "paragraphs" of fourteen, six, eight, and nine lines. -has notable meditative and lyric elements -presents a more meditative poem, dominated by three extended images that not only carry the meaning of the poem but also provide much of the emotional and imaginative impact. -presents the eternal conflict between the wisdom of the heart and the wisdom of the head. -only has 2 lines on love, with emotional impact & vividness of the final image -The effect of the poem would seem to emphasize that the possibility of love is tentative at best, while the poet cannot seem to purge from his consciousness his horrifying vision of human life.

imagery

-is antiromantic: --Like a "patient etherised upon a table." -The city streets = are tawdry and depressing -the women Prufrock will meet chatter meaninglessly of "Michelangelo" -he feels himself "pinned and wriggling on the wall." -contrasts "the cups, the marmalade, the tea" = with the more momentous matters he would like to broach, but his grand visions always give way to bric-a-brac and bored tea drinkers. -He sees himself as going down, descending a stair in defeat or drowning in the sea.

language

-is carefully designed so as to convey a complex, yet highly controlled range of meanings. -ex, the use of the words "blind," and "set . . . free" in the first sentence, the various uses of "stall" in the body of the story, and "driven" and "eyes" in the last sentence. -These motifs support the chivalric and religious themes in the story and subtly link them to its emotional core.

Matthew Arnold

-is doing 2 things in the poem: --chronicling & lamenting the loss of faith -seeking a substitute, here the possibility of human love for another individual -firmly believed that Christianity was dead --his knowledge and investigation of such mid-Victorian intellectual trends as the Higher Criticism of the Bible and quasi-historical concerns about the historical Jesus had convinced him that a reasonable man could no longer believe in Christianity. -YET- Arnold's heart and instincts told him, not that Christianity ought to survive, but that humankind desires and indeed must have something in which to believe in order to truly live, to be truly human.

Prufrock

-is neither hero nor villain — he is simply a failure. ==Even heroes destined to fail normally begin with hopes and possibilities, but not far into "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," one senses the impossibility of this man fulfilling his aspirations. -behaves like a middle-aged, set in his ways, and hopelessly irresolute; -like someone resigned to reading about heroes than someone who will ever take action. -is a figure to be pitied, but he is also a disturbing presence because his weaknesses, his mediocrity, and his sense of isolation are all too common in the modern world. -has something that Whitman's heroes lacked — a name — -could compose a real love song, or any valid song, he would be achieving a victory of sorts, but he lacks the capacity to express his situation. -failure engages sympathy for him as a human being who must live with a residual sense of inadequacy. -In his mediocrity, he is a more representative figure than Hamlet. (but cannot rise above them)

2nd dominant image

-lines 25 through 28= expressing the emotional impact of the loss of faith. - melancholy, withdrawing, retreating, vast, drear, naked — re-creating the melancholy sound of the sea withdrawing, leaving behind only a barren and rocky shore, dreary and empty -emphasizing the condition after faith has left, present a void, an emptiness, almost creating a shudder in the reader

Soldiers

-men he describes in this war are anything but noble. -Instead of confronting their foes in single combat, ...[they]... are retreating from the front lines. -are tired, both physically and psychologically -almost deaf to the sounds of the falling gas bombs that could take their lives at any moment. -Death: does not faced at the hands of a recognizable enemy who bests them with sword or spear. Instead, death comes from afar; worse still, it comes impersonally in the form of an insidious poison that snuffs out life in a brief instant of agony -realities of the battlefield did not match the glorious descriptions of war prevalent in the literature

"Eveline"

-nineteen years old, -lives in the past, her mind occupied with the way things "used to be" as she sits by the window of her father's house. -The world around her has changed, just as the neighborhood has changed --Ex: A land developer from Belfast has constructed brick houses on the field where "other people's children" used to play. One of the children who used to play there is now dead, and others have left the area; some have even left the country. Eveline remains. -brother Ernest, who was "too grown up" to play, is now dead, as is her mother. -Her father has turned to drink and is given to violence, particularly on Saturday nights. -works as a shopgirl at "the Stores," earning a miserable seven shillings a week, which are then given over to her father. -She promised her dying mother that she would "keep the house together," rearing the two younger children and contending with her father's bad temper and the drinking that has worsened since her mother's death. She dreams of escaping the dull, routine existence that circumstances have forced on her. -At first her misgivings at home are centered on a remembrance of her past, as she sits by the window, clutching the letters that she has prepared for her father and brother in order to explain her departure. At the end of the story, she discovers that she is in fact unwilling and unable to leave Ireland. She is a captive of the past; she has no future; finally, she cannot leave.

Eliza's testimony.

-places in the proper perspective - The sympathetic attitude of the boy, called into question by the mutterings of the neighbor and uncle,

priest

-referred to as "one of those . . . peculiar cases." - taught the boy "a great deal . . . and they say he had a great wish for him." - the "wish," or respect, that the priest had for the boy does not impress old Cotter and the family, for they are anti-intellectual and indifferent to education. -New Britain Street house where the priest lived with his two sisters above a drapery shop, and the bouquet and card on the door confirm for him the fact that his old friend indeed has died; - is lying, "solemn and copious, vested as for the altar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice." -crucial incident, which presumably led to Father Flynn being relieved of his duties and retired, occurred one night when he was needed to make a call, perhaps on a dying parishioner. "They looked high up and low down," Eliza tells the boy and his aunt, and finally tried the locked chapel. There two priests and the clerk found him alone in his dark confessional "wide awake and laughing-like softly to himself." Clearly, "there was something gone wrong with him." Eliza has the last word, for the story concludes with this statement.

Thomas Hardy

-saying that the use of force, the making of war, has been with humankind for as long as there have been human beings. -offers the reader this bleak but in a way grand perspective on human existence, setting that existence in the framework of the cosmos with the notable phrase that closes the poem, a phrase marked by alliteration and four strong beats — "starlit Stonehenge." Bloody as it has been, the human enterprise acquires a certain substance and dignity here. Unlike the poem's handling of God and fundamental presuppositions of Christianity, it does not undercut that dignity by subjecting it to irony.

Wilfred Owen

-served as a lieutenant in the British Army during World War I; ironically, he was killed shortly before the armistice was signed. -had considerable first-hand experience of the horrors of gas warfare during World War I, -describes the general condition of men involved in the war, sketches briefly the shock of a gas attack, then dwells on the aftermath of this tragic event on someone who lives through it. - speaking in his own voice. - is able to make the horrors of warfare come alive before readers' eyes. - frequently collapses two activities into a single image, thereby heightening the reader's awareness of the agony of the soldiers he describes. -his bitter indictment of this philosophy("Dulce et decorum est,") comes through in the words he chooses to depict the death of his fellow soldier.

Eveline points

-story- a psychological study in frustration, is about a young woman who longs to escape from the tyranny of her father and from the responsibilities of surrogate motherhood, thrust on her after the death of her own mother. When she is offered an avenue of escape, she discovers that she lacks the spirit, the courage, and the strength of character to take it. -

Eliza

-tells about Father Flynn's last days. Among other things, she recalls noticing "something queer coming over him latterly" and mentions that she would "find him with his breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in the chair and his mouth open." Then Eliza gets to more substantive matters, which in the aggregate clarify the veiled comment ("something queer . . . something uncanny . . . peculiar . . . ") that old Cotter made about Father Flynn. Eliza begins by saying, "The duties of the priesthood was too much for him. And then his life was, you might say, crossed." His problem started, she says, when he broke the chalice. Others said that it was "the boy's fault," that is, the carelessness of the acolyte who assisted the priest at the altar, and the people made light of the incident, because the chalice "contained nothing," the wine already having been transubstantiated into Christ's body and blood. According to Eliza, however, the incident "affected his mind," and "he began to mope by himself, talking to no one and wandering about by himself."

Poem (The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

-the dramatic monologue — the tone, the language, and the character of Prufrock are highly original. -131 lines of various lengths with flexible rhythm and rhymes. -uses couplets, cross rhymes, and unrhymed lines. -blend of tr-aditional poetic sound effects and free verse. -who would like to produce a true love song but can manage only a confidential confession of his own ineptitude. -technique: the ironic interjection of quotations from earlier poets.

escape

-theme -will be a familiar one for those who have read Joyce's semiautobiographical novel, - "Eveline," also written in 1904, was inspired by one of the writer's neighbors when the Joyce family lived at 17 North Richmond Street in Dublin. Eveline Thornton, the daughter of Ned Thornton, fell in love with a sailor, whom she married and with whom she ultimately set up housekeeping in Dublin, according to Richard Ellmann, Joyce's biographer. Not only did the prototypical Eveline marry her sailor, but also her mother outlived her. Joyce was writing fiction, however, not biography, and the principal difference seems to be that the husband and wife who served as Joyce's models both ended up being trapped in Dublin.

paralysis

-third theme -introduces in the first paragraph, when the boy, gazing up at the dying priest's window, says "paralysis" to himself, a word that "had always sounded strangely in [his ears]," like "gnomon in the Euclid" and "simony in the Catechism." -also signals its general significance for the entire volume. -refers to more than the priest's physical imperfection, which is the result of the debilitating stroke he has suffered; it also calls to mind his spiritual and social imperfections.

poem (Channel Firing)

-title: refers to the firing of naval guns on the English Channel, guns apparently engaging in a military exercise -registers a complex response to this event, -using nine stanzas, each a quatrain, rhyme scheme(abab) -speaker(s): --the dead = whose actions and speech are reported to the reader directly --God Himself = who speaks condemningly of humankind. -setting: graveyard -might SEEM unrelievedly solemn and moralistic piece BUT it works to subvert such an effect through the use of irony. -atmosphere: comic undercutting + the irony attached to the figure of God, "Channel Firing" might be read as a fairly straightforward and unrelentingly serious condemnation of humankind for continuing to make war, a judgment coming from within a Christian perspective. -moralizing figure of the poem, God, cannot be taken seriously, however, or at least not entirely so. Ultimately, He is an unattractive figure. -registering the fact of war and its cost in human life. -said to replace judgments with facts, and Christian theology, which it finds absurd, with history. -last stanza= to have the sounds of the guns carry not merely inland through space but also backward through time -The reader moves from Hardy's century to the eighteenth century,

Lazarus

-used as a monologue in the poem -one of Prufrock's pick up lines -returned from the dead -Prufrock says he is like a dead person because he wants to live but doesn't know how to

Mangan's sister

-vision of desire, both erotic and religious.

God

-voice: discrepancy between the way one would COMMONLY expect God to talk - given a touch of the elevated and archaic by His employment of the medieval "Christés" (instead of "Christ's"), -speech: all-too-human taunting remark, "Ha, ha," as well as for the cliché "Mad as hatters" (which alludes to the occupational hazard once faced by people who made hats because of a chemical used in their production). "Ha ha" = irony; God taunts and teases the dead on the matter of Judgment Day. Instead of having the coming of that momentous occasion continue to be regarded as a certainty, He leaves the matter open. == in response to the appearance of this sort of divinity, one of the dead should regret having given his life to being a Christian preacher.

reader

-who has some knowledge of classical literature, especially epic poetry and the heroic odes which celebrate great warriors who fall in battle while serving their nation, will immediately see Owen's strategy. -

Stourton Tower

. The reference to that edifice moves the reader back even further, for it commemorates an event of the ninth century.

What is a five-nine?

A dance/ A type of weapon

how to reconcile these apparently irreconcilable forces? (the heart + head)

A: is that perhaps true love between two people can somehow supply meaning in a world that is still filled with confusion and struggle.

Araby

Author: James Joyce Characters: --A young boy, (about twelve years old) --A young girl, (the sister of a playmate named Mangan) --Mangan= boy's playmate -may be seen as designed in accordance with this story type, though rendering it in an ironic vein - this is a story of initiation, marking the rites of passage from the Edenic domain of home to the uncertain terrain of adult life. -the story conjoins the personal and archetypal stories in a beautiful blend of realistic detail, tonal control, and symbolic design.

Eveline

Author: James Joyce Characters: -Eveline Hill, a nineteen-year-old Dublin shopgirl -Frank, her fiancé, a man who has seen the world and wants to take Eveline with him to Buenos Aires -Mr. Hill, her father, a drunk who forbids her to see Frank -Harry Hill, her brother, in the church-decorating business -Ernest= younger brother; dead -Mrs. Hill= Mother; Dead

repetitions reveal his anxieties:

Examples were: -"Do I dare?"; -"how should I presume?"; -"I have known them all." -He also repeats the answer he expects from the woman if he ever does succeed in making his declaration to her: "That is not what I meant at all." --Like other features of the poem, these iterations come at irregular intervals.

"flound'ring like a man in fire or lime" (line 12);

He characterizes his dying comrade-in-arms as

Gospels.

He feels impelled to an: antiheroic stance + compares himself to biblical figures - for the sake of denying any resemblance. - a beheaded John the Baptist (used as a pick up line)

Thru: -language -symbol -allusion

a world of feeling beyond the boy's experience is conveyed to the attentive reader.

The Sisters

James Joyce -part of Dubliners (short stories) Characters: -The narrator, an adult recalling a childhood experience (unnamed) -The boy's aunt -Eliza Flynn (the sister of Father Flynn) -Nannie Flynn (the sister of Father Flynn) -Old Cotter (the neighbor)

Dover Beach

Matthew Arnold

Short Summary

adult recalling his first direct experience with death when he was a boy in Dublin in 1895. He tells of passing on several evenings the house in which a retired old priest, who was his mentor, lay dying. Then, when the boy, who lives with his aunt and uncle, comes down to dinner one night, he hears them and a neighbor talking about the priest, who has just died. -has the youngest hero, and it shows him confronting directly for the first time the reality of death. The story also develops the archetypal motif of the search for a father. The boy, apparently an orphan (he lives with an aunt and uncle), finds in the priest a substitute father, a kindly man who teaches him about many things, nurturing his intellect and preparing him for the future; yet Father Flynn himself is an imperfect, eventually demented, man — and priest — who is unable to face his own faults and inadequacies and ends up going mad in his own confessional. as an "epiphany," a story in which a character experiences a "sudden spiritual manifestation." In this story, the boy gains enlightenment, learning the truth about Father Flynn; significantly, at the very moment of the revelation, when Eliza pauses for a bit, the boy rises, goes to the altar-like table where Nannie has laid out the refreshments, and tastes his sherry, a conscious ceremonial gesture in the concluding act of this particular rite of passage.

Camelot

carries the reader still further back, to the sixth century,

crab

creature Prufrock said he should have been

1st 2 stanzas

describe: the arousal of the dead by the sound of the guns, a sound that is interpreted by them as signaling the arrival of Judgment Day.

Sound

emitted by those under gas attack are incoherent yells and — after death — a "gargling" from "froth-corrupted lungs" that occurs as the corpse of the soldier too slow to put on his mask in time is carted off to burial.

first two lines of the poem do seem to promise a graceful lyric:

first two lines of the poem do seem to promise a graceful lyric: "Let us go then, you and I,/ When the evening is spread out against the sky."

"Culture"

for the loss of the unifying faith that men once shared, most notably what Arnold called ______.

Stonehenge

goes back furthest of all, for that prodigious structure is prehistoric.

"It is impossible to say just what I mean!"

he exclaims at one point. The meaning emerges not from what he says but from what Eliot, through the images, the ironic quotations, and the obsessive repetitions, shows.

heart

is attracted by the pleasant appearance of the view from the window

head

is forced to take heed of the eternal sound of the surf, which says something entirely different.

Nannie

leads the guests to the sitting room, where she serves wine and crackers, and then sits on a sofa and falls asleep, having fulfilled her duties as hostess and having introduced the boy to the mysteries of the "dead-room" and welcomed him into the fraternity of adults with the sherry.

"glebe cow,"

means: a cow pastured on church grounds for the pastor's use

James Joyce

published Dubliners (short stories)

Buenos Aires

represents the ideal of escaping Ireland, of making a clean break with one's nation and family ties, the sort of break that Joyce's own wife, Nora, would make in 1904 when she left her family to go with the writer to Paris.

Power of Weakness & Gnomon

shows

symbolism,

straightforward and realistic (some have even said naturalistic),

gassing

to have realized is that death by _________ was a metaphor for all death in modern warfare; the notion of a glorious death was simply a lie.

the boy

uncle referred to him as: "that Rosicrucian" (who study and practice the metaphysical laws governing the universe; Our mission is to provide seekers with the spiritual wisdom necessary to experience their connectedness with the miraculous world around us and to develop Mastery of Life. ) -continues eating "as if the news had not interested [him]." Actually, he becomes increasingly upset by the comments and crams his mouth with porridge to keep from venting his anger. -he does not want to knock. Wandering about Dublin in the wake of this decision, he remarks to himself that neither he nor the day "seemed in a mourning mood" and that he felt "a sensation of freedom as if . . . freed from something by his death." Though he does not comprehend what is happening, he is, for the first time, seeing that the world at large is unaffected by one person's death and that life goes on. In other words, the death of his mentor — or surrogate parent — is a major event in his progress toward maturity. As he continues to walk through sunny Dublin (the narrator mentions the sun twice in this context, as if emphasizing the indifference of the world to Father Flynn's death), the boy remembers what the priest had taught him, including "stories about the catacombs and about Napoleon Bonaparte, and . . . the meaning of the different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments worn by the priest." - When the three kneel at the foot of the bed to pray, the boy cannot "because the old woman's mutterings distracted [him]."

mermaids ...... Michelangelo

what are "sea-girls" ...... talking about?

"The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, 'No' "

— creates the momentary impression that God is enjoining the cow not to drool, a patently ridiculous effect. "No" refers to the fact that God is informing the dead that it is not Judgment Day, irony persists.

The Love song of J. Alfred Prufrock

T.S Eliot

Arnold's best-known expression of this problem is in "Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse," where he finds himself "Wandering between two worlds, one dead,/ The other powerless to be born."

The dead world is Christianity, the world powerless to be born is the modern world with its deceptive attractions.

realistic fiction

The details are carefully crafted and arranged so as to accumulate in such a way as to give meaning to the story's climax, in keeping with the young writer's theory of the "epiphany." The progression is dramatic in Aristotelian terms, in that the central character is brought to a point of recognition and discovery, as suggested by Aristotle's Poetics.

third line, however, the reader is jolted by an unexpected and decidedly unromantic simile.

The evening is spread out "like a patient etherised upon a table."

The promise of spiritual bliss is made but not delivered:

The hero's aspirations are cultivated and then denied. The cacophony of the modern city clashes and breaks the harmony of the mood of nostalgia for a faith in an ideal order of nature and grace.