Another James Joyce Essay

James Joyce

James Joyce, an Irish novelist and poet, grew up near Dublin. James
Joyce is one of the most influential novelists of the 20th century. In each of
his prose works he used symbols to experience what he called an "epiphany",
the revelation of certain revealing qualities about himself. His early writings
reveal individual moods and characters and the plight of Ireland and the Irish
artist in the 1900's. Later works, reveal a man in all his complexity as an
artist and in family aspects. Joyce is known for his style of writing called
"stream of consciousness". Using this technique, he ignored ordinary sentence
structure and attempted to reproduce the rambling's of the human mind. Many of
his works were influenced by his life in Ireland as an artist. He was
influenced by three main factors in his life, his childhood and parents, his
homeland of Dublin, Ireland, and the Roman Catholic Church. These three
aspects show up in all his works subtly, but specifically in, The Dead, A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Araby.
James Joyce, was born February 2, 1882 in Dublin, Ireland. He was the
first of fifteen kids born to Mary Jane Murray, and John Stanslaus Joyce. He
was christened James Augustine Aloysius Joyce. His mother was a mild woman who
had intelligent opinions but didn't express them. His father was a violent,
quick tempered man who was a medical student and politician. He was educated
in Dublin at Jesuit school's his whole life. In 1888, he went to Clongeswood
College, but his father lost his job and James had to withdraw. He graduated in
October of 1902, from Royal University. He was fascinated by the sounds of
words and by the rhythms of speech since he first started school. He was
trained by the Jesuits who at one time hoped he would join their order; but
Joyce became estranged from the Jesuits and defected from the Catholic Church
after graduating college. Joyce made a huge effort to free himself from all
aspects of the past such as, family, religion, and country. He left Ireland in
1902 after graduating college. He spent the rest of his life in either Trieste,
Zurich, or Paris. During this time he was very poor. He spent much of his
working career as a language instructor. He was said to have known 17
languages. He also spent time as a bank clerk, while trying to find time to
write. He started to have eye problems in 1907, and by the end of his life he
was almost blind. After Ulysses in 1922, he was left a lot of money from an
Englishwoman, and then spent his time working on his writing full time. This
book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in 1916, was an autobiographical
novel about his youth and his home life. The main character's name in this is
Stephen Dedalus. It shows a clear cut , advocary of an artists right to defy
inhibiting forces like, family, church and nation. When Stephen, was in the
university he talks about hi dislike for his classmates who just bend their
heads and write in their notebooks, "the points they were bidden to note,
nominal definitions, essential definitions and examples or dates of birth or
death, chief works, a favorable and unfavorable criticism side by side," Joyce's
views of Irish education weren't very good. Stephen in this book scorns his
family, and his fathers attributes. He thinks that he has failed in his effort
to unite his will and the will of God, to love God the way he feels is expected.
He feels this because he will not serve God. He wants to live his life his way.
He talks about how he knew he couldn't be accepted, "it wounded him to think
that he would never be but a shy guest at the feast of the world's culture and
that the monkish learning, in terms of which he was striving to forge out an
esthetic philosophy, was held no higher by the age he lived than the subtle and
curious jargons of heraldry and falconry." He feels that he has been taught
nothing, he must seek out and learn on his own. Joyce feels very dedicated to
himself as a literary artist and dedication to God and family is next to
nothing. He says this through Stephen, "Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for
the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my
soul the uncreated conscience of my race." He has a dedication that lets his
writing take over and he waits to see what his soul will create.
Joyce's feelings toward Ireland are very strong. He voluntarily exiled
himself from Ireland and forced himself to forget about it all together. He
had a very small knowledge of life in Dublin, but what he did have he used to
his full extent. He was not effected by the intense Irish nationalism that he
felt most Irish people had. In his novel, The Dead, he uses the character
Gabriel to get his feelings on this across. He says this, "to live successfully
in a land where the unhappy past is always felt and the presence of shades and
spirits is compelling and obtrusive one must vigorously affirm the life of fact
and enlightened action." Joyce feels that Ireland is filled with past events
that now haunt its future and nothing good can happen while there are still bad
feelings. He also says " I'm sick of my country, I'm sick of it." Joyce is
sick of his country and has intense feelings of hatred for it. He expresses
these feelings for Ireland the most in The Dead. The Dead may have been
Joyce's picture of himself if he had not left Ireland when he did. Joyce left
Ireland after college, he says through Gabriel, "the time had come for him to
set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was
general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central
plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther
westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling,
too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey
lay buried." Through Joyce's description of the landscape of Ireland he shows
how he feels that Ireland is an evil place. The snow is almost the purity of
Ireland falling onto the landscape. He goes on to talk about how it melted into
these places and washed away into the evil atmosphere. Joyce intended to
demonstrate the characteristics of Irish life and to hope that Gabriel would
escape his own ego and that life in Ireland would start anew. Joyce states in
his critical writings that "the economic conditions that prevail in my own
country do not permit the development of individuality." He felt very
constricted as an artist in Ireland. He also states that, "the soul of the
country is weakened by centuries of useless struggle and broken treaties, and
individual initiative is paralysed by the influence and admonitions of the
church, while its body is manacled by the police, the tax office, and the
garrison. No one who has any self respect stays in Ireland, but fleas afar as
though from a country that has undergone the visitation from an angry Jove."
Ireland to him is the place where censorship and pain over old struggles that
should be forgotten prevail over new ideas. He believes that his artistic
abilities are being choked and that the bureaucracy of life in Ireland is too
great for him for him to overcome.
At one time Joyce thought he wanted to be a Monk for the Catholic Church.
After he estranged himself from the church, he tried to get as far away from it
as he possibly could. Joyce saw the church as a prison. He writes in Araby
about young boys in a Catholic school. He says this, "North Richmond street,
being blind was a quiet street except at the hour the Christians Brothers School
set the boys free." Joyce himself spent much of his youth in a Catholic School,
in which he felt later as an adult that it had been almost a prison for his mind,
telling him how to think and act. He often writes about how he would like to
see the strict church open up it's mind to new ideas. He says this in Araby
also, " In time, perhaps there will be a gradual reawakening of the Irish
conscience, and perhaps four or five centuries after the Diet of Worms, we will
see an Irish Monk throw away his frock, run off with some nun, and proclaim in a
loud voice the end of coherent absurdity that was Catholicism and the beginnings
of the incoherent absurdity that is Protestantism." Joyce felt that the
restraints placed on thinking was absurd and that people should think on their
own, without the church telling you how to think.
James Joyce's was interested in discovering the truth in his writings
and revealing it. He was a good observer of reality, which he loved, and he
always wanted to get at the truth behind the appearance. Joyce voluntarily
exiled himself from Ireland, but still Ireland was never far from his mind, and
his writing. He also exiled himself from the church yet wrote about it and it's
constraints often. He left his childhood behind and chose to write his
childhood autobiography under a different name. He observed other people's
reality and yet choose to ignore his own. He left Ireland, the church, and his
childhood, psychically, but he never left them in his own unconscious. He
choose to write about his life and feelings in other peoples words and in other
peoples mouths. Still wishing to exile himself from his life, he almost felt as
if by leaving all these places on the outside he would leave all his feelings
behind also. He wrote about the topics he choose to distance himself from, as
if to get an unbiased look at them, and to write about the real truth.