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Maureen's voice: rasik, on this: "late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump (do you see any symbolism,here,Maureen?)"(Refer here to Rasik's random thoughts!), absolutely! :) it is, to my mind, phallic imagery and the descriptive of rusty is important -- a priest being required to maintain celibacy eternally, his equipment being rusty, thereby. what were you thinking? About: "He had been a charitable priest; in his will hehad left all his money to institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister." yea what i had said about this at one time, and am not sure how i feel about it now, was that joyce was implying here that the priest had renounced or turned away from the church, if only in his heart. why? because any priest would normally leave their money to the church -- this priest left his to 'institutions' and even gave the furniture to his sister. what do you think? on your other comments -- 'tis true that all of joyce's fiction was autobiographical, therefore much of what he writes about in dubliners and other texts was based on or sprang from real life experiences. but that does not in any way detract from the symbolic references he used, the theological backdrops he framed his stories with -- he was *the* master at that in my opinion (and so is rushdie ;-) er, i *think*.) -- or, the ways in which he comments heavily on irish culture and the catholic church thru that same reality-based fiction... of course i agree with you about the epiphany but don't know how i feel about the change of voice. he might have known about the willing of property thru the papers or thru all the gossip that goes on in 'wee oireland'. :) Rasik wrote: Maureen: Yes, I agree. It seems the next story "the Sisters" also has a priest and deals with the church. It seems to me your Catholic (I presume) background will be of help in following the Dubliner stories as well as Flannery O'Connor stories, which I would love to discuss. (If our mandate is not as narrow as ....'s!) Ruth, Champa, please come in on O'Connor, since you have been mentioning her . Maureen answers: ...i dunno about that. it does help, and i said before that with joyce, a background in christian and greek myth is helpful. but definitely i don't see it as important, and certainly not necessary -- people all over the world love and consume and obsess over joyce, many of whom are not catholic and know not a'ting about it. :) if it were necessary, then for me to focus on SA literature in grad school would be a one way ticket to failure. i *can* understand it w/o the background, i just have to work at it. jorge and i both come from catholic upbringings so we may interpret meanings *similarly*, but that does not mean that either of us is *correct*. but like with the bicycle pump, i mean, one wonders, why does he say 'he looks out at the wild garden in the back and notices the *rusty bicycle pump*' - i mean this has nothing to do with the story itself and yet joyce adds in this detail, and he leaves it in -- "why?" is the question any reader would ask. this is a short tightly packed little story and we have to assume that JJ chose every single word carefully; at least that is what i assume. he meant to imply *something* with that reference -- so...what was it? i have to do this all the time with SA fiction, and question and re-question myself, which makes me happy now that i spent my childhood obsessed with sherlock holmes, 'my dear shah of blah' (or was it watson...oh whatever! :-), cuz if i did not find it fun to make my way thru mazes, i'd have given up on SA lit long ago!! :)) |
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