JOYCE

LUCK CLUB

RANDOM THOUGTS: (CONTINUED)

Welcome Guidelines Listserv Discussion based on: "Dubliners" Read Araby Discussion topics: Initial impressions Symbolism Blindness and Insight "Brown" in Araby Random Thoughts

Maureen's random rumination on Araby: hi guys...i read the story again and once last week...oh heck i love this story... something kind of jumped out at me and i wanted to share it...it has to do with blood -- yikes! :) -- i think zarqa might have said something about that too? anyway, for starters, *this* is my favorite line from araby and one of my favorite lines 'ever' :): "I had never spoken to her, except a for few casual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood." ooh la la...i love that!!!! funny that he never tells us that name...but then later this hit me... "These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes." and then... "My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why*) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom." [*i love this too how joyce shows the boy's internal confusion so well in the story, he does not know what prayers he is saying or why his eyes fill with tears; he 'could not call his wandering thoughts together'.] ...what hit me was his use of blood references. we know that in urdu literature and poetry, the liver and its product, the blood, are like the seat of passion and emotion and, oh, there are many ways to define this and i am the least qualified... but i was noticing this sequence for the first time. he goes from 'foolish blood' to 'the chalice' (which is the sacred cup that holds Jesus' blood, in catholic ceremony) to 'a flood *from his heart* pouring into *his bosom*'...it seems like a thread here, a section in which he has just gone from telling us about how he watches her waiting for her brother, to how he lays on the floor watching out for her thru the slats in the door, to this segment in which he tells us about this deep pulsating passion he feels for her; it is like building blocks or something? i love how he walks thru "the places most hostile to romance" [that *is* ireland! :)] and how in that segment, he gives us references to so much that is definitively *irish*, almost circularly, from culture to politics to religion to class issues; drunken men, bargaining women, laborers, barking shop boys, pigs cheeks (this is a class ref. i think; only the poorest people buy the pigs heads, the wealthier buy the actual meat; frank mccourt handles this real artfully in _angelas ashes_), street singers singing irish ballads and 'rebel' ballads about "*the troubles* in *our* *native* *land*." so, then when he talks about that single sensation it is as tho he is saying to ireland, (place that is 'so hostile to romance') 'i will bear my chalice thru this throng, and it will not spill! i will hold onto with everything i am!' then the next thing we know, he goes into the backroom and either receives (or imagines he has received) an answer to his 'blood summons', that is, his conversation with mangan's sister about araby. this story makes me woozy it is so good, simply remarkable. also...i wonder about love relationships and ideas of romance (and timidness in these areas) between the cultures of ireland and india...there are very many elderly bachelors in ireland (hmm???? ;-) and some of that reality comes from the fact that ireland is a very naive, almost youthful country in terms of romance type stuff (also the staunch catholicism has something to do with it, a big part :). the boy in araby would be representative of catholic boys of ireland in many respects; this reminds me of a conversation i once had with a maleindian friend who said that because of a long history of arranged marriage in india, he feels that there really are not 'embedded dating rituals' there like there are here or in britain. so for him, living in america, it is hard because he feels unsure what the rules of the game are or how to play them. that is a reality of ireland too, but for different reasons. and for some reason, that conversation comes back to me in re-reading araby these days... i think if i read araby everyday? everyday something new would hit me!! :-) Rasik's comments: Wonderful, wonderful, I think you are in love with Joyce! If you can keeep going at this rate, by the time we come to HCE or FW, I think we should all arrange a meet on bloomsday. A very good, non-academic introduction to Joyce is Anthony Burgess' "Here Comes Everybody." In that Bookworm interview, the question Rushdie asked was, Is there anything after Joyce? Some corner somewhere he could find? He did. I believe the first three stories in the Dubliners are about a boy protagonist in the first person. The omniscient,colder, more objective voice takes over after that. Can't wait till we get to that one (Is it the Countreparts?) about the solicitor's clerk who says "Sir, that is hardly a fair question to ask of me?" The greatest of all is, of course, "The Dead". All of you who can, please read the story and then see John Huston's video of the story! Zarqa adds: Yeah, it was me with "joyce is showing us the blood pounding in the ears of the...boy" (or something like that) but you did a superb job of listing all the references to blood in the story!! What I was thinking of was simply how I felt the first time these feelings were awakened in me. Remember the weaking of the knees, blood pounding so loud in the ear that he (the boy who elicited the reaction) could have been saying or doing anything and I wouldn't have heard a thing. Quite a magical feeling the first time it happens. Magical and scary as hell and depending on culture, capable of inducing much guilt and shame. But Joyce didn't go into the guilt and shame part of it....a south asian writer would have perhaps, who knows...a SA version of Araby still has to be written, I think. What the story does so beautifully is to put the reader smack in the center of this boy's gut, where all his hesitations, misunderstandings, and misgivings reside. Transcendent! End of discussions on Araby!

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