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Maureen's thoughts: hi y'all... just wanted to share some of my thoughts on this one. i like this story. in thinking about it since reading it again the other night, i realized something that took me awhile. that is, the transformation tommy undergoes. whether the character correlates with doubting thomas or not is probably unimportant, but doubting thomas, for catholics, represents the idea of a 'lacking faith' or, ignorance of the true faith. doubting thomas was later 'resurrected' and became a spreader of the word too, one of the most important of these in christian history/mythology, and i think i see thomas in this story as lacking faith in his own people, doubting their value, even blatantly devaluing them, altho he is confused and perplexed about this. it is as tho there is a dialectic going on in this story between thomas' intellect and his intuition, or his heart/memory and his brain/future hopes and ambitions. the transformation i gathered thru certain references; initially i feel when joyce alludes to "a horde of grimy children", who "crawled up the steps before the gaping doors [to the *kings inn*] or squatted like mice," he is talking about the people of ireland, the catholics, many of whom in dublin proper would be poor. and the quote chandra fingered, "he picked his way deftly thru the all that vermin-like life" and "UNDER THE SHADOW OF THE GAUNT SPECTRAL MANSIONS IN WHICH THE OLD NOBILITY OF DUBLIN HAD ROYSTERED" ...is real important because here joyce is symbolically juxtaposing the indigenous irish with the landed gentry and their descendants; the colonizers and their wealth are juxtaposed to the filth and poverty the indigenous catholics are now living in... note that these stories were written only about 55 years after the great famine in ireland, a time during which the streets were in fact lined with starving dying sick people, almost all if not all, indigenous catholics -- and joyce's ancestors supposedly, in fact his father was born not long after the famine. so i think the story's axis is caught up with these issues, and i say this because of thomas' epiphany at the end in which suddenly his wife appears with beady black eyes (like mice) and his child becomes a screaming nuisance with whom he can't deal which is keeping him "imprisoned forever, his arms trembling with anger" as he holds the child. early in the story, as thomas' picks deftly thru the vermin-like life on the street, he thinks "no memory of the past touched him, for his mind was full of a present joy." here, i think joyce's point is made clear. he sees people like gallaher and the future thomas as people who have forgotten the past (or don't care or don't understand) and who wish only to live in a 'present state of joy', a state of joy and wealth and comfort that is gained by *associations with* the colonizer, with britishness, and by forgetting the past, forgetting your people, and even beginning to look down on them, as rats, the way the colonizer and her people had done for centuries, such views justify colonization. the ideas of this story remind me of ideas chronicled by certain african american writers, about african americans who associate themselves with whiteness, who 'cow-tow' to the white man, and who are often referred to as "oreos" -- ie, black on the outside, white on the inside. joyce is saying something similar about where gallaher already is and where thomas is headed. this is implied in the end when thomas even sees his wife as a form of vermin, particularly his eye references... and notice too that he says that his wife placed the sleeping child "deftly" in his arms whereas earlier thomas had walked "deftly" thru the throng of "children." the orange tie is an obvious reference joyce has made to "orangemen" -- by placing this bright orange tie on gallaher he implies that gallaher has switched sides, like being a double agent culturally speaking, that he is now an "orangeman." the orangemen of ireland are the celebrants of the william of orange's defeat of the irish catholics at the battle of the boyne. nowadays there are frequent news stories (particularly in july and august) about the orangemen wanting to march thru catholic neighborhoods on the day commemorating the success of william of orange and the success of the protestant minority over the catholic majority -- this is an ugly chapter of irish history, and only one small outcome of william of orange's success were the penal laws, the penal code that he passed sometime after his victory -- a group of laws that made it legal for a british man to kill an irish man for no reason and with no cause as long as he was on irish soil; denied catholics the right to own property, to speak gaelic, to attend catholic mass, required catholics to pay a tithe to the anglican church, and many more brutalities follow and accompany these. joyce's use of the orange bow tie is obvious and here he is being sarcastic -- normally joyce's symbols are much subtler but when he wrote this story, i think he was a wee bit miffed, pissed, ticked off and otherwise bothered very greatly! :-)) The main point is the transformation... gallaher says to tommy, "I don't fancy tying myself up to one woman...must get a bit stale i should think." then, there is a break in the story. thomas has heretofore been at "the kings inn" where he *works*, then to Corless's, a place where the aristocracy hangs out (not tommy's people)...then he goes home, so it is like returning to home, to ireland from places until now that were associated with britishness (kings inn, corless). when thomas goes home, he begins to think about his wife differently, suddenly she has boring eyes, and everything about her and even everything in the house that she purchased starts to look ugly and evil. well, it seems to me that altho thomas is disgusted by gallaher, some other part of him still wishes to have what gallaher has... to hobnob with the anglo-protestant aristocracy at places like that bar at which they met; to become famous, etc. so that altho some part of him (the part he has no memory of now... ireland's past) is disgusted by ignatius, at the same time, he wants what ignatius has and we see the effect of ignatius and his sort on the flimsy impressionable mind of a guy like thomas... that is what i meant. and it may very well be a commentary on the celtic twilight school, now that i am thinking of it... maureen. |
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