|
|
|
|
|
Manish on I agree, as Chandra mentioned, that the characters in the story are used in an allegorical manner, to bring forward the turbulances in the mind of the boy, the elder person used as a restraint put by the social order, call it the church, on the desires. The change in the stand of the old man(when Mahony is gone) seems to show the hypocrisy of the system. But what really seemed to be the crucial part of the story was the ending(as someone pointed out earlier also), when the boy 'narrates'.." And I was penitent; for in my heart I had always despised him a little."....but had he???...it never was brought up in the story, so, what was it, had he 'now' started moving on the path to be moulded in the social order, introduced by the man, why was he 'guilty' ??...and why did he 'now' start disliking Mahony??(Because though he says that he had always despised him, since the essential 'tools' of principle were provided now, so the feeling, even if they were there, could not have been realised earlier)...Had he, in the new light, now realised that the freedom that Mahony represented was 'wrong'?? It seemed thus, but still the last line is intriguing. So here again we find a character which is 'against' what Joyce has in mind as a 'good' person (but of course he is 'normal'..), and here he shows the introduction of the 'guilt' in a previously untarnished mind, something which is developed in the subsequent stories(as also in Araby which is the next).. Maureen finally i am sorry, i am so busy right now i just can't keep on top of my mail and i am out of town the next three days after today. :) i have not read all of the postings on this thread yet; this is a reply to roopesh's original posting (arnab, any idea why i did not get that? oh bother...i hope i am not missing any others.) anyway, on this comment... "We can guess that he might be masturbating. (with apologies to the squemish amongst us, but this is the most likely explanation. )" i don't know what else he could have been doing, if not masturbating. the thing that this story highlights, i feel, is the paradox of sexual needs, desires, 'existing as sexual human beings'...within a culture framework that attempts to entirely deny that aspect of our existence, of our selves. so, in other words, look at how contradictory the old guy's words and actions and behaviors are. this reality again makes us hypocrits, as in the sisters. of course it is not just a reality of irish catholic life (the denial and repression of our sexual selves is an issue in many cultures), but in joyce's case, the issue (and all other issues) is presented in that context. so anyway i think the issue is in the man's waffling and the boys' observing that. the man becomes symbolic of "men, the male elders, the priests, the teachers" of ireland; the boys symbolize 'male youths of ireland', how they learn about sexuality and are perplexed by it themselves because of what they see in "the male elders'" behaviors -- contradiction, hypocrisy, confusion, lies, a kind of 'lost'ness, etc. |
|
|
|
|
|