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Hi All The first thing that struck me reading _Grace_ is the close friendly atmosphere created by a group of men choosing to guide one of their peers out of a bad situation - a real contrast with _Counterparts_ where we see little but the downward kicks of the oppressed. The rhetoric of Cunningham, Power McCoy and Fogarty is absurd. The attempt to persuade, by assuming a knowledgeable air about the political machinations and ideological disputes of the papacy, is hardly convincing - Cunningham's version of a Latin motto, for instance, includes English "Lux upon Lux". But this absurdity doesn't detract from their generous intent. The is large amount of tact they employ in the manoeuvring Mr Kernan, shows an intelligence, that lightens the satire of the group as pompous know-it-alls; and they do go to the retreat themselves. This feeling of camaraderie is echoed in the description of a member of the Protestant Orange order attending a Catholic sermon. This sense of the warmth of human contact that I get from the scene of friends rallying round their fallen companion, is all the more powerful because of its contrast to the story's beginning. Our introduction to Tom Kernan is very impersonal. For most of the first scene Kernan is just a body. This is heightened by the narrator's refusal to give us any information. It is only after the narrative leaves the public house, and the Mr Kernan is sobered enough to speak his own name that the narator begins to impart some biographical information about the character. As Jeane Kane points out, this dehumanising description of Mr Kernan is intensified by the use of impersonal pronouns in the clinical description of his wounds "the lower teeth were covered with clotted blood and a minute piece of the tongue seemed to have been bitten off" Chandra you mentioned that you saw the other businessmen taking part in the retreat, like Mafia at a church in Sicily; and that Joyce was making fun of the church, confession and grace. I'm inclined to see this story as not so dark a vision of the troubles that face Dubliners. I thought that Joyce was giving a little back to the priesthood, as he shows it providing a possibility for the rehabilitation of Mr Kernan. Yes, the vision of God the accountant is hardly going to shake the foundations of Mr Kernan's world-view. But a shock to the system isn't necessarily the best way to get Mr Kernan to abandon his alcoholism. Even if the retreat does nothing else than make Mr Kernan feel more pious, it would still be a boost to his self-image, and be a step in the right direction. (incidentally, the image of God as a member of the bourgeoisie, in this case a divine accountant, reminds me of the image of God as a divine artisan, that emerges from the proof that God exists because only a divine being could have created a world of such intricate complexity.) Like you Chandra, Jean Kane in her essay on Grace gives a pessimistic view of the situation. For Jean Kane, the drunken body in general is representative of the paralysis of Dublin's moral world; and a metaphor for the colonised individual - unable to speak, yet complicit in their own lack of voice. The guidance offered by Mr Power is seen as tainted by the fact that he works for a London backed organ of power. The Catholic Church is regarded as bending over backwards to match its rhetoric to the desires of the petit-bourgeoisie and hence unable to challenge the moral malaise. We do not have any inner monologue from Mr Kernan, so we do not know if he is likely to change his dissolute ways. We are not given any evidence that the retreat does any good for any of the men that attend. However the possibility that some good comes out of the retreat is still there, and is made to my mind, slightly more likely by the humanity shown to Mr Kernan by his friends. Kiri Kiri Your post on Grace opened another window on the story. You make it all so positive, and I looked it rather negatively! Particularaly when you say at the end that something good will come out of the retreat. Isn't it interesting that a given story can affect different readers in such different ways! I am also intrigued by your reading of this meeting between the friends. Yes, there is a nice human touch there. I want to keep this post short, and would like to add here the one sentence I read in the book by Bloom on Grace: "The story "Grace" is Joyce's classic portrayal of simony. It is a dramatic and unambiguous statement of the Irish clergy's exchange of spirital benefits for worldliness and gain." Chandra |
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