"Revelation" and "Parker's Back"

In this story about a woman who is abruptly knocked off her high horse, O’Connor illustrates, once again, one individual’s path to revelation-about herself and the world she so openly judges.

An incredibly controlling and self-righteous woman, Mrs. Turpin embodies those who pompously consider their existence to be beneficent to those who are “beneath them”. She not only views herself as a very respectable, kind, charitable, virtuous woman, but feels she is entitled to judge everyone else. O’Connor immediately begins her story with Mrs. Turpin’s shallow observations of the waiting room. She evaluates “the well-dressed lady”, “the ugly girl”, and “the trashy mother” (194), and deems them all beneath her status in her system of classification.

She analyses her life from an entirely superficial point of view, concerned only with the “classes of people” (195), and thankful to God for making her herself, and not “a nigger or white-trash” (195). It is obvious that her acts of “kindness” are insincere. Her pity for others who she considers to be beneath her is driven by a sanctimonious view of herself. Even her habit of bringing the black workers water at the end of the day is out of necessity to keep them loyal: “I sure am sick of buttering up them niggers, but you got to love me if you want em to work for you” (196).

Her revelation comes when she is, for once in her life, judged just as harshly as she judges others. And she does not like it. The girl’s harsh words, “go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog” (207), relentlessly eat away at her mind. A devout Christian who consistently talks to God (mostly about her thankfulness for being born white and privileged), Mrs. Turpin is finally hearing back from him. She recognizes that the girl’s attack on her is a message sent by God. “She was looking at her as if she had known her all of her life”(201), “The girl’s eyes seemed lit all of a sudden with a peculiar light” (197): O’Connor implies that something of a higher power, some spiritual force, is guiding this young woman, and to Mrs. Turpin that is God. She does not understand why she of all people is being given this message, for she has done no wrong in her opinion: “Why me?...There’s no trash around here, black or white, that I haven’t given to” (215). She even states that the message could have been justly given to the other trash in the waiting room (210). But it is precisely because of this thinking that she is being given this message. When she asks God “Who do you think you are?” (216), she finally begins to comprehend who she actually is. O’Connor paints two opposing images: Mrs. Turpin’s initial dream of all the classes of people “being ridden off to be put in a gas oven” (196), and her final vision of the procession of all types of people into heaven, their virtues being “burned away” (218).

The image of a sunset at the moment of revelation is one that O’Connor has used before. In “a Temple of the Holy Ghost”, the child observes the setting sun like a “Host drenched in blood” (CP 69). In both of these short stories, O’Connor is depicting an individual’s revelation about themselves, their judgmental attitudes, and their arrogance. The allegory of the setting sun is therefore one of unity and mortal connection.

Another common theme of hers is the college graduate. Sometimes this figure is offering grace or invoking revelation, other times it is the one in need of epiphany. Julian, in “Everything that Rises Must Converge”, and Hulga, in “Good Country People”, both come to a harsh realization that they are not above the uneducated, traditional folk that surround them. However, in “Revelation”, the college student, or “ugly girl” as Mrs. Turpin calls her, is the one who brings forth the main character’s epiphany. This girl is also very similar to O’Connor’s character Hulga. Not only is she uncannily reminiscent of Hulga’s sour disposition and unfortunate physical appearance, they share the irony of having uplifting names, Grace and Joy. And it is grace indeed that Mary Grace unintentionally gives Mrs. Turpin. Through her vicious attack, she opens the door to revelation and introduces a new perspective-on both herself and others.

I think that O’Connor is pointing towards a tropological epiphany in “Revelation”. If we step back and look at the story in it’s entirety, her biblical undertones and religious emphases are metaphorical for a broader moral truth-that racism, classism, and self-important judgment are not only contradictory to a Christian lifestyle, but hurtful and morally corrupt.

The revelation in “Parker’s Back” was not as easily recognizable-at least not for me. Like the slow-building epiphany Parker feels as a child upon seeing the tattooed man, the message O’Connor imparts in this story is one that gradually unfolds and has no clear, initial impact; it is an overall feeling that overtakes the reader, as opposed to a sudden epiphany.

It is reasonable to say this story is of an incarnational nature. “She is trying to embody the mystery of the incaranation in a tattoo on a man’s back” (Ragen14). Parker tries to fill a void in his life, a dissatisfaction he feels, by covering his body in tattoos. But this therapeutic act is somewhat selfish and vain: “He had no desire for one anywhere he could not readily see it himself” (225). However, I do not think O’Connor is completely dismissing the tattoos as an incarnation, but rather identifying Parker’s failure to understand what it is he is longing for, and an inability to grasp what it is the tattoos truly embody. Ragen states “He still touches His people’s lives through material signs…the sacramental theology of the church encourages the writer to see with an anagogical vision, since it finds in physical things signs for participation in the Divine life” (20). Read Ragen’s chapter “The Burning Bush and the Illustrated man” in A Wreck on the Road to Damascus: Innocence, Guilt and Conversion in Flannery Connor for an analysis of Parker as the grotesque embodiment of the incomplete man-an unfulfilled soul-and the tattoo as an incarnation/salvation.

Flannery O'Connor: Catholic writer

O’Connor was baptized into the Catholic faith soon after her birth in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, and attended mass daily throughout her life (Cep). Her religious pursuits and devout Catholic understanding informed her literary work. Although a Roman Catholic in the Bible Belt South, much of her fiction was “largely concerned with fundamentalist Protestants, many of whom she admired for the integrity of their search for Truth” (Gordon).

“One reason why I can write about Protestant believers better than Catholic believers [is] because they express their belief in diverse kinds of dramatic action which is obvious enough for me to catch. I can’t write about anything subtle” (O’Connor).

O’Connor was highly regarded in the Catholic community as a devout believer, yet she was very aware of the inadequacies of the church and was a “harsh critic of the superficial faith of many Catholics” (Magee). Most of her writings either dealt with religion explicitly, or had undeniably Catholic undertones. O’Connor says of her own work, “‘To the hard of hearing…[Christian writers] shout, and for the . . . almost-blind [they] draw large and startling figures’—a statement that has become a succinct and popular explanation of O'Connor's conscious intent as a writer” (Gordon). Despite the increasing secularism of her time, she continued to place emphasis on original sin and guilt in her writing, and infused much of her work with a Christian outlook.

“Like the comedy of Dante, O'Connor's dark humor consciously intends to underscore boldly our common human sinfulness and need for divine grace. Even her characters' names (Tom T. Shiflet, Mary Grace, Joy/Hulga Hopewell, Mrs. Cope) are often ironic clues to their spiritual deficiencies. O'Connor's recurrent characters, from Hazel Motes in Wise Blood to O. E. Parker of "Parker's Back," are spiritually lean and hungry figures who reject mere lip service to Christianity and the bland certainty of rationalism in their pursuit of salvation.” (Gordon)

Outside of her own stories, O’Connor also wrote book reviews The Bulletin and The Southern Cross, two Catholic newspapers in Georgia. “Professor of English Carter Martin, an authority on O'Connor's writings, notes simply that her ‘book reviews are at one with her religious life’” (wiki).

Cep, Casey N. “The Artist as Invalid: The Life of Flannery O’Connor”. The Oxonian Review. 2009. The Oxonian Review. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. .

Gordon, Sarah. "Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 2009. University of Georgia Press. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. .

Magee, Rosemary M., and Flannery O'Connor. Conversations with Flannery O'Connor. Jackson [u.a.: Univ. of Mississippi, 1987.

O'Connor, Flannery, and Sally Fitzgerald. The Habit of Being: Letters. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979.

Wikipedia-Flannery O'Connor. .

Grace through Sin and the Grotesque: The Writings of Flannery O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor's Career and Writing

Despite her death at a young age, O’Connor was quite a prolific writer. She wrote two novels, Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away, as well as publishing two books of short stories, A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (published posthumously in 1965). In her work O’Connor addressed the most sensitive contemporary issues of the time including the Holocaust and racial integration.

Especially at the beginning of her career with the publishing of Wise Blood, many people did not understand her dark stories and their meaning or purpose. A major emphasis of her writing:

“Like the comedy of Dante, O'Connor's dark humor consciously intends to underscore boldly our common human sinfulness and need for divine grace. Even her characters' names (Tom T. Shiflet, Mary Grace, Joy/Hulga Hopewell, Mrs. Cope) are often ironic clues to their spiritual deficiencies. O'Connor's recurrent characters, from Hazel Motes in Wise Blood to O. E. Parker of "Parker's Back," are spiritually lean and hungry figures who reject mere lip service to Christianity and the bland certainty of rationalism in their pursuit of salvation. These same characters, usually deprived economically, emotionally, or both, inhabit a world in which, in O'Connor's words, "the good is under construction."”

Other important themes in her work were the grotesque, the South, and a sardonic sense of humor, and a pervasive sense of grace from God despite human flaws. In regard to her humor, she often used characters, who are well-meaning liberals unable to come to terms with race poverty and fundamentalism, as an example of the failure of the secular world in the 20th century. O'Connor had little patience for critics who did not understand her use of the grotesque as she asserted:

"Anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is gong to be called realistic."

Moreover, her overall intent as a writer can be explained best in her own words:

"To the hard of hearing, Christian writers shout, and for the...almost-blind [they] draw large and startling figures."

A distinctly Catholic understanding of the world deeply influenced her writing, which will be discussed in the next blog post entry. Important influences on her, though, included Faulkner, Caldwell, Eudora Welty, Caroline Gordon, Katherine Anne Porter, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Joseph Conrad, and Francois Mauriac, and Georges Bernanos.

O'Connor received accolades during and after her life. After completing her M.F.A. in 1947 she won the Rinehart-Iowa Fiction Award for the beginnings of her first novel. In addition, the posthumous collection The Complete Stories received the National Book Award, her collections of letters have received rave reviews and a number of awards. In 1992 she was inducted into the Georgia Women of Achievement, as an inaugural honoree, and she was inducted as a charter member into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000.

Quoted and Paraphrased from:

Gordon, Sarah. "Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 2009. University of Georgia Press. Web. 19 Jan. 2012..

Wikipedia-Flannery O'Connor

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flannery_O'Connor

A Convergence of Innocence and Martyrdom

Through the character of Julian, O'Connor seems to critique people that hold high-minded ideals and principles but do not live them out. Rather, it seems that abstract principles obscure people's ability to see exactly what is in front of them.

Throughout the story Julian thinks he is so much better than everyone but is he? He has “sympathy” for the “Negro man” who enters the bus but only wants to talk to him in order to “teach [his mother] a lesson that would last her a while” (14). It’s no wonder then that he “had never been successful at making a Negro friend” (15), who he sought out on principle but not to befriend as an equal. In fact, it seems no one is equal to Julian who lives apart from even the people around him by escaping into his “mental bubble” (11). He cares for no one, no thing except for his “principles”, which “rescue” him from “sensing…innocence,” and abstract notions of justice (17). Most prominently, Julian cannot recognize his mother’s state of innocence. Despite clearly racist attitudes, Julian’s mother does not see herself as such. She believes she is “gracious” toward “Negroes” and finds nothing wrong with this. Moreover, his mom asserts that “they should rise, yes, but on their side of the fence” (7), a belief held so deeply that she cannot recover from her physical convergence with the “Negro woman.” Rather, she returns to her childhood mentality, asking for her wet nurse Caroline, revealing her innocence all along to Julian. No longer in his protective mental bubble, Julian finally shows concern to late for his “’Mamma’” (22). He scrambles toward the light but cannot reach them as they move seemingly farther and farther away, epiphany slipping from his grasp.

Perhaps, Julian is a "false" martyr. O’Connor compares him to St. Sebastian as he leans “pinned to the door frame” (4) and references his time going on the bus as “be[ing] sacrificed to [his mother’s] pleasure” (3). However, O’Connor hints at his being more a false martyr when walking with his mother to the bus he is “saturated in depression, as if in the midst of his martyrdom he had lost his faith” (5). For what is a martyr without faith?

"This is the way He wanted me to be."

          In “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” Flannery O’Connor focuses on an unnamed adolescent girl, “the child,” who is visited by her two boy-crazy, unintelligent cousins  Susan and Joann (O’Connor describes them as “positively ugly” – just like her description of the name and character of Hulga in “Good Country People”). After coming up with silly ideas of how to keep her cousins entertained, the child’s mother takes her up on the idea of spending the evening with Cory and Wendell Wilkins, as the girls would be “perfectly safe” with those boys.

            It is evident that O’Connor comments on their Church of God upbringing and desire to be ministers when they sing “Old Rugged Cross” and “Jesus is a Friend.” The girls interrupt them with the much more traditional, mature “Tantum Ergo.” This highlights the rift between Catholicism and another breed of Christianity that seems to be less mature. Especially when one of the boys comments, “That must be Jew singing.”

            One of the main points that I think O’Connor makes with this story is the difference between the Wilkins and Alonzo’s faith in a church where sin must be eradicated and harbors of sinfulness, such as the fair, must be shut down, with a church founded to be a hospital for sinners, in O’Connor’s eyes. She complicates this with the cousins who do not exactly display the best traits of Catholics or an understanding of the church’s teaching (exhibited by their scoffing at the notion of their bodies as temples of the Holy Ghost).  However, O’Connor sides with the notion of a faith in which there is not much distance between God and humanity, in spite of evil that does take place. To me, there are parallels between O’Connor herself in her struggles with lupus and the “Freak” at the fair who accepted that God made her that way. Neither one are perfect, but they accept their affliction and aim to be content being what God made them to be. Additionally, the child ultimately realizes that she is in the presence of God during adoration at the convent. O’Connor reveals that the church is an imperfect place, filled with imperfect people but its members must accept how they were created and live their lives in pursuit of God.  

Want to read up on “Good Country People”? Here’s a link to a page that takes a closer look at the other story we read for today: http://mediaspecialist.org/ssstamping.html

Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)

            [Since we will spend three days discussing O’Connor’s works, the next three biographical posts will be organized into a general overview of O’Connor’s life (today), a look at her literary works and career by Mary Walle, and then we will finish up with a deeper look at her connection to Catholicism, compliments of Brijit Spencer…]

Mary Flannery O’Connor, considered to be one of the greatest American fiction writers and an important Roman Catholic apologist, was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 25, 1925. She was the only child of Regina Cline and Edward O’Connor. She attended Catholic school in Savannah until her family moved to Milledgeville, GA in 1938. Upon arriving in Milledgeville she attended Peabody Laboratory School, associated with George State College for Women (now Georgia College and State University). When she was fifteen her father was stricken with lupus and died, leaving Flannery devastated.

            As a result of her father’s death, Flannery decided to remain in Milledgeville and study in an accelerated three-year program at GSCW. She was a dedicated reader and artist and served as editor and contributor cartoons, fiction essays, and poems to her college’s literary magazine, The Corinthian. Her friends described her as gifted and shy as well as disdainful of mediocrity. Upon her graduation she was given a scholarship to the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa) to pursue a graduate degree in journalism.

            Shortly after she arrived in Iowa, she realized that she was not suited for journalism and switched to studying creative writing after the obtaining the approval of Paul Engle, head of the Writer’s Workshop . During this time, O’Connor built relationships with other important writers in her program including Andrew Lytle, the editor of Sewanee Review, who later published many of her short stories. Paul Engle later recalled that

O'Connor was so intensely shy and possessed such a nasal southern drawl that he himself read her stories aloud to workshop classes. He also asserted that O'Connor was one of the most gifted writers he had ever taught. Engle was the first to read and comment on the initial drafts of what would become Wise Blood, her first novel, published in 1952.

            The blossoming writer completed her M.F.A. in 1947 and was subsequently accepted to Yaddo, an artist’s retreat in Saratoga Springs, NY. She later moved into the garage apartment of Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (the famous literary critic and translator) in Connecticut. While living in Connecticut, Flannery found that living with the devoutly Catholic Fitzgeralds helped her obtain a “balance of solitude and communion necessary to her creativity and her intellectual and spiritual life.”

            These productive years of living and writing were interrupted in 1950 when Flannery was stricken with the same incurable autoimmune disease that killed her father. She soon returned to Milledgeville where she would live and write for the rest of her life. She lived just outside of town on her family farm, called Andalusia. In her final fourteen years, she devoted her time to writing and taking a few trips to lecture about her works. She raised peacocks (an important symbol in some of her stories) and stayed in touch with the literary world by maintaining correspondence with many different writers.

            Following a period of remission of her lupus, it returned in early 1964 during a surgery to remove a fibroid tumor. After several days in a coma, Flannery died on August 3, 1964 and was buried beside her father. In 1979, Sally Fitzgerald edited and published a posthumous collection of O’Connors letters entitled Habit of Being: Letters. This collection received very warm reviews as readers were able to see beyond her shocking stories, into her astute intellect as well as her warm, witty personality.

Quoted and paraphrased from:

Gordon, Sarah. "Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 2009.  University of Georgia Press. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. <http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-498>.

F. Scott Fitzgerald "Benediction" II

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Benediction tells the story of a young woman whose lover seems to be considering a break up. As this woman, Lois, sets out to meet her long-unknown brother, she hopes to also meet up with her lover. Her brother, Keith,  is a seminarian who left for his priestly studies when Lois was still young. She was young enough that she didn't really know him. She goes to meet him at the seminary where she seems to express apathy toward Catholicism. She seems to question whether or not it is a good idea that some  of the seminarians entered their studies so early. Lois expresses to her brother that she thinks the young seminarians should have gone out and seen the world before committing to celibacy. 

This last concept makes me think that, early on, F. Scott Fitzgerald may have considered entering the priesthood. I know for a fact that sometimes, to a young Catholic man, the thought of jumping into the priesthood can be quite strong. But there is the fact that "not going out and seeing the world" can hold a prospective seminarian back from making the decision early on. There is truth to both approaches. The struggle with indecision seems to be at least implicitly expressed in this story. At the end of the story, Lois decides to send the telegram to Howard, but, in the end, she doesn't. To me, this expresses some deep interior perturbation. The same type of unsettling feeling that is present when one feels that he may have a vocation to the priesthood. This was the main takeaway that I got from this story and I can relate to both Lois and Keith. To me, Lois represents indecision, Keith represents comfort in decision. This theme of indecision is important to recognize in the characters because it can manifest itself in life in many circumstances.

F. Scott Fitzgerald "Benediction" I

Who is F. Scott Fitzgerald?


Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul Minnesota on September 24, 1896. Edward, his father, came from Maryland and had some allegiance to the Old South. His mother, Mary McQuillan, was the daughter of an Irish immigrant who was a grocer in St. Paul. Both of Francis's parents were Roman Catholics. Francis attended the Newman School in New Jersey. It was at this prep school that Francis met The Reverend Father Sigourney Fay who encouraged Francis in his writing. Francis attended Princeton University and frequently abandoned his studies to focus on developing his writing. He wrote for several publications while at Princeton. Francis fell in love and was engaged to Zelda Sayre while he was writing "The Romantic Egotist. The novel was rejected at the publishing firm twice and Francis was sent to fight in the First World War. After being discharged, Francis went to New York City to pursue his career. Zelda was not so enthusiastic about waiting for Francis and she broke the engagement.

Francis's Novel This Side of Paradise was published on March 26, 1920. It made Francis famous. A week after the publishing, he married Zelda Sayre and they lived as young celebrities. They had a son Francis Scott (Scottie) Fitzgerald who was born in 1921. The Fitzgeralds became wealthy after the success of Francis's play The Vegetable. Francis became connected to the Jazz Age. While in France, Francis wrote his most famous book The Great Gatsby in 1924. A year later, in Rome, Francis revised the work and it was published in Paris in April of 1925.

In 1931, the Fitzgeralds returned to America. Zelda suffered a relapse and entered Johns Hopkins Hospital. She remained in the hospital or as an outpatient for the rest of her life. She rapidly wrote Save me the Waltz, her autobiographical novel, which caused strain between the couple. In response, Francis wrote Tender is the Night which failed. Francis's child being sent to boarding school due to Francs's degrading lifestyle, Francis pursued a career in Hollywood, striking a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Although his debts were paid, he was unable to save and spend much visiting his wife. He fell in love with writer Sheliah Graham. He continued to work as a freelance script and short story writer. He died of a heart attack on December 21, 1940, halfway through writing The Love of the Lost Tycoon. Zelda Fitzgerald died in a hospital fire in 1948

Source:
Matthew J. Bruccoli’s “A Brief Life of Fitzgerald” originally appeared in F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Life in Letters, ed. Bruccoli with the assistance of Judith S. Baughman (New York: Scribners, 1994.); essay reprinted courtesy of  Simon & Schuster.

Reading Response: “The Dead” as exemplar of Modernism

As I read “The Dead” again for class, I remembered how long the story is. When I finished I was tempted to say that the title must refer to the state of the reader after getting through the whole thing; but then I thought, no, that wouldn’t be the kind of thing that a responsible English teacher would write… :)

Anyway, it’s definitely the longest story we’ll be reading in the short story section of this class. And I realized that the story's length, along with the obscurity of some of the references, can make it hard to make sense of the first time through.

But that's not always a bad thing - to struggle with a text can be very fruitful in developing reading skills. Even if you don't know all the names or political events that are referenced by the characters, you can learn to read context clues to get the gist of a given moment in a story.

For example, in "The Dead," at one point the main character Gabriel dances with a woman named Miss Ivors. She represents the Irish nationalistic movement of the time, which was attempting to break Ireland free of English rule. She's upset with Gabriel for writing for a paper, the Daily Express, which takes a more conservative, pro-English stance. But even if you don't know all that, you can still get the sense of the uneasiness of the scene just by reading it and paying attention. Joyce's writing allows you to feel the tension between them, even if you don't know the particulars of their political dispute.

Understanding the themes
There are so many things we could talk about for this story. It's been studied and written about many, many times. (And because of that, and because it's so long, this blog will probably be longer than most of the reading response posts should be).

This a story with a ton of rich symbolism. And as a work of modernism, as discussed in the last blog post, it creates a great deal of ambiguity and uncertainty. It often seems to be holding up conflicting emotions and viewpoints side-by-side. A few fragmented reactions:
- The elaborate holiday celebration reminded me of many similiar celebrations in my own family. Joyce does a great job describing both the joys and the hidden tensions, often simmering beneath the surface, which we often find in such circumstances.
- The meal is described in great detail. It's a moment of communion, as Thomas Foster discusses in his book "How To Read literature Like a Professor." But with Joyce, there's always an ironic element, so we can see that during the meal this communion between the characters is less than perfect.
- In fact, one way to see this is in Gabriel's speech. He makes some comments which are actually quite rude to his aunts! I think Joyce likes to put his characters into a common setting which normally brings up ideas of togetherness and connection, and he inserts some slight moments of discord.
- The symbolism of the weather (particularly the snow) which recurs throughout the story, is very interesting. Typically, the warmth of the inside of a house is contrasted with the coldness of the outside world. But Joyce turns this on its head a couple of times - once he even has Gabriel look out and wish he were out alone in the snow instead of in the house! It's an interesting moment which shows how even "warmth" and "hospitality" can sometimes become onerous or burdensome.
- The main "epiphany" or "revelation" at the end of the story is centered on Gabriel. I won't spoil it here, but we should all think about it in terms of the Foster book Chapter 1 - the issue of the quest for self-knowledge. What self-knowledge does Gabriel come to at the end of the story?

On this point, I want to try to make the beginnings of an argument about the story - and I want to connect it to our ongoing discussion about the "sacramental" view of life. One of the seven Catholic sacraments, of course, is marriage, which is a central point in "The Dead."

What is Joyce saying about marriage through the story of Gabriel and his wife Gretta? Does he seem to think there is hope for their marriage? Or not? And how does he reveal this through his writing choices?

I think that ultimately, the answer to this lies in how we read the final few paragraphs of the story, which some people read as positive, some as negative. There's evidence for both readings - it's modernism, so it's ambiguous.

Again, without spoiling the end too much, I would say that I think Joyce, in his heart of hearts, does still hold onto a sacramental understanding of marriage, in one sense. I think that he has his main character, Gabriel, undergo an experience in this story in which his false, man-made illusions about his marriage are stripped away (just like his illusions about himself are stripped away when he looks in the mirror in the last scene). Perhaps, this removal of his false view of marriage will prepare the way for a better, deeper understanding.

"The Dead" and Free Indirect Discourse
Finally, one of the key things that "The Dead" can help us understand about modern fiction is the idea of "free indirect discourse." Joyce was one of the founding fathers, so to speak, of this style of writing, in which the narrator's voice often merges with the characters' voices. The excerpt from James Wood's How Fiction Works which we read for class described this same style and mentioned Joyce a couple of times. Also, I found a great description of how the free indirect style works in "The Dead," written by Wallace Gray. Here is an excerpt:

There are a number of terms for narrated monologue: free indirect discourse, empathetic narrative, stylistic inflection...These are all ways of indicating that the prose style changes depending upon the nature of the character that the narration is about; another way of putting it is to say that the fictional character begins to make authorial choices, that the character "infects" the prose style of the writer.

As an example from Dubliners, let us look at the first sentence of "The Dead":

"Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet."

Now, a precise stylist would want to change this to "figuratively run off her feet." But the use of literally in this context is one that uneducated people, such as the housemaid Lily, frequently employ. What has happened here is that Lily, the character being written about, has, shall we say, literally taken the pen from the author and begun to use expressions that would come naturally to her; in other words, she has infected the author's style with her own personality. To continue, the third sentence of this opening paragraph reads:

"It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also, ... "

The expression "well for her" is the kind of language a Dubliner of her economic and social caste would use; here, it becomes part of the author's style.

Indeed, we can see that the authorial voice of the nineteenth-century writer, which was that of the distinct character of the writer, has become multilingual rather than monolingual. This becomes evident at the opening of the second paragraph:

"It was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan's annual dance. Everybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends of the family, the members of Julia's choir, any of Kate's pupils that were grown up enough and even some of Mary Jane's pupils too. Never once had it fallen flat."

Now, this is no longer Lily's voice. The topic has shifted to the opinions of middle-class Dubliners, the typical party guests at this event, and so they have grabbed the pen of the author and are using their own Dublin speech in the choice of words and in the rhythms of the sentences.

This is an excellent explication of how Joyce uses "free indirect style" in "The Dead." Gray also has lots of other great things to say about Joyce and his writing in Dubliners, check it out yourself if you need additional help understanding his stories.

An introduction to James Joyce: Modern, Catholic(?), Writer

James Joyce is considered one of the 20th century’s greatest writers, an exemplar of “Modernist” literature, a pioneer of innovative styles such as ‘stream-of-consciousness,’ and a brilliant master of multiple literary genres such as short stories and the novel – but he is usually not considered a Catholic.

Though he was raised in a devout Irish Catholic family in Dublin, he explicitly rejected his Catholic faith as a young adult, and went into exile away from Ireland with his wife in his twenties, never to return. He famously wrote “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can.”

And yet – as many scholars have noted, Joyce’s works and his worldview are permeated with the remnants of his childhood faith. Just about anyone who studies Joyce or writes any serious criticism of his works has to also understand the Catholic beliefs which shaped so much of his early life.

So, in a class on Modern Catholic Writers, why start with Joyce? Philosophically, he perhaps was ultimately more Modern than Catholic. Therefore, he offers one way of approaching a central question of this class, drawing on a tension inherent in our course title: What does it mean to be both “Modern” and “Catholic”? Are those two words compatible? Contradictory? A little of both? And how do authors with connections to Catholicism navigate this tension? How do they dramatize this conflict in their writings?

Joyce was born in Dublin in 1882, the oldest of 10 children. His father worked as a tax collector, and his mother was a devout Catholic. The young Joyce attended a Jesuit boarding school until 1891, but left because his family ran out of money (his father’s drinking problem and inability to hold steady employment was a major factor). In 1898 Joyce studied at the Catholic University College Dublin, but had already begun to move away from his faith (although earlier he had seriously considered becoming a Jesuit priest). In 1904 Joyce met Nora Barnacle, a young woman from Galway on the West coast of Ireland, and together they eloped to Europe. In the same year Joyce first began to publish some of his short stories in magazines, and his writing career began.

Joyce was extremely well-read (thanks to his excellent Jesuit education) and filled his writings with allusions to the foundational classical and Christian texts of Western culture. He loved to experiment with language, freely using wordplay and puns. He became a master of English prose and one of the most influential writers of the “Modernist” style of storytelling, which we will need to understand as we read the short stories and novels in our class.

Modernism as a literary movement emerged in the early 20th century, typically marked by a rejection of older, traditional forms of writing. One prominent feature of Modernist literature, which we will see in Joyce and other writers this term, is the use of what is called “Free indirect discourse.” In this style of writing, the narrator’s voice is often merged with the voice or the thoughts of a character. This is seen as a repudiation of an older style of storytelling which featured a “godlike” omniscient, third-person narrator. The free indirect style undermines this ideal, making it hard to distinguish between the thoughts of the narrator and the characters.

As such, Modernist literature often mocks or subverts older ways of storytelling. It is often considered the literature of the post-believing, post-Christian world. It suggests that we can’t really understand the world as a whole, but only in fragments. It uses things like “free indirect discourse” to create irony and ambiguity rather than easy answers. It suggests that we often can’t fully understand people or literary characters, even if we are allowed “into their heads” in a story. And it often deals with mundane or “everyday” things, rather than with heroic characters or epic tales as in earlier literary traditions.

All of these features will be seen in Joyce’s short story collection Dubliners, which we’ll read excerpts from in class. His other famous works are the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, the mock-epic novel Ulysses (which I read as part of a class in college and needed every minute of the teacher’s help to fully understand), and the highly experimental novel Finnegan’s Wake (which I confess I have tried to read about three times and could never get through it).

Joyce himself said that his goal in writing Dubliners was to “present Dublin to the world” and to lead to the “spiritual liberation” of his country. So we can see right here, Joyce still considered himself to be “spiritual.” As we read him, let’s be on the lookout for how he draws on spiritual concerns even in the midst of his proclaimed rejection of religion - our first example of a writer influenced strongly by both the traditional beliefs of his Catholicism, and the changing beliefs of the Modern world.

Tips for Effective Blogging

Some ideas on how to write effective blog posts for this class:

• Posts should focus on one or two topics. Unlike research papers or essays, which often can make several interconnected arguments, blogging is a short-form genre that requires a more compact structure. If you want to address more than two different topics, split them into separate posts.



• Posts will typicallybe either descriptive introductions (i.e. sharing information about one of our authors) or analytical responses (i.e. describing your reaction and starting to make an argument). Everyone is required to write two types of posts: "introductory" posts about the author they've chosen, and "analytical responses" to the readings for the day. More on those two below -



• Posts about the authors should be descriptive introductions. Each of you will choose a writer or writers to "introduce" to the class via this blog, from the reading list on the syllabus. When you post your introduction, make sure you give your readers enough interesting information about the writer, but not too much. Also, make sure to tell us about your author's connections to Catholicism. Were they born Catholic? Did they stick with it? Did they convert? Why?



• Posts about the readings should combine your reactions to the reading with an attempt at an analytical arguments connected to the text. Like all good academic writing, blog posts should assert something. But, you don't have to think of these as well-polished academic essays. They can be speculative, or fragmentary - they could just be a series of bullet points, for example. You could try to trace an idea or a common theme you found in the story. But you should still be trying to assert something about the text. A post might say something like "I really think that this author was trying to make a point about X in this story. Here are some quotes from the story that show this."



• Reading Response posts should include concrete examples or evidence from readings, class discussions, or outside sources. Make sure that whenever you are asserting something, it is based in evidence, and that the evidence is clear. you should try to mention the supplemental class readings if they connect with what you're discussing. When you're making points about a story, you should include quotes from the reading. Also, if you want, you can provide a hyperlink to outside resources online. Did you find something helpful online as you wrote your post? Link to it! It's a good idea to practice doing this, since this is a major aspect of online writing.



• Every post must include a title. Coming up with a good title for a blog post is a good skill to work on. It should give the reader a brief preview of what is to come, or maybe hint at the argument you will be making.

Modern Catholic Writers at UM: The Blog

Welcome to to our course weblog for English 230! During the term, all of us will contribute to the ongoing discussion of our readings through both posts and comments here. It's a way to learn a new, quick form of written response, and it allows us to read and comment upon each others' thoughts quickly and easily.

After the first day of class, everyone will receive an invitation to sign up as a member of this blog, so you can make your own posts. If you have a Google account already, that will be the fastest way to sign up. So, if you do have a Google or Gmail account, please send it to me and I'll add you on that account.

You'll be able to access this blog from Ctools, or directly at this address: http://www.moderncatholicwriters.blogspot.com/. You might want to bookmark this page on your computer.

See the syllabus for more details about blogging requirements. If you have any questions or have any trouble logging on, feel free to contact me!