Sunday, September 20, 2009
Blog 3
In this week's reading, I found more and more reoccurring themes. In the short story, "Counterparts", Farrington constantly dreams of drinking while at work. He fantasizes about drinking at the bars with his friends. His job is to make hand-made copies of important documents, which I think was a clever symbol Joyce decided to add. His job is based on duplication; everything is routine. That was how Ireland ran during that time. Farrington has a revelation, as do many other characters in The Dubliners, that his life is run by tradition. The watch that he gave away also made a lot of sense because he pawned it off for drinks. Time was thus released. Farrington's whole life is one big routine schedule. I definitely found this story to be the most dark and tragic of the stories we have read so far. There was a lot of anger, and it seemed pretty explicit.
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This week I read the stories "counterparts" and "clay". The first story was about a man named Farrington. He was stuck on a sentence on the copy of a contract. This part made me laugh because of him having trouble concentrating when all he was doing was making a copy. This showed how much of an alcoholic he is. He could not wait till after his shift to go drink. His boss, Mr. Allen, was always mad at Farrington because of his attitude and negative emotions. He was even compared to as having a “Dwarfs Passion". In a since of being short and aggressive. For example, Mr. Allen asked Farrington if he took his boss for a fool. Of course he responded with a sarcastic remark, "That’s an unfair question." I noticed a trend with these characters, they are self destructive.
ReplyDeleteMr. Farrington ended up pawning of his watch for money. In reality, he wanted to lose a since of time and get money to drink. When he finally goes out to drink, he ends up buying everyone else drinks and gets mad. This is a major point because he pawned off his watch just to go drink, and now doesn't even have enough to get drunk like he wanted. Also in the story, he loses twice in an arm wrestling contest which also brought him to be angry. Everything that has upset him he did to him self. He could have stopped him self and had some control, but he decided to give up like everyone else in this book. He ends up taking his anger out on his son by violence. As he was about to hit him, his son yells that if he didn’t continue his sinning act he would pray for him. But it does not work. Joyce wanted to show that you can’t always look for God to help you; you need to stand up and do your own things.
The Chapter “Clay” is about and old woman by the name of Maria. She was a small woman with the characteristics of a witch (long nose and chin). She is an old maid and yet is an extremely nice woman. Everyone likes to talk to her because of how nice she is. She is a neat and tidy woman and gets up set when things don’t go her way or get out of routine. For example, she cries when she loses the cake which was a present for a loved one. Her family is all she has in the world, and is the most important. Maria is dieing slowly and so is Ireland. She is not really living because of her not being able to change, she seems to be stuck. She is also stuck on repeat. For example, she sings a song to Joe and repeats a verse, and doesn’t even notice. She seems to be stuck like a lot of characters in the book.
Kassie Ligore