Comparing The Dead and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Essay

The Dead and A portrait of the Artist as a tender Man Un resembling the preceding stories in Dubliners, which convey the basic national of paralysis, The Dead marks a departure in Joyces narrative technique. As one critic notes, in this final story of Dubliners The world of eternal figures has become one of forces that, in relation to each other, vary in dimension and direction (Halper 31). Epstein has offered some insight into Joyces technique in portraying Each section . . . contains significant timeless moments in the life of the artist, selected from a life history of events. The readers attention traces the line of the curve from one point to the next until the murder curve is defined. . . . Both he the artist and the reader became sodding(a)ly aware of the adorn of his soul and the nature of it (103). The above excerpt is provided for the benefit of the student only. The complete essay begins below. To venture into the morass of Joycean scholarship reminds one of the closing lines of the metrical composition Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold. It reads ...The world, which seems To lie before us corresponding a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies shake up by night. ( 1148 ) The sense of anxious hope captured in these lines is much like the struggle experienced by one seeking to offer a fresh perspective on the complex works of crowd Joyce. On a deeper level, though, the poem suggests an important aspect of Joyces prose. Arnolds poem is often singled egress as a prime exa... .... New York Penguin, 1976. Levin, Harry. The Artist. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Text, Criticism, and Notes. Ed. Chester G. Anderson. New York Penguin, 1968. 399-415. Loe, Thomas. The Dead as Novella. James Joyce Quarterly 28 (1991) 485-98. Power, Arthur. Conversations with James Joyce. Ed. Clive Hart. London Millington, 1974. Torchiana, Donald T. Backgrounds for Joyces Dubliners. Winchester, MA Allen and Unwin, 1986. Welsh, James M. The Dead. Masterplots II Short Story Series 5 Ed. Frank N. Magill. Pasadena, CA Salem Press, 1986, 510-15. Winters, Kirk. Joyces Ulysses as Poem Rhythm, Rhyme, and Color in Wandering Rocks. Emporia claim Research Studies 31 (Winter 1983), 5-44. Wright, David G. Characters of Joyce. Dublin Gill and Macmillan, 1983.