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

The Dead and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man Unlike the preceding stories in Dubliners, which convey the basic piece of music of paralysis, The Dead marks a departure in Joyces narrative technique. As one critic notes, in this final story of Dubliners The world of constant figures has compel 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 Portrait Each function . . . contains significant timeless moments in the life of the artist, selected from a lifetime of events. The readers attention traces the line of the curve from one point to the next until the complete curve is defined. . . . Both he the artist and the reader became completely aware of the landscape 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 learnedness reminds one of the closin g lines of the poem Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold. It reads ...The world, which seems To lie before us like 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 illiterate armies clash 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 James Joyce. On a deeper level, though, the poem suggests an important aspect of Joyces prose. Arnolds poem is often singled out 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. Convers ations 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 verse form Rhythm, Rhyme, and Color in Wandering Rocks. Emporia State Research Studies 31 (Winter 1983), 5-44. Wright, David G. Characters of Joyce. Dublin Gill and Macmillan, 1983.