James Joyce †A Little Cloud (in: Dubliners) Essay

A particular obliterate has non generated foreshortenificant critical debate, scorn Warren Becks unorthodox recitation of the denouement in 1969. Chandlers relationship with his give-and-take non with his marital wo creation Annie or journalist/ friend Gallaher could be the crucial, epiphanal element of the narration Joyce portraiture a father who is and beginning to learn what the heart is and what it feels (A enactment 252), a man whose conscience is awakened, despite his flaws. However, scholars urinate generally agree that the ineffectual booster abuses his sister parole and refuses to take responsibility for his accept shortcomings. The point ends with the following paragraph micro Chandler felt his cheeks suff utilise with shame and he stood back out of the lamplight. He listened while the paroxysm of the childs sobbing grew less and less and tea leafrs of remorse started to his eyes. (81) Though its same(p)ly that Chandler is genuinely sorry for havin g frightened his son, most Joyceans insist that the protagonist cries out of self-pity, that his epiphany, if he does experience cardinal, is egocentric of a man who whitethorn dream and suffer but who will never produce. drop for Beck, umpteen veteran Joyce scholars affirm that A elflike pervert develops the historied palsy-theme and that it complements, in tone and circumstance, the other pieces which precede the final story, The light. Walzl believes that The Dead seems to reverse the pattern of increa tittle-tattle insensibility that Dubliners other-wise traces and that no one earlier to Gabriel, the protagonist, undergoes a com-parable change or has such an enlightenment. Similarly, Ghiselin suggests that A footling Cloud fits into the over-all schema of Dubliners by representing the sin of envy. Ruoff asserts that the story describes a ambitious artists pathetic failure to transcend a nail existence of his own creation, and Bernard Benstocks inter-pretation mentions that Chandler regresses to adolescent self-pity. Indeed, all emphasis on Chandlers sloth, his cowardice, his self-delusion, and his final rage and humiliation assert that he is shamed, non ashamed. just what with Joyces use of remorse? believably the most important reason for assuming that Chandler is non enlightened by his experience involves several of Joyces own statements. A Little Cloud was written in the proto(prenominal) months of 1906, when Joyce was 23 and the father of a six-month-old son, Giorgio. yet In 1904, speaking virtually Dubliners, he had told a friend that he wanted to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city (Letters 55). Another frequently quoted letter asserts, It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories (Letters 63-64). The combination of paralysis and odour, then, while justified by many details in the acts themselves, may have also clouded our perception of scattered, positive(p) sensations which some of the pieces generate.As Gillespie argues, The opinion that this negative place dominates the final form of the stories oversimplifies Joyces emotional attitude toward his country and unjustly circumscribes the aesthetical potential of the work. Similarly, Garrison observes that Joyces explicit statements c at one timerning his artistic intentions in Dubliners are not very useful as a basis for interpretation. Although Joyces defense of his work provided us with an opportunity to clarify his intent, it probably was not meant to narrowly limit or define our reactions as readers. If Joyce at to the lowest degree partially intended the final story, The Dead, as a tribute to the more positive aspects of Dublin culture (Letters II 166), it is not unreasonable to screw a hint of this attitude in A Little Cloud.Joyce in one case told his sister, The most important thing that can happen to a man is the birth of a child, and since his altogether son and first-born child was about six months old when A Little Cloud was begun in the early months of 1906, life circumstances are relevant to this discussion. But such issues do not necessarily help us interpret the story, for Joyce world power, subsequently all, have been drawing a portrait of an unfit father. Reviewing the storys joining to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young bit while examining information about the young writer should enrich our reasonableness of his state of mind, reveal key similarities and differences between Joyce and his protagonist, and test the validity of an renewal reading of this story.In general, Chandlers disposition is melancholic, but it is a grief tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple joy (68). He is fastidious about his appearance and, probably, careful about his work as yet though he finds it tiresome (65). Joyce also emphasizes Little Chandlers shortcomings end-to-end the story. He lives in a little house, reads by a little lamp, drinks small whiskies, displays childish white front teeth, and is given over short answers by his prim wife. Joyce invites us to believe an ordinary man, muted capable of a dream, but ruled by circumstances and his own, goodish inadequacies. Joyce employs important imagery which firmly links this story to central Joycean themes The melodic theme that a poetic moment had touched him took life within him like an infant hope A light began to tremble on the thought of his mind. He was not so oldthirty-two (68, emphasis added). Linking infant hope with a light so early in this story hints at Joyces lifelong interest in the consubstantiation of father and son as well as procreation in the literary mother wit (Ulysses 32, 155). By the time Joyce wrote A Little Cloud, both physical and artistic generation had become realities. Of course, the reader soon realizes that Chandler wont make headway, despite his soul, for he is not original and hopes to capitalize on com monplace trends, although he realistically admits that he will never be public and hopes only to appeal to a little circle of kindred minds (68). Recalling Joyces claim in 1904 that only two or three infelicitous wretches may last read me (Ellmann 163) go games an interesting echo.The location of Chandlers poetic mood is also relevant, for it may be based on one of Joyces own experiences. A similar incident occurs at a pivotal point in A Portrait. In Chapter 4, Joyce presents a obsolescent interaction between the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, and his brothers and sisters during the family tea. Structurally, this scene occurs at an important juncture. Immediately forgo the epiphany of profane joy which Stephen experiences on the beach while watching a girl wading, this episode also follows the interview with the religious director of his school, after which Stephen decides not to become a priest. As he walks home to a squalid, over-crowded house, interesting parallels to A Lit tle Cloud occur. Like Chandler, he crosses a bridge, symbolically connected to opposing attractions, but clearly, like Chandler, moving toward a new possibility. Stephen notices a shrine to the Virgin which is in the spirit of a hamshaped encampment of poor cottages (162).Unlike Chandler, however, Stephen does not romanticize the image, for he in truth lives here, and he laughs to think of the man considering in turn the four points of the set up and then regretfully plunging his spade in the earth (162). Without even a hint of rain, the man must begin work. The cloud image in this scene of Portrait is intentionally delayed. Stephen, the university educatee, then enters his home and finds his brothers and sisters seated at the table. He realizes the contrast between his privileged position as the first son and theirs The sad quiet greyblue of the dying day came with the windowpane and the open door, covering over and allaying quietly a sudden instinct of remorse in Stephens he art. All that had been denied them had been freely given to him, the first but the quiet glow of evening showed him in their faces no sign of rancour. (163) After one of his sisters, who is as nameless as Chandlers son, tells him that the family has once again been evicted, her similarly unnamed little brother begins to sing.The others join in, and Stephen thinks, They would sing so for hours till the last pale light died down on the horizon, till the first dark nightclouds came forth and night fell (163). But Joyce does not end Stephens musings on a negative check off, just as he does not seem to end A Little Cloud with a protagonist who pities himself more than his screaming son. Stephen remembers that Newman had heard this note also giving utterance, like the voice of Nature herself, to that pain and weariness yet hope of better things which has been the experience of her children in every time. (164). in spite of their circumstances, the children sing. Faced with the guilt of primacy, the oldest son is forgiven by his brothers and sisters. Again, Stephens vision is winner to Chandlers. He will retain the mood of this experience, be more exposed to future encounters, and sustain an ethos which will allow him to reject home and family to travel along an artists life, perhaps with a family of his own making.Stephen is an artist Chandler only longs to be one. However, in a collection of stories which includes a series of married men who beat children (Mr. Hill in Eveline, Farrington of Counterparts, and Old Jack of common ivy Day in the Committee Room), Chandler faces the truth about himself after notwithstanding shouting at his son. His experience prepares us for Gabriels, just as the family tea prepares us for the strongest epiphany of Portrait. And, although Joyce would work as a clerk in capital of Italy a few months after mailing A Little Cloud off to the publisher and felt superior to his fellow employees who were forever having something vio late with their testicles or their anuses, Chandler, unlike them, is fastidious about his manners and appearance and at least longs for an artists life. The first portion of A Little Cloud also reminds us of Joyces sentimental, poetic temperament while living in Paris as a medical student from December 1902 until April 1903, when he was called home because of his mothers illness. Stanislaus reports, He told me that a great deal when he had no money and had had nothing to eat he used to walk about reciting to himself for consolation, like Little Chandler in Dubliners, his own poems or others he knew by heart or things he happened to be writing then. (My Brothers 231-21)All three have an opennesss to life and appetency and are willing to struggle against fortune. Through the encounter with Gallaher, Chandler appears provincial, timid, comic about immoral sexual practices, but he definitely emerges as the better human being, and inches the reader toward sympathy. We can safely assu me that, whatsoever Chandlers weaknesses, Joyce had an even lower opinion of Gallaher, letting Chandler considering himself superior in birth and education. (75) Unlike OHara, a character in the story who fails because of boose and other things (70), Chandler is abstemious, employed, married, and a parent (unlike most of the Irish middle class, which was experiencing tremendous economic hardships and either postponed marriage or abandoned it altogether). On the other hand, the reader experiences Gallahers inflated ego and patronizing attitude toward dear dirty Dublin and toward his friend.Incapable of the kind of wit which might successfully redeem his position, Chandler is ultimately defeated however, our sympathies lie not with the achiever but with the young clerk and father. Gallaher may have had the ability to navigate by the nets of nationality, language, religion, an aim to which the protagonist of Joyces next major(ip) work aspires (A Portrait 203), but he is little mor e than a bragging, rude scribbler in the worst Swiftian sense. A new feeling in the Dubliners tales is that escape from Ireland does not necessarily equal salvation. If you wanted to succeed you had to get away, Little Chandler thinks, echoing the thoughts of the boy in An converge (real adventures . . . must be sought abroad). And yet Gallaher, who got away, has succeeded in only the most superficial sense. Despite having seen London, Paris and heard dress down of Berlin, he is shallow, boorish, and alone.The story reveals that Chandler, however remote from being either a poet or the old hero which Gallaher initially calls him, remains physically and morally the more appealing character. Still, Chandler himself probably feels anything but heroic, and during the gap between scenes, we imagine him returning, deflated, to his family. Like the dog viewing his reflection in the pond, Chandler drops his bone in envy of Gallahers, preferring the exotic narrative not of his own experie nce. His mood at the beginning of the final scene in the story is reflective, self-pitying, and, ultimately, enraged. However, the intensity of his sons suffering (If it died) and the coldness of his wifes accusation eventually result in unselfish shame and genuine contrition. Chandlers dreams complement, not dominate, his occasional world.Allusion was a serious business in Joyces seminal paradigm. Despite the irony of a candle-maker or candle-seller as a failed artist, Little Tommy Chandlers tears suggest that he has turned from the worship of a false god (Gallaher and, perhaps, Romanticism) to the true religion of hearth and home through the unconscious intervention of his son as savior, as little honey of the world. The final clause of the story, tears of remorse started to his eyes, is precise. Joyce does not write tears of self-pity nor does he promote ambiguity by and saying tears started to his eyes. When Chandler backs out of the lamplight, he passes the torch to the nex t generation, genuinely contrite.Unlike Gallaher, Stephen Dedalus, and Joyce himself, Chandler will remain in Dublin, return to his daily tasks, and pay off the furniture. Yet, he may also foster the growth of an artist. He is, indeed, a prisoner for life, but the prison walls offer the hope of graffiti, for the child represents creativity as well as responsibility, and the story offers an early treatment of a central Joycean theme.