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Historical context of translations by brian friel
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Brian friels translations relevance in modern society
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Brian Friel's "Translations"
'Translations', by Brian Friel, presents us with an idyllic rural
community turned on its head as the result of the recording and
translation of place names into English; an action which is at first
sight purely administrative. In Act 1 of the play, Friel brings
together the inhabitants of this quaint Irish village in what can only
be described as a gathering of minds - minds which study the classics,
yet minds which study dead languages. In the same way, while this
community is rich in culture and togetherness, it is also trapped in
what is later described as a "contour which no longer matches the
landscape of…fact". Thus, in expressing his ambivalence, Friel
presents the reader with a question - is Baile Beag an intellectual
Irish Arcadia?
There is no denying that Baile Beag is an intellectual community. At
the beginning of the play, Jimmy Jack Cassie, one of the central
characters, is in the process of reading Joyce's 'Ulysses'. He is
capable of reading the text fluently and understands it, despite it
being in another language (although he later reveals that, while he is
fluent in Latin and Greek, he knows only one word of English). He even
relates his own life to that of characters in the book, posing the
question, "if you had the picking between them [Athene, Artemis &
Helen of Troy], which would you take?". Furthermore, he even goes so
far as to associate the smoke described within the pages of the text
to the turf smoke which he believes has turned his hair flaxen.
Hugh, the teacher in charge of the running of the hedge-school, is
also an intellectual. While one could argue that he displays pomposity
(his long, drawn out sentences result in him never rememberi...
... middle of paper ...
...g is not
what one would describe as a predominantly intellectual community.
Furthermore, while Baile Beag is a place rich in community and in
culture, a sense of threat and danger undercuts this. For, you see,
Friel presents us with a society that teeters on a knife-edge; a
people that live in constant fear of rural collapse and the horrendous
poverty which would inevitably follow. Exacerbating the relentless
grip which this fear has on people's lives is the prospect of the
collapse of the Irish language at the hands of the national school,
and the potential cultural and linguistic erosion as the result of the
remapping of Ireland by imperial forces (although it is unlikely that
the people of Baile Beag were aware of this erosion until it
occurred). Therefore, while Baile Beag may be a relatively
intellectual community, it is in no way an idyllic Arcadia.
Included within the anthology The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction,1[1] are the works of great Irish authors written from around three hundred years ago, until as recently as the last decade. Since one might expect to find in an anthology such as this only expressions and interpretations of Irish or European places, events or peoples, some included material could be quite surprising in its contrasting content. One such inclusion comes from the novel Black Robe,2[2] by Irish-born author Brian Moore. Leaving Ireland as a young man afforded Moore a chance to see a great deal of the world and in reflection afforded him a great diversity of setting and theme in his writings. And while his Black Robe may express little of Ireland itself, it expresses much of Moore in his exploration into evolving concepts of morality, faith, righteousness and the ever-changing human heart.
"Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years and he had never questioned the joy of the midnight runs, nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames…never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid. Then he met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think…and Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do! (Ray Bradbury-Fahrenheit 451)". Was Guy Montag the same person at both the beginning and end of Fahrenheit 451? The answer to this question is a definite no. Montag transformed dramatically throughout the story. He started as a person of ignorance, but ended a man of enlightenment and intelligence. Montag embarked on his journey as a fireman who lived to burn and destroy books, but returned a crusader who lived to save them.
Physical, emotional and mental abuse is affected by the entire body. Physical is the outside, mental is the inside, and emotional is even deeper on the inside of the body. The people in this new world deal with this abuse every day. It has become a severe tragedy of what the future might become.
“With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history.” – Page 4 of 431 iPhone eBook (177 Pages Left)
With a spout of kerosene and a flick of a match, a fireman sets fire to a house and all the books inside it, not waiting for the heat to reach 451 degrees farhenheit; the temperature in which it is said books ignite. This may seem a strange thing, a fireman setting fire, but in the futuristic world author Ray Bradbury created in his work Farhenheit 451(1951) this is the norm. A fireman's job is to hunt those with books and set destroy all the books with thier flames. In the Bradbury's book, the government has deemed books and all who possess them public enemy Number One, and society has accepted that with no questions asked. Books represent knowledge, difference of opinion and ideals that are now unsavory in the public's eye.
Don’t worry, be happy, or at least that’s what everyone in Ray Bradbury’s book Fahrenheit 451 thought. No matter what was going on around them, war, crime, or death, they were always happy… Or were they? Ray Bradbury wrote books about censorship in society forming around being censored totally or partially from books and television. In Fahrenheit 451 the main character, Montag, is a fireman whose job it is to burn books to keep the public from reading then and coming up with their own thoughts and ideas and not the ideas that the government puts in their heads. Wile he is burning books one day he opens one to read it and becomes obsessed with reading books. He turns on his fire chief and burns him, and goes to live with people who also read books and memorize them so that they can be reprinted then society is ready for them again. Three people that show that they are happy on the outside but are not truly happy are Montag, Mildred and Mrs. Phelps.
In pages 15-32, Montag encountered many events that impacted his thoughts, actions, and feelings. One of the events that he encountered was when Clarisse decided to rub the dandelion under Montag’s chin to see if he’s actually in love (Page 19). Although it was just a little fun activity that Clarisse came up with, the result both surprised and upset Montag, who thought he was definitely in love with the woman he married. The fact that he was shocked was demonstrated when he wanted to lie to both Clarisse and himself by saying: “I am, very much in love” and tried to make a facial expression to match his statement (page 20), which he failed to make. Furthermore, he also blamed the outcome on the dandelion, which shows his reaction and feelings
In “Why Literature Matters” the author Dana Gioia, from the start catches your attention using facts about America today. Within the first paragraph she develops the persuading argument on why reading needs to make its way back into the world.
“Just as Spanish would have been a danger language for me to have used at the start of my education, so black English would be a dangerous language to use in the schooling of teenagers for whom it reinforces feelings of public separateness.” When Rodriguez says this, it appeals to the reader’s emotions as well as logic. Rodriguez effectively uses logos and pathos to convey his message that speaking a different language than what’s around you increases separateness in the public. “Just as Spanish would have been a danger language for me to have used at the start of my education…” This part of the quote appealing to logos and saying that if Rodriguez would have used Spanish when he went to school then he would not have made the friends he had,
highlights Paddy’s innocence and respectability. Orwell’s anecdotes of the actions of various characters throughout “Down and
Justin Levenstein. ‘Ulysses, Dubliners, and the Nature of Relationships in the Modern World’. Emergence: A Journal of Undergraduate Literary Criticism and Creative Research. Available from(WWW) http://journals.english.ucsb.edu/index.php/Emergence/article/view/21/100 Date Accessed: 11/12/13
2. Setterquist, Jan. Ibsen and the Beginnings of Anglo-Irish Drama. New York: Gordian Press, 1974. 46 - 49, 58 - 59, 82 - 93, 154 - 166.
Dubliners by James Joyce is a collection of short stories all connected by a common theme of paralysis. Overall, it is a novel about life in the city of drab Dublin. But it is evident that each story has its own epiphany, eventually leading to prove to the readers of how hollow Dublin is. The four different stages of life that the readers are woven through portray how powerless and hopeless the Dubliners actually are. The short stories show the struggle that the people of Dublin face everyday. The Irish people are stuck in their old ways and want to change their life, but are too afraid to change. The snow that covers Dublin portrays the hollowness and loneliness of all characters as they age, as well as the negative progression and the idea of paralysis in Dublin’s society.
To me, Ulysses was a necessary evil, in that I thought that I would not be able to call myself a literature student unless I had read the entire novel. While my journey through Ulysses was laden with moments of bewilderment, exasperation, and self-pity, I was able to power my way through the novel with a deeper appreciation for the way James Joyce was able to create a linear story told through a series of non-linear writing styles. In retrospect, the grueling challenge of reading Ulysses made me a better student, in that I was able to grow as a reader by adjusting myself to Joyce’s train-of-thought writing style, and that I could add Ulysses to my personal canon of academic literature.
McCann et al. Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies, 1994, 95-109).