James Joyce's Ulysses
"There's five fathoms out there.... A sail veering about the blank bay waiting for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, saltwhite. Here I am" (18). If "Old Father Ocean" (42) is Proteus (Gifford 46), god of "primal matter" (32) corresponding with a viridian tinge of primal soup as well as the tide that washes in the ruined flotsam and jetsam of man's voyages, it makes some kind of sense that there is no corresponding symbolic organ to this episode. We are in the protean realm of the non-organic, or rather unorganized and de-organized matter. The aforementioned bobbing corpse is of course more than a homicide case in Joyce's symbology. The corpse lost to sea's rot and "bladderwrack" is the body of Proteus manifest in a disturbing (dead) human form, bloated and dissolving. It is there to intimately remind us of our eventual return to unformed matter, to entropy at its extreme. This disintegration will lead to a chaotic reintegration with the Ocean, unfathomable body of energy, crusher of bodies washed to shore, carried to the sandflats of Dublin via "Cock Lake." Proteus harbingers the "seachange" (42) of all organisms, all matter; the corpse also manifests the "Seadeath, mildest of all deaths" (42), "soft as the hand of mist" (Book XI of The Odyssey).
"Full fathom five thy father lies" (41): Father Ocean or Proteus as the drowned, absent father, hidden body of "coral" and "pearls" (The Tempest), always in the "sea change... rich and strange" (ibid.). This macabre dance of matter and energy is witnessed in the undead movement of the corpse "driving before it a drift of rubble" (41), an indeterminate mass of preterite matter. He will rise again "sunk though he be beneath the watery floor" (41). He is a "bag of corpsegas," porous, "a spongy titbit." In his undead, coral-like growth, matter transforms according to unpredictable, heretical logic, which Dedalus is compelled to read as he does "signatures of all things... seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot" (31). This logic only a poet could follow, or perhaps it is simply poetic creation: "God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain" (41-2). This fabulation of the chain of being is certainly profane, or at least outside the accepted, predictable logic of any catechism. Ocean is God as an immanent storm and flux; the abstract, ethereal God of Christendom is more ascetic, barren, removed.
Published in 1944, the poem itself is an elegy, addressing the melancholy and sorrow of wartime death, as indicated by the title ‘Beach Burial’. This title gives clear meaning to the sombre nature of the work, and the enigmatic nature of it holds the attention of the audience. The entirety of the poem is strewn with poetic devices, such as personification of dead sailors as “…they sway and wander in the waters far under”, the words inscribed on their crosses being choked, and the “sob and clubbing of the gunfire” (Slessor). Alliteration is used to great effect in lines such as that describing the soldiers being “bur[ied]…in burrows” and simile in the likening of the epitaph of each seaman to the blue of drowned men’s lips and onomatopoeia is shown in the “purple drips” (Slessor). The predominant mood of the work is ephemeral, with various references to the transient nature of humanity. The ethereal adjectives used to describe and characterise objects within the poem allow a more abstract interpretation of what would normally be concrete in meaning. The rhythm of this piece is markedly similar to the prevalent concept of tidal ebb and flow, with lines falling into an ABCB rhyme scheme and concepts
The author shows the reader the sea just as the sailor does as death, but more than death
The juxtaposition of the Titanic and the environment in the first five stanzas symbolizes the opposition between man and nature, suggesting that nature overcomes man. The speaker characterizes the sea as being “deep from human vanity” (2) and deep from the “Pride of Life that planned” the Titanic. The diction of “human vanity” (2) suggests that the sea is incorruptible by men and then the speaker’s juxtaposition of vanity with “the
I think from the attitude of the diver, he was suicidal. As he dove into the sea, he does so at a high speed and with reckless abandon, taking to account all the details of everything he sees as he plunged deeper into the sea. “swiftly descended/free falling, weightless”. He was doing all he could to forget about life as he descends “…. Lost images/fadingly remembered.” Initially in his descent into the ocean, the diver, having decided to end his life, treated the images in the sea as if they would be the last things he will see before his death, so I think he thought it best to savor his last moments while he had the time. When he got to the ship, he described all that was there. While I read the poem, I couldn’t help but conjure those images in my mind. The ship was very quiet and cold when he entered it but the silence drew him in and he was eager to go in, not minding the cold because at that moment he was suicidal and didn’t care about life. With the help of a flashlight, he saw chairs moving slowly and he labeled the movement as a “sad slow dance”. From this, I think the speaker is trying to point out that there are sad memories on the ship. There is no story of how the ship got to the bottom of the sea, but it seems the ship used to be a place of fun, celebration, and happiness. Now that it is wrecked and in the bottom of the sea, the
In Chapter 69, the narrator vividly describes the image of a recently captured, decapitated sperm whale bleakly floating about near the Pequod while sharks and birds feast upon its dead remains. Despite the degrading imagery of, “the air above vexed with rapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many insulting poniards in the whale,” the whale has still, “not perceptibly lost anything in bulk...it is still colossal,” (257). In the spite of its crude carcass, there is still human wonderment in regards to the indisputable massivity of the whale. However, the whale is not considered to be enormous just because of its literal size, but also because of the long-lasting effect its dead body will have on future ship encounters. It is the duty of a ship captain to avoid steering a ship into dangerous territory--the most common of which would be large rocks near the shore. In the lines, “...the whale’s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the log-- shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts: beware!”, (257), the sperm whale’s carcass is often mistaken for rocks and, so, it necessarily follows that, “for years afterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly sheep leap over a vacuum…” (257). The paragraph continues with the lines, “there’s your law of precedents; there’s your utility of traditions; there’s the story of your obstinate survival of old beliefs never bottomed on the earth…” (257), which reinforce the idea that since the sperm whale is already seen as being frightening and mysterious, its dead body ensues the same kinds of paranoid, uneasy thoughts. So, although
“The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.”
Throughout the story the ocean represented Edna's constant struggle for self-realization and independence. From her first flow of emotion on the beach to her last breath of life in the sea, the ocean beckons her. The voice of the sea lures her onward in her journey toward liberation and empowerment.
In the novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain, the characters all value some things specific to his character. Jim and Tom are peculiar characters because they have distinct ways of looking at things. In that Jim values family and friendship, Tom values following the rules, and Huck values the natural world.
In the book The Great Gatsby Fitzgerald discusses Gatsby. Gatsby was a very strange and mysterious man. According to Doreski, “Gatsby was far from perfect in many ways but all in all it contains such prose as has never been written in America before” (Doreski). Gatsby always throws very fancy parties that everyone attends. “I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby’s house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited—they went there (45).” Nick got an actual invitation to Gatsby’s party and he is probably the only person who has ever gotten an invitation. Gatsby invited Nick because he wanted to get close to him.
Running along the outermost rim of the shield is the Ocean River, the river that is at once the barrier between the quick and the dead, and also the frontier of the known and imagined worlds. One of the last descriptions on the shield, this river could perhaps be a symbol for total inclusiveness and eternity, and for the stability of the larger perspective.
The story’s theme is related to the reader by the use of color imagery, cynicism, human brotherhood, and the terrible beauty and savagery of nature. The symbols used to impart this theme to the reader and range from the obvious to the subtle. The obvious symbols include the time from the sinking to arrival on shore as a voyage of self-discovery, the four survivors in the dinghy as a microcosm of society, the shark as nature’s random destroyer of life, the sky personified as mysterious and unfathomable and the sea as mundane and easily comprehended by humans. The more subtle symbols include the cigars as representative of the crew and survivors, the oiler as the required sacrifice to nature’s indifference, and the dying legionnaire as an example of how to face death for the correspondent.
James Joyce wrote the book Dubliners; Joyce expresses many different types of emotions throughout the book. The emotions portray individuals in society, and light and dark. The emotions of individuals are examined throughout the stories by other members in society. The stories that express the ideas are: “The Encounter,” “Eveline”, and “The Dead.” The symbolism of individuals in society expresses many different situations that are happening in the characters lives. The symbolism of light goes along with the idea of feeling happy and enjoying life. The theme of dark shows the individuals fighting, and having a negative outlook on life.
In James Joyce’s “The Dead” Joyce uses a winter setting to create his scene. Many writers use nature to show human nature and the human condition. Joyce’s use of snow to cast light on characters and convey the meaning for events provide an analysis of the themes throughout “The Dead.” Snow has many interpretations. It can be beauty, as it outlines vegetation and adds definition to their shapes. It can be seen as a symbolism of innocence and new beginnings. Snow can be seen as the beginning or the end of life as it usually means the end of one life as plants that it falls on die. It also means new life as it melts it brings to light new life. Gabriel the main character of “The Dead” mimics the snow in much this way. Gabriel is a man who really doesn’t know where he belongs and doesn’t know who he should be. He represents a world covered in snow, a blank slate. When he arrives to the party it begins to snow covering his clothes in an oppressive manner. This is similar to his role as an Irish man. Which is a restrictive, cold and oppressing routine to him. He even is trapped by his cautious and inhibited personality. His wife however is the opposite. She is a free spirit, who loves adventure and wants more from life. This creates conflict for him as he has difficulty talking to women. They talk about Michael her love from when she was young, and how even though he was sick he traveled to see her off on her trip through the snow and cold. Gabriel for the first time displays true emotions as she sleeps by letting tears roll down his face and he stares into the whiteness of the snow. This shows the beginning of him being a new man. Snow at the beginning of the story is seen as oppressive diminishing life as if...
The human voyage into life is basically feeble, vulnerable, uncontrollable. Since the crew on a dangerous sea without hope are depicted as "the babes of the sea", it can be inferred that we are likely to be ignorant strangers in the universe. In addition to the danger we face, we have to also overcome the new challenges of the waves in the daily life. These waves are "most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tall", requiring "a new leap, and a leap." Therefore, the incessant troubles arising from human conditions often bring about unpredictable crises as "shipwrecks are apropos of nothing." The tiny "open boat", which characters desperately cling to, signifies the weak, helpless, and vulnerable conditions of human life since it is deprived of other protection due to the shipwreck. The "open boat" also accentuates the "open suggestion of hopelessness" amid the wild waves of life. The crew of the boat perceive their precarious fate as "preposterous" and "absurd" so much so that they can feel the "tragic" aspect and "coldness of the water." At this point, the question of why they are forced to be "dragged away" and to "nibble the sacred cheese of life" raises a meaningful issue over life itself. This pessimistic view of life reflects the helpless human condition as well as the limitation of human life.
It is the duty of the sea to act as a navigation system, so humanity is always going in the right direction. It also acts as a way for us to get the water we need to survive, to catch the food man needs for nourishment, and provide cleanliness, which is equal to godliness. This stanza portrays water as a friend, that guides us in the right direction, and a parent that provides us with everything needed to survive and be prosperous. This once again strikes home the point that the world is an extension of God, created to bring mankind ultimate pleasure - the water that He created acts as a willing servant, and parental figure, such as God is usually