segunda-feira, 6 de julho de 2015

Group 3: A Painful Case - James Joyce

Title: A Painful Case
Author: James Joyce
Year of Publication: 1917  (Written  in July 1905)



Setting:

 Mr. Duffy, who works in a bank, lives a dull life in Dublin, maintains a routine to opera and meets Mrs. Sinico, who lives a fast and tragic romance that results in the death of Mrs. Sinico.

Characters
* main characters: 
Mr James Duffy: is a cashier at a private bank, has no friend and is a very correct and reserved.
Mrs Emily Sinico: She is married, has a daughter and she has a bad relationship with her husband and ends up falling for Mr Duffy. 

* character secondary:
The husband of Mr Sinico: is a capitan of a merchant ship, and spends most of this time away from home.
Mary: daughter of Mrs Sinico which appears in the beginning in concert with her mother, and at the end when her mother dies.

Plot summary :
James Duffy lives in a distant suburb of Dublin called  Chapelizod because he  is a reserved and methodical man who does not like the city.   He is a very organized person, works in a bank and does the same things every day, like reading the newspaper at the same restaurant every evening, and walks home .He plays the piano at night and sometimes goes out to hear classical music. He is not the kind of person who cares about family. One of these evenings, he  meets  Mrs. Sinico, a woman who sits with her young daughter at the audience of the Opera house. Since this day, they start to talk and then, Mr Duffy invites her over to his house. This was the first of many meetings. Their discussions are around their similar intellectual interests, including books, political theories, and music, and with each meeting they draw more closely together. However, Mrs. Sinico is married with Captain Sinico, a Captain of a merchant ship, and he is constantly away from home.  Even knowing that, Mr. Duffy keeps going to her house .The meetings come to an end one night when Mrs Sinico reacts to one of his phrases differently: she "caught up his hand passionately and pressed it to her cheek". Mr Duffy doesn't visit for a week and then decides to have a last meeting with her in public so he could avoid any kind of problem. She sends him back his books and they stop seeing each other.  After that, he's back to his old routine of going to work and walking home until one night when he reads about Mrs Sinico's death in the newspaper. She had been "knocked down by the engine of the ten o'clock slow train from Kingstown, thereby sustaining injuries of the head and right side which led to her death.The newspaper article goes on to explain that the real blame lay with Mrs Sinico and not with the train. She was out "late at night" and had "been in the habit of crossing the lines  from platform to platform. Her daughter even testifies that she'd recently started drinking a lot. Mr Duffy's first reaction is disgust: "she had degraded him." He regrets ever getting involved, wondering, "Was it possible he had deceived himself so utterly about her?". Then he thinks about it more and, as he goes in to get a drink at a pub, he remembers the whole relationship. That's when he starts to feel remorse. "He began to feel ill at ease" and realizes how "lonely" she must have been without him, and that he's to blame for his own loneliness. He retraces the steps of their old walks and "felt his moral nature falling to pieces" because he realizes that he had "sentenced her to death" He doesn't make it home by the end of the story, but stops walking at one point and is perfectly still: "He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him.He halted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing .He felt that he was alone".

Symbols :
 The theater, the house, the windows, the twilight and nighttime, dark and black, the food.
These symbols consist of the thriller of these young men to reflect on their lives evoke the anticipation of events or meetings that are bound to happen. 
The dark scenario symbolize the half-life or intermediate state the characters occupy Dubliners, both physically and emotionally, suggesting a mixture of life and death marking each story. In this state, life can exist and continue, but the darkness makes the experiences of Dubliners dire and convicted.

 In most cases food serves as a reminder of both the threatening dullness of routine and the joys and difficulties of marriage. The meal symbolize the experiences of the character and its restrictions.

Epiphanies:
The story´s  climax is where we can also see the protagonist’s epiphany. After receiving the news about the death of Mrs. Sinico, Mr. Duff out to drink and think about what he read in the newspaper, to return home and walk through Phoenix Park, which was also his last meeting with Mrs. Sinico, Mr. Duff observed a couple in the park and recalls of his relationship with Mrs. Sinico, and how hard it was for her after he had gone, the thought is so strong that he comes to feel her presence beside him, but then he realizes that your life has been very lonely and difficult and he lost someone who loved him and who brought happiness, He is completely alone again.

quinta-feira, 2 de julho de 2015

Group 2: The Boarding House, By: James Joyce

Title: The Boarding House (Dubliners, 1914)
Author: James Joyce

Setting:

            The story takes place in Dublin. Where Mrs. Mooney opened a boarding house to continue her life with her children after her separation from her violent husband, the whole story takes place in the Mrs. Mooney boarding house.

Characters:

*Mrs. Mooney:

            The Mother of Polly and Jack. She is separated from her husband and opened a boarding house to living. She is one of the two protagonists of the story, playing an important role.

*Mr. Mooney:

            The Mrs. Mooney violent husband.

*Polly Mooney:

            She is the other protagonist of the story. A nineteen years old girl daughter of Mrs. Mooney. She helps her mother at the boarding house, during the story she has an affair with Mr. Doran.

*Jack Mooney:

            Polly’s brother, he likes to drink and fight.

*Mr. Doran:

            A thirty years old man, he is a successful clerk that prey for his reputation. He is the lover of Polly Mooney.

Plot Summary:

            After her difficult marriage that ended in separation, Mrs. Mooney left her house with her two children Jack and Polly to open a boarding house in Dublin to living. Polly left her work in an office requested by her mother to help her at the boarding house, cleaning the tables and amuse the people that living there, surrounded by many young men, Polly developed an affair with Mr. Doran, everybody there knew and they were speaking about, then Mr Mooney had a conversation with her daughter about Mr. Doran and arranged a meet to speak with him after knew what was happened between them, She would try to defend the honor of her daughter.
            Mr. Doran after receiving the invitation to meet with Mrs. Mooney began to think about his life and career and to feel anxious and disturbed without know what he will do (marry or run away), during this time, Polly enters his room crying threatening to end her life, Mr. Doran comforts Polly and then goes to the meeting.
            Then Polly began to have a daydream about how could to be her life in the future, her daydream is interrupted by her Mother calling her saying that Mr. Doran wants to speak with her.   


Symbols:

            One of the symbols is that all the people that living in the boarding house speak of Mrs. Mooney as “The Madam”, its represents her power of influence and outcome, thus she is a strong character. Doran sweating fogging his glasses on the way to the meeting meant he is afraid, and the last symbol is the role of Catholic Church being a important thing for those, directing the life of the ordinary people from Ireland, we can point the fear of sin that Mr. Doran has as an example of its importance in the story.

Epiphany:


            The epiphany is that the Mooney’s family is found in a strange situation; Mrs. Mooney has to take the control of the place and takes care of her problematic children, principally Polly that had an affair with Mr. Doran, and her mother “fight” to defend her honor and the only way is through marriage, Mr. Doran is in the same situation wanting to protect his reputation, also to him marriage is the only solution, they have no escape. Another epiphany is the lack of maturity towards life of all characters.

segunda-feira, 29 de junho de 2015

Group 1: An overview of James Joyce's 'Eveline'

Title: Eveline
Author: James Joyce
Year of Publication: 1917



Setting:

The story takes place in Dublin. Eveline starts the story recollecting her time in the neighborhood with nostalgia. Every little detail of her surroundings - and of her house - is now extra meaningful to her given that she is about to elope the city with her sweetheart Frank.

Characters: 

  • Main Characters: 

             Eveline Hill: She is the main character of the story. She works hard to make ends meet, but her father is very abusive and forces to give him all the money she makes. She lives a miserable life and hopes she will see a change in her life soon.

             Frank: He is the sailor for whom Eveline falls in love and may be her passport to a new life.


  •  Secondary characters
            Ernest: He is Eveline's brother, who died as an infant. 

            Tizzie Dunn: She is Eveline's mother, who died when Eveline was a child. Eveline has promised she would keep the house together. 

            Harry: He is the Eveline's brother who works with the ornaments of the church. Due to his line of work, he is constantly away from his family, but helps them financially the best he can.

            Eveline's father: During Eveline's childhood he was a good man, but after Eveline's mother died, he started being abusive to her, which is one of the reasons why she wants her life to change. 


Plot Summary:

'Eveline' tells us the story of Eveline Hill, a 19-year-old woman whose life has become restricted to a job she does not enjoy as a store clerk and to household duties towards her drunk father and young siblings that curb her existence as an individual human being.

Struggling to find happiness, she plans to flee with her sweetheart Frank, who is a well-traveled sailor, to Buenos Aires. She imagines that away from Dubin (which she thinks of as a socially oppressive place), married, she will finally experience happiness, love and respect. However, Eveline starts second guessing herself after she recollects the promise she made to her mother alongside her mother's death scene.

As a result, when she is about to board the ship, she is suddenly paralyzed by fear of the unknown and remains on land, unable to make a move. As Frank insists on her joining him on the ship, "She set her white pale face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of love or farewell or recognition." (D 40-41). As her mother before her, she cannot escape from Dublin merciless paralysis.


Symbols: 

The symbols are 'the window' and 'the sea': they both represent a transition in Eveline's life.

The window represents the transition between her past and her present. She sat at the window watching the evening and the people walking down the street, She thinks about the changes that have occured in her life. The childhood that she and her siblings had when their mother was still alive.

The ship represents the transition between her present and her future. When she is in the harbor and sees the sea, she ponders over the possibilities that the future may bring to her, It is the fear of the unknown versus the comodity of sticking to what is well-known, bearable even with its hardships.


Epiphanies: 

There are two epiphanies in this short story:

The first one occurs when she hears the sound of an organ. She recollects her life when her mother was still alive, her relationship with her family and the promise she made to her mother, but it also reminded her of the difficult live she is having. In horror, she decides she needs to change her life, run away so as to have a happy life.

The second epiphany occurs when she's in the North Wall of the harbor and sees the sea. In this moment, she reflects upon the changes that may occur in her life whether she decides to go with Frank on the trip. The ship seems to be the promise of a new life of hope. On the other hand, wht may happen is still unknown. Faced with this excruciating dilemma, she gets scared and decides to stay with the safest option.

Dear students,

Rafael has kicked off the production of the blog. Let's begin working to keep the schedule of tasks and achieve our goals with this virtual forum.

I'm looking forward to your contributions.