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A intellgent student.

Sunday, March 30, 2008

James Joyce

Blindness/Eye SightJames Joyce uses blindness and eye sight to cleverly help the audience realize the downfall of a character. Eye sight is the act or fact of seeing. Being blind completely strips you of your eye sight leaving you helpless. Blindness is someone unable to see; lacking the sense of sight; sightless. In addition, in an abstract manner, blindness is someone unwilling or unable to perceive or understand. In any form it is used, blindness is a handicap that affects a person to have a hard time to distinguish or solve their hardship. In the novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus is the main character that undergoes many changes as we see him mature throughout the novel. We see Stephen gradually mature little by little such as during his first years from a sheltered little boy to a bright student who understands social interactions and can begin to make sense of the world around him, and another time where Stephen sleeps with the Dublin prostitute. Throughout the whole time Stephen matures, he goes through many phases where he is in confusion or is helpless. This is where Joyce uses blindness and eye sight to show the troubles that Stephen is going through. In the beginning of the novel, Joyce expresses how child-like Stephen is by the way he starts out with words like “moocow” and “baby tuckoo” to explain how Stephen was. The narrative is limited to Stephen's consciousness, so his misperceptions become part of the story. Joyce also portrays what it means to be a young man growing up in a confusing modern world. In the passage, “Pull out his eyes, Apologise, Apologise, Pull out his eyes.” (Dante, P.21). Dante speaks of what would happen if Stephen didn’t apologize for hiding under the table in the Vance’s home. He claims that if Stephen does not apologize then the eagles will come and pull out his eyes. Joyce uses the pulling out of Stephen’s eyes as an abstract example of the consequences that Stephen would go through if he did not do what was right. Back in Egyptian time, one of the evil penalties inflicted on robbers was of vultures picking out their eyes. Joyce uses this passage to express how badly punished Stephen would be had he not apologize just as if he were a robber like in the Egyptian times. During the end of chapter two, Stephen has sex with the Dublin prostitute. Joyce portrays this significant part of Stephen’s life where he loses his innocence and turns it into corruption by using the lack of eye sight. “He closed his eyes, surrendering himself to her, body and mind, conscious of nothing in the world but the dark pressure of her softly parting lips” (Joyce, P.99). As Stephen loses all eye sight by closing his eyes, he performs his act of corruption because he is unwilling to perceive what is happening. “Conscious of nothing in the world” (Joyce, P.99), shows how after Stephen closes his eyes he is not aware of anything going on around him. Losing his innocence in such a way as to a prostitute obviously shows how badly Stephen has sinned and that is why Joyce uses the lack of eye sight to express Stephen’s downfall in his maturing stage of his life.James Joyce wants the reader to be able to identify the occurrence of the downfall of someone. Stephen makes many bad choices during his growing up stage. After undergoing each mistake, he falls into a state of unconsciousness of his surroundings or lack of understanding to what he is doing which is portrayed by Joyce with blindness or lack of eye sight such as the closing of eyes.

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