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.

Tom Philips' Humament!!! =]

On page 200 of Tom Phillips’ A Humument, Phillips portrays his feelings through his artwork and rich detail in color, shades, and texts. even the most unique occurrence can be shadowed by other perceptions around similar to it. Phillips uses streaks of bold dots, colors and contrasts dark and light imagery which shows the different perceptions of reality within the human mind. The light imagery is where everything seems holy and beautiful with the opera lady singing and her hand reaching out to the sky, where as the dark imagery seems mysterious and cloudy with a shadow of a person in the background. To start, the texts are defined with bold black borders as well as the painting itself. The painting cuts such as a puzzle with missing pieces and there is especially the biggest cut in the middle of the painting where it also resembles the biggest font of text which is a name, “Irma”, which I believe to be the woman who is singing in the opera and reaching her hand out. The text boxes itself are also in the shape of puzzle pieces connecting to each other to make one full sentence. Phillips does this to express a feeling of being incomplete and wanting more such as the hand reaching out or the puzzle pieces being separated rather than being together. “In the street studying sound”, represents the noises around the world or from both the light and dark imagery and how its loud everywhere. “The opera”, is the noises from the light imagery, the beautiful sound from the opera with its soothing music from the lady. “..had yet no heavy salmon-coloured tone;”, represents how the dark imagery is clashing with the light imagery making everything sound the same and the beautiful sound from the opera lady isn’t getting through due to the noises around the whole world and how the dark imagery balances with the light imagery. The text explains how the world is balanced with good and evil no matter how beautiful the good is or how ugly the evil is.Phillips uses many distinct colors to resemble the good and evil. For the dark imagery he uses olive green, a very disgusting evil type of green such as the swamp. Then he gradually shades it in to turn from olive green to complete blackness. In addition, he makes the shadow of a character all sketchy as if it were fading to portray how sneaky it is and hard to find. The dark imagery blends in with the light imagery in the middle where from the dark colors comes light colors. The light imagery has yellow which is the one of the brightest color of them all along with light blue and a tint of orange. The opera lady’s hand which is reaching to the sky has the orange tint around it as if I were a glow along with the light blue lining which goes around her whole arm and then around her body. The dots around the whole background make the drawing seem blurry and makes everything seems as if its fading away, almost like the image is being created by the vibrations from the sound. Then there is the buildings at the bottom of the picture which represents the street that Phillips was talking about, or the world. It is a shadow showing how with both the good and evil side combine everything is blank due to everything evening up. A positive one and a negative one added together is zero, just like good and evil.The texts and colors together form the message that Philips is trying to express. His abstract meaning of good and evil is represented so well with his indirect meanings through the opera lady‘s beautiful singing to the darkness of shadows and mystery, perhaps the protagonist, could also be used to describe simple objects to create a beautiful piece of art. People find happiness from hearing the voice of opera and go to the opera to be soothed and feel peace and serenity. The shadows from the outside is scary and make you wonder what is going wrong or make you stress about everything around you. The night and its mysteries and darkness makes you almost incapable to perceive what is going on around you. On the other hand, with the light and daytime, you are able to comprehend everything around you and with the sun helps sooth you with heat and happiness. In conclusion, Phillips uses his great art expressions and abstract meaning to portray his message. He uses great blends of colors, imagery of light and darkness, rich detail on objects such as the shadow, opera lady, and buildings, and great fading effect with the way he does his painting with dots. Phillip’s emotions and message is perfectly portrayed through his art.

Hamlet's Soliloquy Act 3 Scene 1

Hamlet’s soliloquy in Act 3 Scene 1as portrayed by Laurence Olivier is the best out of the three videos with how it delivers Hamlet‘s interpretations. The elements that the director use in this clip portray exactly how Hamlet would have acted perfectly. Everything from the camera angles, color and lighting, symbolic scenery, and actor’s movement make this piece much more entertaining and realistic than the other videos. In the video the camera starts out with showing us the ocean. The massive waves seem to be uncontrollable and unpredictable. They represent Hamlet’s agitated feelings and everything going on inside of him. In addition, Hamlet says, “to take arm against a sea of troubles” (line 58), which compares the sea to his feelings. The sea is compared to the vast amount of problems that Hamlet is going through. Moreover, everyone thinks Hamlet is a lunatic and is crazy. Lunatic literally means possessed by the moon and the moon controls the turbulence of the ocean which is a perfect connection to how Hamlet is. Afterwards, we see Hamlet sitting on a rock. In the background is dark clouds which embrace the confusion and melancholy that Hamlet is going through. In addition, the way Hamlet is sitting doesn’t seem like he is comfortable at all which shows the distortion that Hamlet is going through. The black and white colors add depth and gets you to focus more on Hamlet and his words rather than what is going on in the background. Also, the colors add to the current mood of what is going on in the video which is to be portrayed as melancholy and confusion. As the film progresses, we see the camera zoom in at Hamlet’s forehead into an extreme close-up from a medium shot to portray how disoriented Hamlet is from the sweat dripping down from his forehead. Hamlet says “To die, to sleep- No more, and by sleep to say we end” (lines 59-60), which is very essential as it explains the feelings Hamlet has about how he has been thinking about death and whether or not he should die because of he went to “sleep” forever he would be able to end all his troubles. The scenery and deliverance of lines is in unison to what Hamlet I saying and doing. As he says that line, he also takes out a knife and plays with it as if he were to stab himself with it. However, in a sudden movement, the actor suddenly put down his dagger and switches his facial expression of being scared to being disappointed, since Hamlet knows that dying might not grant the dreams he wishes to come. Hamlet then says “in that sleep of death [we don’t know] what dreams may come.” (line 65). The acting and lines in this video work perfectly together to deliver the message of what Hamlet is trying to get across about his troubles and confusion about everything going on around him.As the video comes to an end, the actor delivers the lines “Thus conscience does make cowards of us all” (line 82), as he tails away from the camera and walking away into a fog. The fog represents how Hamlet is lost and doesn’t know where he is going but is trying to make things inside his head make sense. Hamlet keeps with this idea about how humans act when determining their fate after dying; stating things about one’s conscience will always make one look scared, because everyone is scared of death. Hamlet realizes that his thoughts are weakening him and that is when he begins to walk into the fog.Laurence Olivier’s video portrays Hamlet’s soliloquy perfectly with every single detail that he puts into the video to make the audience understand the deeper meaning of Hamlet’s obstacles. The details gave a much clearer interpretation about everything going on. From every camera shot and color/lighting arrangements, to the perfect acting that went along with the lines that the actor was saying, this video made it much more interesting and easier to understand than any of the other videos.

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