ENG 484B Notes
9/5 – Woolf, The Years
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Woolf’s last published work in her lifetime
Huge correlation between the weather/environment in the first sentence of each chapter
and the development of the characters
Sense of the seasons changing, parallels historical events (i.e. winter, November mist
during WWI)
Look at Wikipedia article for The Years
Does Woolf’s style change?
o In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce writes like a young boy in Chapter
1 and progresses to reflect the growth of Stephen
She did not want Between the Acts to be published
9/10 – Woolf, The Years
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Earlier chapters do not promise too much, short, contained
Final chapter is full of life and promise, despite all the suffering that has happened
Book has perfect beginning and perfect end, almost no middle; chronicle of family life
Characters are still young at heart, even after enduring Boer War, WWI, suffragette
movement, Irish trouble, death, poverty
Grand party that ends the book is full of memories and aspirations, with some nostalgia
and melancholy for passing years
Difference in excitement for future vs. nostalgia exemplified in Eleanor and Peggy
o Eleanor: excited and curious about modern age
o Peggy: prefers romantic stories of Victorian age, her brother Charles died in the
war
After fifty years from 1880 to 1930, they’re still alive and enjoying fresh family life
First sentence: “It was a summer evening; the sun was setting”
Last sentence: “The sun had risen, and the sky above the houses wore an air of
extraordinary beauty, simplicity and peace”
9/12 – Woolf, Between the Acts
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Plot is simple, almost a calmness about it
Similarities to The Years:
o First sentence: “It was a summer’s night and they were talking, in the big room
with the windows open to the garden, about the cesspool”
o Fifth to last sentence: “The window was all sky without colour”
Differences with The Years:
o Last two sentences: “Then the curtain rose. They spoke”
o Clearly a reference to the novel’s title
Seems like this is not her last work, that Between the Acts was meant to be an interlude
between her earlier works and a final work
She committed suicide before the final revision of this was completed
Is she trying to send the message that she has another final act in the afterlife?
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9/17 – Woolf, Between the Acts
This isn’t a timeless work
o Clearly occurring just before World War II
o Obvious tension in anticipation of what is to come
o As a result, all of the play’s characters continually allude to the coming conflict
Giles Oliver: Europe = enraged hedgehog, “bristling with guns, poised with planes…at
any moment guns would rake that land into furrows; planes splinter Bolney Minster into
smithereens” (66-67)
Last page about Giles and Isa: “must fight, as the dog fox fights with the vixen, into the
heart of darkness, in the fields of night” (256)
9/19 – Joyce, Finnegans Wake
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Book starts and ends in the middle of a sentence: “A way a lone a last a loved a long the”
(628)…“riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us
by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs” (3)
Finnegan
o Hod-carrier = bricklayer
o Falls from a ladder and breaks his skull
o At his wake, they spill whiskey on his corpse and cause him to come alive and
join the party
o Whiskey causes his death and rebirth, “water of life”
Audio reading sounds very sing-song in the Dublin accent
9/26 – Joyce, Finnegans Wake
“For that (the rapt one warns) is what papyr is meed of, made of, hides and hints and misses
in prints. Till ye finally (though not yet endlike) meet with the acquantaine of Mister Typus,
Mistress Tope and all the little tytopies. Fillstup. So you need hardly spell me how every
word will be bound over to carry three score and ten toptypsical readings throughout the
book of Doublends Jined…” (20).
In the passage above, it seems like Joyce is actually writing about Finnegans Wake,
adding an even more confusing element to the book. “The rapt one” could be in reference to
Joyce’s critics; he knew that they would peruse every facet of his writing as well as offering
their own opinion on everything. To me, “So you need hardly spell me how every word will
be bound over” is Joyce’s way of acknowledging the incredible difficulty and unorthodox
nature of his work. However, this acknowledgement is in no way apologetic. I think that
Joyce is brazenly challenging critics to delve through Finnegans Wake and even try to
understand the mind of James Joyce.
My advice to those reading Finnegans Wake is to tackle it in the way you want to. I
personally do not enjoy getting hung up on every single word of a book, which is made even
more difficult when attempting to decipher even a phrase of Joyce’s whimsical dialect.
When looking at Finnegans Wake, I merely tried my best to pick out references which I
understood, namely those which mentioned notable Irish historical figures (Charles Parnell)
and mythological characters (Tristan and Isolde, Fionn mac Cumhaill). I chose to do so
because those are aspects which I am familiar with, thereby helping me understand
Finnegans Wake even just slightly more than the average reader.
10/1 – Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
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Many modernist authors believe there is a final form of writing
o Woolf may be the exception
“Truth is lived, not taught” (83)
Reminds me of psychoanalysis and sociology
o Joseph is always watching others’ behavior
o Hesse was familiar with Carl Jung
Pages 13-14 discuss individual vs. hierarchy
o We do not approve of the rebel
o Those who sacrifice themselves for the greater whole are heroes
o Joseph is one of these heroes
“Let no one, therefore, expect from us a complete history and theory of the Glass Bead
Game” (14)
o Like Finnegans Wake, is not a traditional work that can be easily analyzed
Set in the 21st century, which is not what I would have guessed
o Seems more like turn of the 19th century feeling
10/3 – Hesse, The Glass Bead Game
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As the novel progresses, Joseph comes to doubt his loyalty to Castalia and the order
Sees Castalia as an ivory tower/city on a hill that is separated from the rest of the world
and therefore, oblivious to the real problems outside its borders
The Music Master somewhat helps Joseph realize this epiphany
Rainmaker story
o Written as if Joseph was born in another time
o Pagan rainmaker living thousands of years ago when women ruled
o Eventually his powers to summon rain fail and he sacrifices himself for the tribe
Midterm (Thursday October 24th)
o 5 unidentified excerpts from readings, write about 3 of them
“The Rainmaker” is interesting in that is written as if Joseph was born and lived in
another time. Instead of living sometime in the 21st century, Hesse places the story of the
Rainmaker thousands of years ago in a time when women ruled. The story is about a prehistoric
shaman, who we come to realize is Joseph in a past life, who has the power to summon rain. The
story can be directly paralleled to the main story of The Glass Bead Game. Like Joseph’s
humble appointment to Magister Ludi, the Rainmaker learns his craft from a master of
rainmaking. He eventually passes on his power to his descendants, and then sacrifices himself
for the good of his tribe.
While one may find it difficult to draw a direct correlation between the sacrificial death
of the Rainmaker and the main story of The Glass Bead Game, Hesse actually writes about how
the two are linked:
. . . all these thoughts are no doubt far too abstract and explicit for Knecht [the
Rainmaker] to have been capable of them. Let us say: he was on the way to them; his
way would someday lead him to them and past them. . . . And if we were to go still
further back beyond this Rainmaker and his time which to us seems so early and
primitive, if we were to go several thousands of years back into the past, wherever we
found man we would still find—this is our firm belief—the mind of man, that Mind
which has no beginning and always has contained everything that it later produces (466,
469).”
Basically, Hesse sees the relationship between master and apprentice as a timeless function of
human society, one that is steeped in tradition. Joseph started out as a low-level member of the
Castalian Order and is eventually elevated to the position of Magister Ludi. After he comes to
see Castalia as an isolated dystopia where the residents ignore the outside world, he resigns his
post and chooses to tutor Tito. Not long after, the story abruptly ends when Joseph dies
attempting to match his apprentice’s swimming. The story of the Rainmaker is undoubtedly a
primeval version of the same story, proving that certain parts of the human psyche do not change
with time. However, Hesse’s argument seems morbid indeed when one considers that an
apprentice’s position is elevated only when their master is no more.
10/8 – Borges, Labyrinths
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“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”
o Second full paragraph on page 4 indicates how Uqbar is a fictional place that
Borges has just discovered
o Bioy Casares brings an encyclopedia article about Uqbar which outlines its
customs
 “Copulation and mirrors are abominable
 For one of the gnostics, the visible universe was an illusion (or more
precisely a sophism
 Mirrors and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply and
disseminate the universe”
o Amusing reference about how Ritter’s (German geographer) Erdkunde is
“plentifully ignorant of the name Uqbar”
o Heresiarch: one who practices heresy
 Since a heresiarch proclaimed all of the above, does that mean that
Uqbar’s main religion/culture does not believe these things?
o Gnosticism: shun the material world in favor of the spiritual world
o Sense of subliminal messaging
10/15 – Borges, Labyrinths
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“The Garden of Forking Paths”
o “Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures. In one of them I am your
enemy” (28).
o Doctor Albert telling Doctor Tsun about Ts’ui Pen’s Garden of the Forking Paths
o World where all possible outcomes of an event occur at the same time
o Declares his friendship before murdering Albert
o While he may have gone to Albert’s house learn more about his famous ancestor,
he ended up murdering him in cold blood
o Through murdering his friend, he indicated to his German handler where the
British artillery park is so they could bomb it
o Also interesting that Tsun is motivated to spy not for the sake of Germany, but to
prove to his racist masters that he is intelligent enough to save their soldiers’ lives
 He believes Captain Madden, an Irishmen, is similarly motivated
10/22 – Boye, Kallocain
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Are organs in body in competition with each other, or working towards a common goal?
o Knowledge gained in biology classes suggest the latter
o However, compelling argument for the former, especially in the context of a
nucleonic, totalitarian state
The thing that strikes me most about Kallocain is how it is comparable to Brave New
World. They are both drug dystopias where the government uses drugs to suppress opposition.
The difference is that in Brave New World, drugs are used to subdue nonconformity as a whole.
In Kallocain, drugs are used to detect individual acts and thoughts of rebellion. Leo Kall’s story
is very interesting because it is written in diary form. He is very loyal to the government and
develops the drug Kallocain, which is essentially a truth drug which forces the taker to reveal
anything, even things they do not consciously realize. The drug is the final step towards
individuals of the state becoming a “happy, healthy cell in the state organism.”
Kall reflects to his wife Linda, “For, from thoughts and feelings, words and actions are
born. How then could these thoughts and feelings belong to the individual? Doesn’t the whole
fellow-soldier belong to the state? To whom should his thoughts and feelings belong then, if not
to the state?” (13). To me, this conversation is reflective of the intense censorship which is
characteristic of both fictional totalitarian states, such as this one, and historic ones such as the
Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Boye observed these two regimes during the 1930s and they
undoubtedly influenced Kallocain. The above passage suggests that since the state regulates all
thoughts through censorship, propaganda, and arguably Kallocain, aren’t thoughts, feelings, and
the individuals possessing them the property of the state?
11/12 – Girard, Battling to the End
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We are always reacting to someone else’s violence
Clausewitz hates Napoleon
Girard on ritual sacrifice
o Repetition on the outcome of continuous violence
o Tries to take up what everyone is doing last time peace came and economize it
o During peacetime, it’s easy to blame one person for war and suffering
Theory of modern desire
o What happens when we imitate someone else’s desire?
Change in religion makes science possible
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How do humans handle violence?
o In primitive cultures, they mystify it and attribute it to the gods
Christianity takes the side of the innocent
o Disarms the sacrificial resolution
Modern culture saves itself from the judicial system
Girard is arguing that the League of Nations and the United Nations have no real power
and are not effective in stopping violence
Conflict between France & Germany has forced everyone to take sides
o European countries perceive France as a warlike nation
o Russia & Germany are dangerous rivals to each other
o Mostly neglects United States
How does Girard’s book sit with Woolf, Joyce, Hesse, Borges, Boye, and Orwell?
o Use postwar to fill in the gap of the fear of a totalitarian state
o Feasible to only write with one novel but using multiple is fine as well
o Preferably use Judt to compare other novels
Should we read Joseph’s end (Glass Bead Game) as positive or negative?
o Samuel Beckett: “Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of
happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I
wouldn't want them back.”
11/14/13 – Girard & Judt, Postwar
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Orwell could’ve had predictions that could’ve come true if Germany had won WWII
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