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Banha University
Faculty of Arts
English Department
A Guiding Model Answer for
Comparative Literature (Make-Up Exam)
Third Grade
March 2011
Faculty of Arts
Prepared by
Mohammad Al-Hussini Mansour Arab, Ph.D.
University of Nevada, Reno (USA)
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Banha University
Faculty of Arts
Department of English
Third Grade
March 2011
Time Allowed: 3 hours
Comparative Literature (Make-Up Exam)
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1. Respond to only three of the following questions:
(Note: time limit for each question is 40 minutes)
A. Attempt a detailed comparison/contrast essay between William Wordsworth's
poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "The
Rhodora"?
B. Attempt a detailed comparison/contrast essay between Samuel Taylor Coleridge's
poem "Kubla Khan" and Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ode to the West Wind,"
which shows how they employed the levels of meter, phonology, form, syntax,
imagery, and foregrounding to present their ideas effectively?
C. Develop a parallel-order comparison essay between Henry Reed's poem "Naming
of Parts" and Richard Eberhart's poem "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment"?
D. Attempt a detailed comparison/contrast essay between Matthew Arnold's poem
"Dover Beach" and Anthony Hecht "The Dover Bitch: A Criticism of Life"?
2. Respond to the following question: (Time limit is one hour)
Given that the similarities between Sir James Frazer's anthropological book, The
Golden Bough, and James Joyce's novels are essentially analogies and lines of
parallel development, choose five examples to develop a parallel-order
comparison/contrast essay between Frazer's book and Joyce's novels which
shows how Joyce employs his synthetic technique to prove the perdurability and
the mutability of the archetypal patterns?
Good Luck
Mohammad Al-Hussini AbuArab
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Answers
Question # 1
A. Attempt a detailed comparison/contrast essay between William Wordsworth's poem "I
Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "The Rhodora"?
Answer:
In William Wordsworth's poem "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud," one finds the
poet hiking on a windy day. He has no set destination. Happening upon innumerable wild
daffodils, he compares them to a crowd of people and to an army ("host" implies that the
flowers are the heavenly army of the divinity). He compares the densely packed flowers to
the stars in the Milky Way and to a multitude of dancers engaged in a spirited dance. This
stanza, added in 1815, balances the original event more evenly between isolated subject
("I") and communal object (daffodils) by concentrating on the external scene. The other
three stanzas rely heavily on the first-person singular.
The poet had enjoyed the event even while he experienced it, but in later years,
when he is more mature, he comments that at the earlier time he had not recognized its full
value. In the final six lines, the poet moves into the present tense, using the key
Wordsworthian word "oft" to generalize about the reiterated and enduring effects of
recollection. The word "vacant" usually connotes for Wordsworth positive things such as
vacations. "Pensive," by contrast, implies melancholy, the serious, gloomy, earthbound
humor among the four humors; but it mainly serves as a dark foil to set off the bright and
joyful conclusion.
In the poem, Wordsworth plainly anoints himself as the new Adam; two Eves,
Dorothy and Mary, saunter with him into the ew post-lapsarian world of Romanticism. Not
the Judaeo-Christian providence but Nature—or more precisely, the wind, as the holiest
spirit remaining—will bring the poet who abandons himself to it to his daffodils, his
destiny, for their sprightly (spirited, inspired) dance. During hours of apparently aimless
sauntering, the wind will lead him away from melancholy into the sensual and sanguine
Eden of a post-Christian, nearly pantheistic cosmos.
In "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud," a holy wind brings the poet to the place of
meeting that Nature has appointed, Nature reveals itself to him through the daffodil host (as
if the flowers are a multitude of angelic messengers of the divine), and the wind of Nature
finally empowers the poet to utter his enduring inner experience.
In "The Rhodora," Ralph Waldo Emerson finds an opportunity to celebrate a flower
simply for "being." A deeper look, however, reveals that the poem is in keeping with
Emerson's transcendentalist beliefs about the mystical unity of God's love throughout all
nature. He comes to an appreciation of the Rhodora, a relatively common New England
flowering shrub, by seeing it in its own context—by visiting it at home—and he offers that
appreciation as a model for contemplating all of nature.
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The foundation for "The Rhodora" lies in Emerson's belief that nature is a
transforming agent. He crafts this meditative poem with precision and purpose. Emerson
zealously affirmed that humans must see the beauty in nature and respect its inherent
power. Emerson believed that nature connected the person to the all-knowing source. He
sought to broaden America's consciousness through a connection with nature.
Emerson declared in Nature, his first work which formed the basis for most of his
later works, that "Words are signs of natural facts. Particular natural facts are symbols of
particular spiritual facts. Nature is the symbol of spirit." "The Rhodora," Emerson's
sixteen-line poem, flows down the page employing natural facts: the description of this
flower, its place in the woods, and its relationship to its surroundings. He wants readers to
get its deeper meaning: the spiritual fundamentals of awareness, transformation, and
reflection. He argues that this beauty is the art of a life-force common to both humans and
nature, reaffirming that "nature is the symbol of spirit."
The poem's essence lies behind the 136 words, starting with Emerson's subtitle: "On
Being Asked, Whence is the Flower?" This question convinces readers that its answer will
not be simple. As he explains in Nature, "we have no questions which are unanswerable.
We must trust the perfection of the creation as to believe that whatever curiosity the order
of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy." Like the curiosity
that the flower awakens in one's mind, readers must trust that the order of things can
satisfy.
The poem's introduction reflects on the origin of the flower. "Whence," an
introspective word inquiring about origin, prompts a meditative journey. The use of
whence has evoked conflict for centuries, although Emerson may not have known the full
extent of its debate in his day. Since the fourteenth century, reputable writers used "from
whence," especially in biblical writing. In the 18th century, intellectuals criticized "from
whence" as redundant. By the nineteenth century, perhaps Emerson employed whence to
create redundancy. This repetition, something critics have noted in Emerson's writing, may
have pierced his ideas into readers' attentiveness.
Emerson opens "The Rhodora" by describing an awakening to the beauty of nature:
"In May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes, / I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods, /
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook, / To please the desert and the sluggish
brook." In Emerson's New England home, this deciduous shrub grows about three feet tall
and produces delicate rose-purple, two-lipped flowers that bloom in the spring before or
with its leaves. A natural, unplanned wind penetrates the symbolic solitude of winter. It
announces the eruption of spring. As Emerson describes in Nature, "to go into solitude, a
man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society." As the poet lets the seawinds pierce the consciousness and its chamber, spring jolts the poet into a new awareness.
The poet sees the fresh flowers in the woods. The attentiveness rouses the soul.
As the poet examines the shrub, the awakening intensifies. The leafless blooms
spread in a damp nook; Emerson alludes to the idea that this location pleases both the desert
and the brook. It symbolizes a fitting in, a desire to belong, much like the way new people
gently settle into an established neighborhood. The people, like the flowers, seek the basic
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elements to live comfortably and yearn for a place to grow. They nudge at the existing
hierarchy to establish their roots and hope to make new friends.
The next verse develops this concept of transformation: "The purple petals fallen in
the pool, / Made the black water with their beauty gay; / Here might the red-bird come his
plumes to cool, / And court the flower that cheapens his array." Awakened to nature's
beauty, the poet notices things previously unseen. The beautiful petals transform the
appearance of the small body of still water, the pool. This deep or still place in the stream
serves as the background for the purple petals, creating an unexpectedly brilliant and
colorful scene. The male red-bird, with its bright red body, black wings and tail, usually
draws the attention of the observer. Yet, its spectacular array fades next to the purple
flowers. The red-bird at the pool no longer contains the same influence that it did before.
The natural facts have led to a spiritual fact; these new events have changed the observer's
perception.
To Emerson, beauty exists for pleasure. Emerson believed, as he expresses in
"Nature," "a nobler want of man is served by nature, namely, the love of beauty." He saw
beauty as the "constitution of all things […] the primary forms, as the sky, the mountain,
the tree, the animal, give us a delight in and for themselves; a pleasure arising from outline,
color, motion, and grouping." Emerson draws on this core belief in the next verse:
"Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why / This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, / Tell
them, dear, that if eyes were made for seeing, / Then Beauty is its own excuse for being."
When sages, people respected for experience, judgment, and wisdom, ask the
rhodora why beautiful flowers squander their delightfulness only to be seen by earth and
sky, Emerson answers. He asserts that just as human beings use eyes to see, beauty is there
to be seen. The harmony of form or color, truthfulness, and originality serve as the excuse.
Emerson holds the beauty of nature so reverently, that he applies the term dear when
conversing with the rhodora. Dear identifies the flower as highly valued, something he is
fond of, like a sweetheart.
The culmination of the poem shows the natural introspection that follows a
transformation: "Why thou wert there, O rival of the rose! / I never thought to ask, I never
knew; / But, in my simple ignorance, suppose / The self-same Power that brought me there
brought you." For the first time, the poet wonders why the rhodora appeared in that place
and at that time. With reflection and with the want of knowledge, the poet assumes that
precisely the same strength or force that brought the rhodora brought the poet. Many critics
assume that this last verse references a deity. Perhaps yet, as Robert Richardson Jr.
describes in DLB, Emerson, a deeply religious man, believed that one should "not turn to
God, not to the state, not to society or to history but to nature" for an understanding of
spirit. Emerson alludes that because the poet knows no newer knowledge and that the selfsame power brought both to be there. Whether the identical power comes from a religious
affiliation or a doctrine that a deity does not exist, Emerson believes that nature is the
symbol of spirit. Through introspection, the third of Emerson's spiritual fundamentals, the
question gets answered for each individual.
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B. Attempt a detailed comparison/contrast essay between Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem
"Kubla Khan" and Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ode to the West Wind," which shows
how they employed the levels of meter, phonology, form, syntax, imagery, and
foregrounding to present their ideas effectively?
Answer:
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem "Kubla Khan" and Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem
"Ode to the West Wind" are the products of the poets' synthetic imagination. In "Kubla
Khan," Coleridge has harmonized the meters which are basically derived from English
hymnology to function in the movement of the poem. The first stanza is written in a
combination of Eights and Sixes and Elevens and Tens. The rhythm in the first is generally
iambic. The rhythm in the second iambic and dactylic. This duality echoes the duality of
life and death. In the second stanza, we have two alexandrines (ll. 12, 17); the first
collaborates with the adversative conjunction "But" and the exclamatory "oh" to mark the
shift from the picturesque scenes of innocence in childhood to the world of experience in
adolescence and maturity; the second stresses the termination of the romantic and dreamy
reveries of boyhood ("[…] deep romantic chasm") and the beginning of agonies ("And
from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething"). In addition to this mode of expression
we have combinations of Elevens, Tens, and Nines with generally dactylic, iambic, and
trochaic rhymes. The third stanza is written in a combination of Eights and Sevens, Sixes,
and Sevens and Nines and Tens. The fourth stanza is written in a combination of Eights
and Sevens, Eights, Nines and Sevens. In these latter stanzas the rhythm is generally
trochaic and dactylic, however, it does not conform completely to the rules of traditional
prosody (we may assume that Coleridge has broken tradition on purpose). We discover
that a line of Tens which is supposed to have five stresses has only four (ll. 19, 20), and a
line of Eights which is supposed to have four stresses has only three (ll. 31, 37, 39, 40).
Hence the meter is accentual and not syllabic. These departures from the normal metric
beat mark shifts in the imagery of the poem, and, in turn, they refer to the "mighty
fountain" (ll. 19, 20) of birth and life, which foreshadows the appearance of the mingled
measure and the "damsel" or the "Abyssinian maid"—the two images in which Coleridge
has brought opposites into harmony (ll. 31, 37, 39, 40).
Coleridge's technique of foregrounding depends on either parallelism or deviation.
In (1.25) we have a good example of phonetic parallelism where the repetition of the /m/ in
collaboration with the ictus which falls upon the syllables in which the /m/ occurs: "[…]
mìles mèandering with a màzy mòtion" foregrounds the snaky and twisting road which
every man has to follow from the time of his birth till that of his death. In (l. 50) "His
flashing eyes, his floating hair," we have an example of a parallel syntactic structure where
the head nouns "eyes" and "hair" are both modified by a participle and a possessive
pronoun. The repetition of the /f/ and the parallel syntactic structure foreground the
characteristics of the poet and stress his glaring eyes and wafting hair. Coleridge's
deviations are rare and they are obvious in his shifting the adjectives back in such phrases
as "gardens bright with sinuous rills" (l. 8), "forests ancient as hills" (1. 10), and "caverns
measureless to man" (ll. 4.27). But we can consider them as adjectival clauses, and
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consequently the deviation is negated. Apart from the simile which occurs in (ll. 18, 19),
his language is characterized by simplicity.
In Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," we have seen how the poet has employed the levels of
meter, phonology, lexus, form, syntax, imagery, and foregrounding to present, or to create
through the synthetic power of the imagination, the stereoscopic picture of immortality.
Furthermore, this work of the imagination which has ended in the amalgamation of
opposites expresses the Romantic dilemma of hovering between the real and the ideal.
Coleridge is not satisfied with the real and seeks to penetrate into the ideal, and the result is
the imaginary picture of immortality. This all can also be seen in Shelley's "Ode to the
West Wind," in which Shelley stresses the power of the wind as "destroyer" and
"preserver," and refers to the cycle of death and rebirth—again the amalgamation of
opposites—, which, in turn, expresses the dilemma of the Romantic poets.
The poem is about the power of the West Wind. In the first it is shown driving the
leaves, in the second the clouds, and in the third the waves. In the fourth stanza, Shelley
imagines himself as each of them and calls for inspiration in his personal despondency, and
in the fifth, he prays that his ideas be given the power of the wind, and spread throughout
the world.
In the first three stanzas, Shelley stresses the power of the wind. He constructs the
first stanza in three complex sentences, which form a kind of a multiple sentence.
Adjectival and adverbial phrases and clauses (ll. 1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13) expand the syntax
and impart to the reader the feeling of heaviness which is enhanced by Shelley's technique
of front and back shifting. An example of this occurs in front shifting the head noun
"leaves" (l. 2) and shifting back the adjective "dead." Furthermore, Shelley separates the
remaining adjectives (ll. 4, 5) and interpolates the simile which compares the driven leaves
by the wind to "the ghosts which are fleeing from the enchanter" (l. 3). In (l. 6) he front
shifts the prepositional object "to […] bed." In the third tercet the adverbial phrase of
manner (l. 11) occurs after the verb "fill" (ll. 10, 11) whereas it should have occurred after
the object "With […] hill" (l. 12). The same is true of the objective complement "with […]
odours" which precedes the direct object "plain and hill." These grammatical deviations are
intended to confuse the reader, who—while trying to delineate the main syntax of the
sentence, and to seclude the embedded structures and restore these grammatical deviations
to their normal positions to grasp the latent meaning—feels encumbered by these
deviations. Hence, the power of the wind is conveyed to him.
On the phonological level the reader—throughout the stanza—is made aware of the
presence of the wind by the recurrence of the fricative phonemes, which echo the sound of
the wind, as "their very articulation," according to H. Aboul-Fetouh, causes "the air stream"
to "pass through an extremely narrow passage" in the mouth (English Phonetics 24, 29, 39).
Examples of this are the /f/s (ll. 2, 3, 10, 11), the /Ө/s (l. 1, 10), the /s/s (ll. 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8,
9, 11, 13, 14), the /š/ (l. 9), the /v/s (ll. 2, 3, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14), the /ð/s (ll. 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 10,
12), the /z/s (ll. 1, 2, 5, 12), and the /ž/ (l. 9). Shelley not only creates the sound of the wind
but he also gives its action a continuous influence through the long front vowels inherent in
the /i:/s (ll. 1, 2, 3, 10, 11), the /æ/s (ll. 4, 10), and the long back vowels whose
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sonorousness adds to the power of the wind. This occurs, for example, in /u:/s (ll. 2, 5, 12),
the /‫כ‬:/ (l. 1), and the /a:/s (ll. 3, 6). Another technique, which contributes to the continuous
movement of the wind and its forceful influence, is continuation of the sense of the last line
in the tercet into the second tercet, and so on. The result of this is that the first tercet
merges into the second, the second into the third, the third into the fourth, and even the
fourth into the concluding couplet.
The same levels discussed above combine to foreground the power of the wind in
the second stanza. Rearranging the first sentence—"Thou […] storm" (ll. 15-23)—, the
first part of the stanza might read as follows: Thou, shed loose clouds on your stream,
shook Angels of rain and lightning from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean: the
locks of the approaching storm are there. Here we have three main clauses—three simple
sentences—, which form a multiple sentence. Simple as it is, the sentence is rendered
ambiguous by Shelley's technique of shifting, embedding and transformation. In the first
sentence (ll. 1, 2) the prepositional adverbial phrase of place is front shifted to function
adjectivally. The vocative—the wind—is post qualified by the "stream" metaphor and the
commotion of the "steep" sky. The assonance between "stream" and "steep," created by the
long vowel /i:/ adds to the sweeping action of the wind and to its potent power.
Moreover, Shelley applies two transformations: the passive, and the indefinite noun
phrase deletion. The latter, according to Jacobs and Rosenbaum, is usually applied when
the agent of the action is not known or when it is understood. But in both cases, the
ambiguity adds to the burden, which is imposed on the reader. Shelley's application of the
first transformation makes the deep object function as a surface subject. His purpose is to
foreground the clouds, and by premodifying them as "loose" and post qualifying them
through the simile of the "decaying leaves," he refers to them as being dead. He also
reiterates the image of death and transformation in the first stanza in which dead water (the
clouds) is like dead leaves, and the clouds are created by being violently torn from larger
clouds, which are themselves formed by a union of the air with the water vapor. "Tangled"
connotes confusion and intricacy and foreshadows the images of the "fierce Maenad" (l.
21), and the locks of the approaching storm (l. 23). These images create a scene of
fearsomeness and terror. "Maenads," as Robinson and Wilson describe, "are the female
votaries of Dionysus who ran wild on the mountains, singing, shouting, screaming in
intoxicated fury, tearing animals to pieces, and carrying serpents, swords and cymbals in
their hands. Their disheveled appearance, their bloodshot eyes, and the snakes twisting and
writhing in their hair made them a source of terror." With Shelley's reference to Maenads,
those connotations are, to some degree, attributed to the wind. The syntax of the second
and third sentences adds to the wind's power. In the second sentence (shook […] lightning)
(ll. 17, 18) the prepositional object is front shifted. In the third sentence "[…] there […]
storm" (ll. 18-23) the predicate is inversed with the subject. If the clouds stand for death,
the West Wind will revive them by transmuting them into rain and lightning. The cycle of
death and rebirth is further reiterated and suggested by the image of the Maenads and
Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and vegetation. As "vegetation god," Abrams writes,
"Dionysus was fabled to die in the fall and be resurrected in the spring." Hence, what the
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reader feels most is the mighty power of the wind which is epitomized in the second major
sentence "Thou […] hear" (ll. 23-28).
To this point, Shelley's language is heavily encumbered; he uses twisted syntax and
loaded words. The reader feels the burden—through the recurrence of the fricative
phonemes, the verse gets heavier and heavier—until in the end he is completely
overpowered by it. The "West Wind" will be the "dirge" of the dying year, but the power
of the wind will not be imagined until the reader has understood the composite image
which embodies its immensity. The closing night will be the dome of an immense tomb
which covers the whole horizon, where this dome is arched with the wind's power of
vapors. In short, it is an omnipotent power.
The third stanza reiterates this terrible and fearsome power of the West Wind upon
the sea. During summer the "blue Mediterranean" lies calm, but autumn brings the West
Wind which awakens it (l. 30). The peaceful sleep of the summer is echoed in the stream
of the /i/s which runs through lines (30, 31) and creates the tranquilizing and assuaging
effect that precedes and continues during sleep. The effect is enhanced by Shelley's letting
the words which have the /i/ fall under the ictus. The fact that all of the words, except two,
are monosyllabic adds to the effect of calmness and sleep, and thus the tempo of the rhythm
is slackened. Not only does the wind waken the Mediterranean from its "summer dreams,"
but it also cleaves the Atlantic "level powers" into "chasms" (l. 38). This leads, according
to Bloom and Trilling, to revelation of the vegetation at its bottom—which responds with
fear to the voice of the West Wind—and to creation of sympathy for the vegetation of the
land (447).
At the beginning of the fourth stanza the reader is aware of a shift in the syntax. In
the first three stanzas, Shelley uses direct statements, but in the fourth he uses the
hypothetical construction "If I were […]" (ll. 43, 44, 48). This shifting adumbrates the
dilemma of the Romantics in general and Shelley in particular. Like his contemporary
poets, Shelley longed for the attainment of ideals which could hardly be realized. Since he
has penetrated from the world of the real into that of the ideal (the first three stanzas), and
since this poetic view of the ideal is prophetic, the poet is entitled to suggest reform. But
since he does not possess the power to realize his aspirations, he shifts to the hypothetical,
which in fact echoes the imaginary or the unreal. Thus he imagines himself to be "a dead
leaf" (l. 43) or a "swift cloud" (l. 44), or "A wave" (l. 45) so that he may be able to identify
himself with the power of the West Wind (ll. 53-54).
In the fifth stanza, this imaginary situation is pushed a step further when Shelley
asks the West Wind to make him—like the leaves—its lyre (l. 57). When this is
accomplished, Shelley's "dead thoughts" (his verses) will be driven by the wind—like the
dead leaves—"over the universe" (l. 63), to awaken Man to the need of a new order. Hence
Shelley's insistence on the reiteration of the cycle of death, and rebirth in the first three
stanzas. This cycle embodies Shelley's message to the repressed. "If Winter comes, can
Spring be far behind?" (l. 70). He is, in fact, encouraging the revolutionary forces not to
surrender. If these forces were defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, this does not
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mean that this defeat—or death—will last forever, for rebirth will soon come to enliven the
dead."
The meter of the poem, like Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," is accentual and not syllabic.
Lines of Tens, which are supposed to have five stresses, have only four (ll. 5, 6, 13) and
sometimes six (l. 11). As mentioned previously, the departure from the normal metric beat
is engineered to shock the reader and to attract his attention to certain shifts in the imagery
of the poem.
In the first case the poet stresses the role of the wind as destroyer and the shift
occurs where the modifiers of the dead leaves are mentioned, and where he refers to the
West Wind as an obdurate warrior who drives his unarmed foe to death. The second occurs
where the sweet sister of Spring awakens the dead and urges them "to feed in air" and thus
accomplishes the second role of the wind as preserver.
C. Develop a parallel-order comparison essay between Henry Reed's poem "Naming of
Parts" and Richard Eberhart's poem "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment"?
Answer:
Disillusioned by the experience of World War II, Henry Reed in "Naming of Parts"
and Richard Eberhart in "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment" condemn and reject the horror
of war. Both poems condemn our failure to see war as it is, attack our indifference, and
reflect postwar antiwar feeling. We shall see that Eberhart's poem takes the attack on
indifference one step further than Reed's poem does.
Henry Reed's "Naming of Parts" satirically attacks the callousness of the military.
By using impersonal, neutral words and phrases ("Today we have naming of parts.
Yesterday / we had daily cleaning"), the speaker satirizes how precise and impersonal these
lessons are. The trainee learns a process, without being taught or made aware how terrible
and ugly practicing that process is. References to "the lower sling swivel," "the upper sling
swivel," and the "slings" describe machinery. Such references to mechanical parts evoke
neutral or even positive feelings, since most machines are used for the good of humanity.
This technical language conceals the horror of using this particular machinery. Saying that
"you can do it quite easy / If you have any strength in your thumb" obscures the possibility
that it might be difficult emotionally to gun down a fellow human being.
Reed uses a comparison to nature at the end of each stanza. Jumping from the
mechanics of the gun to the beauty of the garden in consecutive sentences presents a
contrast between the gun and the flower, the one a symbol of death and the other a symbol
of life. The references in the first two stanzas stress the innocence of nature. The line
"Japonica glistens like coral in all of the neighboring gardens" evokes an image of serenity
and peace. The branches with "their silent, eloquent gestures" paint another image of bliss.
The sterile descriptions of the gun and the beautiful descriptions of nature proceed in a
point-counterpoint fashion.
Richard Eberhart's "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment" shares the theme of
"Naming of Parts" in that both poems attack indifference to violence and suffering. By
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saying that "History, even, does not know what is meant," the poet seems to lament that
even painful experience does not teach us to prevent the senselessness of war. We are "no
farther advanced," making the poet ask: "Was man made stupid?" Here again, as in Reed's
poem, technical, impersonal references to the "belt feed lever" and the "belt holding pawl"
imply a criticism of the callousness with which people handle the subject of war. A lesson
about a belt feed lever might be more instructive if the part were named the genocide lever,
for instance.
However, "The Fury of Aerial Bombardment" contrasts with "Naming of Parts"
because Eberhart goes beyond attacking human indifference by attacking divine
indifference to the horrors of war. The poet questions why God has not intervened to stop
the aerial bombardment. The answer, that "the infinite spaces / Are still silent," is a
criticism of God's looking passively upon "shock-pried faces." These are the faces of the
people who have witnessed the horror of the bombing but to whom God offers no respite.
The poet seems to expect a thinking, feeling entity to intervene, but no such intervention
takes place. Men still kill with "multitudinous will." In the third stanza, the poet asks: "Is
God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?"
Both of these poems were written half a century ago, yet their relevance remains
undiminished today. In an age when we read daily of war and death, indifference is
commonplace. The way in which a news reporter casually reads death tolls from current
conflicts is reminiscent of the cold, sterile wording of "Naming of Parts." The casual and
callous projections of the cost in human lives of "winning" a nuclear war are another
example of what is under attack in these poems. And people who ponder such atrocities as
Auschwitz and Hiroshima have cause to question divine indifference, for the earth is long
on suffering.
Question # 2
Given that the similarities between Sir James Frazer's anthropological book, The Golden
Bough, and James Joyce's novels are essentially analogies and lines of parallel
development, choose five examples to develop a parallel-order comparison/contrast essay
between Frazer's book and Joyce's novels which shows how Joyce employs his synthetic
technique to prove the perdurability and the mutability of the archetypal patterns?
Answer:
The similarities between Frazer's study and Joyce's fiction, though striking and
suggestive, may be essentially analogies, lines of parallel development. What they indicate
most sharply is the extent to which Frazer's structural techniques foreshadow those of
Joyce. Thus, Joyce, in his works, is largely content to find in Sir James Frazer habits of
thought and imaginative methods whose essence he can utilize. His strategy is rather to
reproduce Frazer in a dramatic mode, to create his own encyclopedia of myth, folklore, and
cultural history informed by the temper and methods of The Golden Bough.
In the quest for truth, Joyce was convinced that no single phenomenon can be
considered in isolation, but must be seen by its countering and fusing with its opposite.
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This countering and fusing extends even to his treatment of archetypal events in time where
he carefully mingles the present with the past to demonstrate the perdurability of the
archetype, and at the same time its mutability. This intrusiveness of the past into the
present is exemplified in Joyce's reference to the persistence of mythical rites in more
civilized expressions when Stephen says, "Queens lay with prize bulls. Remember
Rasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first confessional box." Thus,
Joyce counters the Roman Catholic confessional with the labyrinth, and sees the act of
confession to be an extension to the devouring of the Athenian maidens and youths in the
labyrinth by the Minotaur. He thus portrays the Christian ritual as a tortuous confrontation
with death and the Christian priest—and, by extension the Christian God—as a monster
that destroys heroes and victims alike, a creature that is an intensification of the bovine god
met by Stephen earlier (Joyce 1981: 11).
In Ulysses, for example, Bloom at the funeral of an old friend, Paddy Dignam, who
had died suddenly of a stroke, contemplates the treatment of the body after death: "Never
know who will touch you dead. Wash and shampoo. I believe they clip the nails and the
hair. Keep a bit in an envelope. Grow all the same after. Unclean job" (Joyce 1961: 87).
Here Joyce is dedicated to the study of man. He vents anthropological curiosity on the
custom of preserving nail- and hair-clippings and the feeling that a dead body contagiously
pollutes or defiles those who come in physical contact with it. In much the same way,
Vickery notes, "Bloom touches on the ancient custom of offering food sacrifices to the
dead: 'Cakes for the dead. Who ate them? Mourners coming out' (100)" (1973: 355-356).
This leads Vickery to write that "the ancient custom of offering cakes for the dead has
dwindled into absurdity, since it is the mourners who now eat them" (355-356). In another
example, Joyce treats the metamorphic character of human consciousness. The doctor
announces that Bloom is "a finished example of the new womanly man" (Joyce 1961: 493),
and "about to have a baby" (494). In The Golden Bough, the circumstances of men's
simulating the roles of women differ widely from Joyce's. Frazer refers to the customs of
men's dressing as women in the rites of Dionysus, at marriage ceremonies, circumcision
rites, and ritual efforts to avoid demons or ghosts. Similarly, women near term were
frequently mimed by their husbands, who took to their beds in simulated labor.
Joyce also employs his synthetic technique to cast Bloom as a modern scapegoat.
In The Golden Bough, Frazer explores the use of the dying god as a scapegoat to free his
worshipers from the troubles of all sorts with which life on earth is beset. The ritual
consists in subjecting the scapegoat to verbal assaults and beating as a means of purification
and as a way of increasing his generative capacities, which then are realized in a brief
marriage with a bride, after which he is taken to his death by hanging, drowning, stoning or
the like (1958: 655-660, 672-673, 712-714). Vickery explains that Joyce reflects the
scapegoat's beating and abuse in the Citizen's contemptuous epithets, which are poured on
Bloom (Joyce 1961: 300). Joyce makes Bloom participate in what amounts to a fertilizing
ritual, which is enacted through the silly adolescent fantasies of Gerty MacDowell (356,
366). Then, he makes Bloom appear panting, with a stitch in his side, in a scene which is an
appropriate approximation of the ritual pursuit and hunt which precedes his arrest (435),
after which he is sentenced to death by hanging. Mrs. Mervyn Tallboys says that (however
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metaphoric her language) she is prepared to treat Bloom as ancient scapegoats were treated.
She will "scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as," she can stand over him, she will "flay
him alive" (466, 467), and the subsheriff identifies him with Judas Iscariot, thus suggesting
the implicit alignment of both Bloom and Judas with the scapegoat.
Joyce uses the same synthetic technique to humanize deities. In Ulysses, the
milkwoman attributes the beauty of the day to God, but Mulligan's comment is: "—The
islanders, [. . .] speak frequently of the collector of prepuces" (Joyce 1961: 13). Mulligan
thus renders the milkwoman's religious faith and the nature of her deity quaint, yet wholly
natural. Mulligan sees God, as Richard Ellmann puts it, not as a supernatural transcendent
being of enormous power, but as an amasser of useless bits of foreskin" (Ellmann 1972:
19). Stephen, on the other hand, equates "the hanged god" with the limits of human
possibility. God, in the words of both Marilyn French and Stuart Gilbert, as "dio boia" takes
care of his creatures and also destroys them and, whatever he does to or for himself, he
does to or for his creatures (Joyce 1961: 213).
Joyce, likewise, links Finnegan's death with the Frazerian dying and reviving god.
Finnegan, as Vickery explains, is aroused by the whisky spilled on him, and one the Four
Old Men treats him as if he were the image of death and revival: "Now be aisy, good Mr.
Finnimore, sir. And take your laysure like a god on pension and don't be walking abroad.
Sure" (Joyce 1959: 24). Joyce intensifies the Frazerian impact when Finnegans is told to
take his "laysure like a god." Just as the speaker urges the ease of leisure on Finnegan, so is
sexual intercourse, for "Sure," is the Irish expression which suggests the easy, assured
casualness of divine copulation, of the sort that Zeus indulges in so frequently (Vickery
1973: 412). In another example, Joyce de-Olympianize the dying god and his consort—
Osiris and Isis—when Shem remarks in one of his twelve questions to Shaun, "theer's his
bow and wheer's his leaker and heer lays his bequiet hearse, deep; [. . .]" (Joyce 1959a:
137). The hidden issue in the middle of the excerpt is, Vickery writes, "a burlesque of
Osiris' dismemberment and Isis' search for the parts of his body" (Vickery 1973: 417). As
Frazer emphasizes, the only part not recovered were his genital organs (1958: 424).
The foregoing examples sufficiently establish the functional use of myth in James
Joyce's works. It is only through myth that Joyce attains his freedom as an artist, and forms
his aesthetics. By miming for himself the myth of the dying and reviving god, Joyce
resurrects himself in what he feels to be greater wisdom; brings something for the world;
forms the metamorphic image, which is based on the synthesis of opposites; constructs the
composite image, in which several levels of existence are intertwined; achieves a sense of
the unity of mankind and of the reconciliation of opposites, including even the identities of
sex, and experiments with language to reveal its metamorphic power.
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