Lecture 15 James Joyce
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Modernism
(1) The rise of modernist movement
Modernism rose out of skepticism and disillusionment
of capitalism, which made writers and artists search for
new ways to express their understanding of the world
and the human nature. The French symbolism was the
forerunner of modernism. The First World War
quickened the rising of all kinds of literary trends of
modernism, which, toward the 1920s, converged into a
mighty torrent of modernist movement. The major
figures associated with the movement were Kafka,
Picasso, Pound, Eliot, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf.
Modernism was somewhat curbed in the 1930s. But
after World War II, varieties of modernism, or postmodernism, rose again with the spur of Sarter's
existentialism. However, they gradually disappeared or
diverged into other kinds of literary trends in the 1960s.
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The characteristics of modernism
Modernism amounts to more than a
chronological description, that is to say, the
more recent does not necessarily mean more
modern. Modernism takes the irrational
philosophy and the idea of psychoanalysis as
its theoretical base. The major themes of the
modernist literature are the distorted, alienated
and ill relationships between man and nature,
man and society, man and man, and man and
himself. The chief characteristics of
modernism are as follows:
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(A) Modernism marks a strong and conscious break with the past,
by rejecting the moral, religious and cultural values of the past.
(B) Modernism emphasizes on the need to move away from the
public to the private, from the objective to the subjective.
(C) Modernism upholds a new view of time by emphasizing the
psychic time over the chronological one. It maintains that the
past, the present and the future are one and exist at the same time
in the consciousness of individual as a continuous flow rather
than a series of separate moments.
(D) Modernism is, in many respects, a reaction against realism. It
rejects rationalism, which is the theoretical base of realism; it
excludes from its major concern the external, objective, material
world, which is the only creative source of realism; it casts away
almost all the traditional elements in literature like story, plot,
character, chronological narration, etc., which are essential to
realism. As a result, the works created by the modernist writers
can often be labeled as anti-novel, anti-poetry or anti-drama.
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Stream of consciousness
Stream of consciousness is a phrase coined by W.
James in his Principles of Psychology (1890) to
describe the flow of thoughts of the human mind. Now
it is widely used in a literary context to describe the
narrative method whereby certain novelists describe the
unspoken thoughts and feelings of their characters
without resorting to objective description or
conventional dialogue. Among English writers, James
Joyce and Virginia Woolf are two major advocates of
the technique. The ability to represent the flux of a
character's thoughts, impressions, emotions, or
reminiscences, often without logical sequence or syntax,
marked a revolution in the form of novel.
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II. James Joyce:
James ( Augustine Aloysius) Joyce (1882-1941)
was an Irishman born into a Catholic family in Dublin
and educated at Jesuit schools. He was a good student
and was intended for a priest. But he renounced
Catholicism at adolescence. He left Ireland and lived in
France, Italy and Switzerland as "a voluntary exile",
though his books were all written about Dublin because
the Irish and Ireland were the people and the place he
knew best and he believed that by writing about Dublin
he was at the same time penetrating the heart of all
cities and all mankind. Joyce suffered from an eye
disease and lived all his life on the verge of poverty, but
he was devoted to his work as a writer.
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His first important work was "Dubliners' (1914), a collection of 15
short stories, all realistic and impressionistic studies of the life,
thoughts, dreams, aspirations and frustrations of diverse
inhabitants in the Irish capital. He wrote: "My intention was to
write a chapter of the moral history of my country and I chose
Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of
paralysis (i.e. moral hemiplegia or spiritual poverty)." In this
paralysed city, everything stands under the sway of priests. The
young may dream of escaping from the narrow confines, but since
even their dreams of getting away are shaped in the existing
surroundings, their efforts often end in bitter resignation or
fruitless discontent.
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In the story "Eveline", a Dublin girl, weary of
her tedious life, has the chance to escape to
Buenos Ayres with a sailor who wants to marry
her. But this signifies a break with all her past
life. At the last moment, she clings to the iron
railing at the docks, incapable of following her
suitor. These stories are written in accordance
with Joyce's theory of ' epiphanies" .i.e. deep
insights that might be gained through incidents
and circumstances which seem outwardly
insignificant.
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His first novel, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' (1916),
is largely autobiographical. It describes the childhood, youth and
early manhood of Stephen Dedalus, a highly gifted young
Irishman. After mental torment and inner conflict, Stephen
abandons Catholicism and leaves Ireland making up his mind to
devote himself to artistic career in exile: 'I will not serve that in
which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home. my
fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in
some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can,
using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use-silence, exile, and cunning.' The plot is symbolic of the relation
between an artist and society as well as that between art and exile
in the modern western world. In the novel, there are changes of
vocabulary, idiom, and prose structure to befit the various stages
of the hero's development from childhood to early manhood, but
the novel presents no difficulty as prose. It is the author's
"preliminary canter over the field of infinite stylistic
adaptability".
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“Ulysses" the novel which took Joyce 7 years to
complete became a centre of controversy on its
publication in 1922. In plot bearing a parallel to
Homer's great epic ' Odyssey" which tells of the
wanderings and adventures of 'the ancient Greek hero
Odysseus, otherwise called Ulysses. Joyce's novel tells
of the Wanderings and "adventures" of Leopold Bloom,
a modern Ulysses, during the 24 hours of a single day,
June 16. 1904. There are 3 main characters: Leopold
Bloom, an ordinary Jewish businessman in Dublin, his
wife Molly, a concert singer, and Stephen Dedalus
from "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", a writer
like Joyce. The story is told through recording the
characters' mental activities by the use of the" stream
of consciousness" method.
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It shows how Leopold wanders about the Dublin streets on his
daily business as an advertising agent, is tempted by the
barmaids and lured by the shop--windows, meets Stephen m
drunkenness and sends him home, but is all the time worrying
about Molly, his .unfaithful wife, who is carrying on an affair
with an impresario. Boylan--thus the reader may see "a whole
individual" who is representative of universal human existence
in modern western world. The "stream of consciousness"
method was used by the author to depict what the inner, mental
world of his characters actually was. Joyce was free in his
experiments with the English language and grammar.
Sometimes he retained the ordinary sentence structures, but
more often he broke through "the fetters of syntax" In a chapter
of the novel, the language goes through every stage in the
development of English prose from Anglo-Saxon to the present
day to symbolize the growth of a foetus in the womb. In the last
chapter, Molly's natural, disconnected flow of thoughts in bed is
recorded by the "stream of consciousness'' style of prose in 8
unpunctuated pages.
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"Finnegans Wake" (1939), Joyce's last novel,
went even further in his experiments with his
writing method. From the beginning to the end,
it depicts a dream of Mr. Earwicker, a Dublin
innkeeper", in a dream language". "In this
immense work," a critic wrote. "Joyce had
written a collection of words, some derived
from languages other than English, and many
apparently invented, whose significance no
single reader can ever hope to gain."
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James Joyce was one of the most original novelists of the 20th
century, whose work shows a unique synthesis of realism, the
"stream of consciousness" and symbolism. His masterpiece
"Ulysses" has been called "a modern prose epic". But he is also
the greatest enigma in 20th-century literature. His admirers have
praised him as "second only to Shakespeare in his mastery of the
English language", whereas the average readers and not a few
reviewers have complained that his masterpieces, especially
"Finnegans Wake", are difficult to comprehend and even
"unreadable". It may be still early to arrive at a final estimation
of his literary achievement, we had better regard "Ulysses" and
"Finnegans Wake" as unprecedented experiments in a new prose
style and a new novel form, the verdict of whose real value will
be given by future literary historians, or by Time, who is the
most impartial literary historian of all.
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Artistic points of view
(1) Joyce is a self-conscious and self-prepared artist. He holds
that the subject matter of art should not be limited only to the
sublime; anything that pleases the aesthetic sensitivity can be
the subject matter of art. To Joyce, the creative artist should be
concerned with the beautiful. As to how to apprehend the
beautiful, Joyce quotes Aquinas' notion about the three
required things for the perception of beauty, i.e. wholeness or
integrity, harmony or proportion, and clarity or radiance.
(2) Joyce believes that literary art can be roughly divided into
three forms, i.e. lyrical, epical and dramatic. He also thinks
that the artist is two in one: on one hand, he is an unconscious
receptor, who reacts emotionally to the world around him; on
the other hand, he is a conscious converter, and schemes them
in different forms.
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(3) In Joyce's opinion, the dramatic form is the
highest form of art. To his understanding, the
artist, who wants to reach the highest stage and
to gain the insights necessary for the creation
of dramatic art, must rise to the position of god
and be completely objective.
(4) To Joyce, comedy is the perfect manner in
art. That well explains why Joyce sticks to
comedy in his writings. And this comic spirit,
which makes its early appearance in A Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man, achieves its
great flowering in Ulysses and Finnegans
Wake.
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(1) Dubliners (1914)
A collection of 15 short stories, it is the first important
work of Joyce's lifelong preoccupation with Dublin life.
The stories have an artistic unity given by Joyce who
intended "to write a chapter of the moral history of my
country.., under four of its aspects: childhood,
adolescence, maturity and public life". Likewise, the
stories progress from simple to complex. Each story
presents an aspect of "dear dirty Dublin", an aspect of
the city's paralysis--moral, political, or spiritual. Each
story is an action, defining a frustration or defeat of the
soul. And the whole sequence of the stories represents
the entire course of moral deterioration in Dublin,
ending in the death of the soul.
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(2) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
(A) Story
The story develops around the life of a middle-class
Irish boy, Stephen Dedalus, from his infancy in the
strongly Catholic, intensely nationalistic environment
of Dublin in the 1880s to his departure from Ireland
some twenty years later.
In his childhood and adolescent period, Stephen
experiences and feels the oppressive pressures from the
moral, political and spiritual environment; with
repeated frustrations and futile isolation, he turns to
savage physical desire as an outlet. This, however, only
makes matters worse and later at a moment of
revelation on the seashore, Stephen suddenly realizes
that the artistic vocation is his true mission and for its
fulfillment he leaves Ireland.
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(B) Theme
The title of this novel suggests a character study with
strong autobiographical elements. So far as the subject
matter is concerned, A Portrait belongs to the kind of
fiction known as the Bildungsroman (Novel of
Education). This kind of fiction is usually about a
sensitive young man who is at first shaped by
excessively powerful and oppressive forces of his
environment but gradually realizes the pressure and
rebels against it and tries to find his own identity. In
this sense, Joyce's Portrait can be read as a
straightforward, naturalistic account of the bitter
youthful experiences and final artistic and spiritual
liberation of the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus--Joyce's
alter ego in the novel.
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(C) Structure
The structure of A Portrait is based on the threedimension growth (i. e. physical, spiritual and artistic)
of a sensitive boy to young manhood. In the novel, the
author builds up a radiant pattern to expand Stephen's
growth on different levels. By using subjective realism
and the stream-of-consciousness technique, Joyce not
only creates a natural pattern of Stephen's growing up:
physically from infancy to manhood, intellectually
from ignorance to scholarship, and in language from
simple to complex, but also presents a convincing
picture of Stephen's spiritual development from
disillusion to overt rebellion and, symbolically, an
exploration of the evolution of his artistic soul from the
early fetal stage to the maturity and, finally, to the
newly-born artist. To avoid slacken structure and make
the novel more effective, Joyce adopts the device of
montages to organize his novel.
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(3) Ulysses (1922)
As Joyce's masterpiece, Ulysses has become a
prime example of modernism in literature. It is
such an uncommon novel that there arises the
question whether it can be termed as a "novel" in
the first place at all; for it seems to lack almost
all the essential qualities of the novel in a
traditional sense: there is virtually no story, no
plot, almost no action, and little characterization
in the usual sense.
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(A) Story
Ulysses gives an account of man's life during one day,
or exactly 18 hours, in Dublin. The three major
characters are the Blooms, Leopaold Bloom, and his
wife, Marion Tweedy Bloom (Molly), and Stephen
Dedalus, the protagonist in A Portrait. The story of
the novel is carried on more in the inner mind of the
character than in the outside world. The events of the
day, and what preoccupies the major characters of the
novel alike, seem to be trivial, insignificant, or even
banal. Beneath the surface of the events, nevertheless,
the natural flow of mental reflections, the shifting
moods and impulses in the characters' inner world are
richly presented in an un-precedentedly frank and
penetrating way.
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(B) Theme
In Ulysses, Joyce seeks to present a microcosm of the whole
human life by providing an instance of how a single event contains
all the events of its kind, and how history is recapitulated in the
happenings of one day. With great varieties and minute details,
Ulysses embodies a symbolic picture of all human history, which is
simultaneously tragic and comic, heroic and trivial, magnificent
and dreary. Critics differ greatly so far as the novel's theme is
concerned, some regard it as an encyclopedic satire on the
degeneration and futility of modern life in Western world in which
men become rootless, lonely, isolated from one another, alienated
with the society, and frustrated by love. Actually, Ulysses is an
anti-novel in which modern men are portrayed neither as heroes
nor as villains, but as vulgar and trivial men with splitting
personalities, disillusioned ideals, sordid minds and broken
families, who are searching in vain for harmonious human
relationships and spiritual sustenance in a decaying world.
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(C) Structure
In Ulysses, Joyce is mainly concerned with his
characters' psychic processes, which are
formless. To compensate for this, Joyce makes
use of several means to superimpose patterns
or forms on his formless subject matter, such
as the unities of time and place, Homeric and
Biblical patterns, symbolic structures, image or
word-phrase motifs, cyclical schemes, and so
on.
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(D) Style
Joyce takes great pains to create Ulysses from a
complex of various techniques and experiments. But
generally speaking, Joyce writes Ulysses in three
main styles.
The first is Joyce's original style: straightforward,
lucid, logical and leisurely. Subtlety, economy and
exactness are his standards.
The second is a style mainly used to render the socalled stream of consciousness. The incomplete, rapid,
broken wording and the fragmentary sentences are
the typical features of this style, which reflect the
shifting, flirting, disorderly flow of the thoughts in
the major characters' mind.
The third is a kind of mock-heroic style, the essence
of which lies in the application of apparently
inappropriate styles.
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Araby
North Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at
the hour when the Christian Brothers' School set the boys free.
An uninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end,
detached from its neighbours in a square ground. The other
houses of the street, conscious of decent lives within them,
gazed at one another with brown imperturbable faces.
The former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back
drawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed,
hung in all the rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen
was littered with old useless papers. Among these I found a few
paper-covered books, the pages of which were curled and damp:
The Abbot, by Walter Scott, The Devout Communicant, and The
Memoirs of Vidocq. I liked the last best because its leaves were
yellow. The wild garden behind the house contained a central
apple-tree and a few straggling bushes, under one of which I
found the late tenant's rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very
charitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to
institutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.
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When the short days of winter came, dusk fell before we had well
eaten our dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown
sombre. The space of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing
violet and towards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble
lanterns. The cold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed.
Our shouts echoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought
us through the dark muddy lanes behind the houses, where we ran
the gauntlet of the rough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors
of the dark dripping gardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to
the dark odorous stables where a coachman smoothed and combed
the horse or shook music from the buckled harness. When we
returned to the street, light from the kitchen windows had filled the
areas. If my uncle was seen turning the corner, we hid in the shadow
until we had seen him safely housed. Or if Mangan's sister came out
on the doorstep to call her brother in to his tea, we watched her from
our shadow peer up and down the street. We waited to see whether
she would remain or go in and, if she remained, we left our shadow
and walked up to Mangan's steps resignedly. She was waiting for us,
her figure defined by the light from the half-opened door. Her
brother always teased her before he obeyed, and I stood by the
railings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body, and
the soft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.
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Every morning I lay on the floor in the front
parlour watching her door. The blind was
pulled down to within an inch of the sash so
that I could not be seen. When she came out on
the doorstep my heart leaped. I ran to the hall,
seized my books and followed her. I kept her
brown figure always in my eye and, when we
came near the point at which our ways
diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her.
This happened morning after morning. I had
never spoken to her, except for a few casual
words, and yet her name was like a summons
to all my foolish blood. .
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Her image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to
romance. On Saturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had
to go to carry some of the parcels. We walked through the flaring
streets, jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the
curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on
guard by the barrels of pigs' cheeks, the nasal chanting of streetsingers, who sang a come-all-you about O'Donovan Rossa, or a
ballad about the troubles in our native land. These noises converged
in a single sensation of life for me: I imagined that I bore my chalice
safely through a throng of foes. Her name sprang to my lips at
moments in strange prayers and praises which I myself did not
understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why)
and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my
bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would
ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of
my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words
and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.
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One evening I went into the back drawing-room in which
the priest had died. It was a dark rainy evening and there
was no sound in the house. Through one of the broken
panes I heard the rain impinge upon the earth, the fine
incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds.
Some distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me.
I was thankful that I could see so little. All my senses
seemed to desire to veil themselves and, feeling that I
was about to slip from them, I pressed the palms of my
hands together until they trembled, murmuring: `O love!
O love!' many times.
At last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first
words to me I was so confused that I did not know what
to answer. She asked me was I going to Araby. I forgot
whether I answered yes or no. It would be a splendid
bazaar; she said she would love to go.
`And why can't you?' I asked.
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While she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round
and round her wrist. She could not go, she said,
because there would be a retreat that week in her
convent. Her brother and two other boys were
fighting for their caps, and I was alone at the railings.
She held one of the spikes, bowing her head towards
me. The light from the lamp opposite our door caught
the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested
there and, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It
fell over one side of her dress and caught the white
border of a petticoat, just visible as she stood at ease.
`It's well for you,' she said.
`If I go,' I said, `I will bring you something.'
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What innumerable follies laid waste my waking and
sleeping thoughts after that evening! I wished to
annihilate the tedious intervening days. I chafed
against the work of school. At night in my bedroom
and by day in the classroom her image came between
me and the page I strove to read. The syllables of the
word Araby were called to me through the silence in
which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern
enchantment over me. I asked for leave to go to the
bazaar on Saturday night. My aunt was surprised, and
hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I answered
few questions in class. I watched my master's face
pass from amiability to sternness; he hoped I was not
beginning to idle. I could not call my wandering
thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with the
serious work of life which, now that it stood between
me and my desire, seemed to me child's play, ugly
monotonous child's play.
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On Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to
the bazaar in the evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking
for the hat-brush, and answered me curtly:
`Yes, boy, I know.'
As he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at
the window. I felt the house in bad humour and walked slowly
towards the school. The air was pitilessly raw and already my heart
misgave me.
When I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still
it was early. I sat staring at the clock for some time and, when its
ticking began to irritate me, I left the room. I mounted the staircase
and gained the upper part of the house. The high, cold, empty,
gloomy rooms liberated me and I went from room to room singing.
From the front window I saw my companions playing below in the
street. Their cries reached me weakened and indistinct and, leaning
my forehead against the cool glass, I looked over at the dark house
where she lived. I may have stood there for an hour, seeing nothing
but the brown-clad figure cast by my imagination, touched
discreetly by the lamplight at the curved neck, at the hand upon the
railings and at the border below the dress.
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When I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the
fire. She was an old, garrulous woman, a pawnbroker's widow,
who collected used stamps for some pious purpose. I had to endure
the gossip of the tea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond an
hour and still my uncle did not come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go:
she was sorry she couldn't wait any longer, but it was after eight
o'clock and she did not like to be out late, as the night air was bad
for her. When she had gone I began to walk up and down the room,
clenching my fists. My aunt said:
`I'm afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.'
At nine o'clock I heard my uncle's latchkey in the hall door. I heard
him talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had
received the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs.
When he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give me
the money to go to the bazaar. He had forgotten.
`The people are in bed and after their first sleep now,' he said.
I did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:
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`Can't you give him the money and let him go? You've kept him late
enough as it is.'
My uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he
believed in the old saying: `All work and no play makes Jack a dull
boy.' He asked me where I was going and, when I told him a second
time, he asked me did I know The Arab's Farewell to his Steed.
When I left the kitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of
the piece to my aunt.
I held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham
Street towards the station. The sight of the streets thronged with
buyers and glaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my
journey. I took my seat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train.
After an intolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly.
It crept onward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river.
At Westland Row Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage
doors; but the porters moved them back, saying that it was a special
train for the bazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few
minutes the train drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I
passed out on to the road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that
it was ten minutes to ten. In front of me was a large building which
displayed the magical name.
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I could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar
would be closed, I passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a
shilling to a weary-looking man. I found myself in a big hall girded
at half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and
the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognized a silence
like that which pervades a church after a service. I walked into the
centre of the bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the
stalls which were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words
Café Chantant were written in coloured lamps, two men were
counting money on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.
Remembering with difficulty why I had come, I went over to one
of the stalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At
the door of the stall a young lady was talking and laughing with
two young gentlemen. I remarked their English accents and
listened vaguely to their conversation.
`O, I never said such a thing!'
`O, but you did!'
`O, but I didn't!'
`Didn't she say that?'
`Yes. I heard her.'
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`O, there's a... fib!'
Observing me, the young lady came over and asked
me did I wish to buy anything. The tone of her voice
was not encouraging; she seemed to have spoken to
me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the
great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side
of the dark entrance to the stall and murmured:
`No, thank you.'
The young lady changed the position of one of the
vases and went back to the two young men. They
began to talk of the same subject. Once or twice the
young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.
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I lingered before her stall, though I knew my
stay was useless, to make my interest in her
wares seem the more real. Then I turned away
slowly and walked down the middle of the
bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to fall
against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a
voice call from one end of the gallery that the
light was out. The upper part of the hall was
now completely dark.
Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a
creature driven and derided by vanity; and my
eyes burned with anguish and anger.
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(1) Story
A young boy, with the dawning awareness of sexuality,
develops a strong liking toward the sister of one of his
playmates. She asks him if he can go to a charity fair,
for she cannot. He resolves to go and buy a gift for her.
His uncle promises to give him the money he needs to
go to the fair. But on the very day of the charity fair, his
uncle comes home rather late. The waiting of his
uncle's coming home torments him immensely.
Nevertheless, he manages to get to the market only to
be disappointed by the gap between his expectation and
the actuality of the almost deserted fair. He perceives
some insignificant events, overhears some minor
conversations, and finally sees himself "as a creature
driven and derided by vanity“.
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(2) Theme
Insignificant as the events of the story may be, they
constitute a meaningful episode of the protagonist's
life experience that introduces him to awareness
about the discrepancies between expectation and
reality, between his pure infatuation about love and
the reality of vulgarity. The story is carried on and
organized by the quest on the boy's part of his
idealized childish love, up to the point of the boy's
recognition of the drabness and harshness of the adult
world. The story is therefore basically about the loss
of innocence—through painful experience the boy
gets to know the complexities of a world that he once
thought simple and predictable.