The Burnt and the Cooked Binaries and Continua in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Literature Essay Samples

The Christmas dinner scene ¹s divisive political and moral debate in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man underlines an essential obstacle to the artistic mind of Stephen Dedalus. Ireland imposes a set of oppressive binaries‹namely in the form of religion and nationalism‹from which he can escape only through the ambiguity of language and his developing theory of the aesthetic. His progression to systems of continua over binaries also functions as implicit instruction from Joyce on how to read the novel. In a piece of art so consumed with its own internal order, the author acknowledges the textual value of a structural analysis, but only for the ideological content of the work. To ingest the tragic emotion of the novel, the reader needs to split the emotional binary of pity and terror and hold a face looking two ways (176). In other words, the reader may not process the emotion of the novel in a diagrammatic form, as he may, for example, when linking the ends and beg innings of chapters or the motif of the word ivory. From this continuum follow Stephen ¹s ideas on stasis and radiance by which, presumably, we should behold Portrait as a work of beauty.However, Joyce complicates his Janus-like theory with Stephen ¹s proclamation that the simplest form of art is the lyrical form, the form wherein the artist presents his image in immediate relation to himself (184). The next form, the epical, is merely the artist ¹s image in mediate relation to himself and others (184). Portrait is, at its most basic level, the authorial framing of a younger self ¹s world‹both self-interrogation and mediated surveillance of the self with others‹and thus an ostensible aesthetic failure. The concluding project for Joyce, then, is the elevation of his literary adolescence beyond lyrical and epical autobiography and into the dramatic, in which the personality of the artistŠfinally refines itself out of existence (185). He can accomplish this only by applying the novel ¹s concept of rhythm to the biographical conflation of Joyce and Stephen‹the initial solipsistic and monochromatic deterrent to an imaginative dramatic aesthetic‹as viewed through the kaleidoscopic lens of exile.When a taunting schoolmate asks Stephen whether or not he kisses his mother goodnight, Stephen first answers yes and, when his peers mock him, recants and is again met with derision. There is no way out for him, and the early lesson of impossible logic imprints itself on him: What was the right answer to the question? He had given two and still Wells laughed (10). To escape the laughter or, in other words, to claim his own voice and not heed those of others, Stephen must find a third way, a triangulation which opens up a multiplicity of non-exclusive answers. Language is a powerful signifier in Irish culture, as evidenced by both the content and form of the Christmas dinner. Dante opens the discussion with identity logic, arguing that a p riest must be a singular entity who relates a Manichean morality: ‹ŠA priest would not be a priest if he did not tell his flock what is right and what is wrong (25). Joyce repeatedly emphasizes the table ¹s attention to the power of the word in the various rebuttals. Uncle Charles pleads Not another word now and Dante returns with ‹Nice language for any catholic to use! (25) Further attempts to conciliate‹‹Nobody is saying a word against them‹are met by Dante ¹s return to the oral interaction: ‹The bishops and priests of Ireland have spokenŠand they must be obeyed (25). Dante, who appeals to Mrs. Dedalus with ‹You hear? reaffirms the importance of language as a vessel for memory and morality: ‹O, he ¹ll remember all this when he grows up, said Dante hotly‹the language he heard against God and religion and priests in his own home (27). Evidently, Stephen does, but even at an early age he has discovered a defense against accepting th e binary morality of priests.Joyce establishes Stephen ¹s first as a poetic mind, able to find beauty in ordinary usage of language. The author of the start of the novel ¹s second episode is ambiguous, as the language is attuned to its own poetics (and thus, perhaps, Stephen ¹s own voice) but also to the overarching narrative:The wide playgrounds were swarming with boys. All were shouting and the prefects urged them on with strong cries. The evening air was pale and chilly and after every charge and thud of the foot-ballers the greasy leather orb flew like a heavy bird through the grey light. He kept on the fringe of his line, out of sight of his prefect, out of the reach of the rude feet, feigning to run now and then. (4)Structurally, many of the touches here are Joyce ¹s work. Stephen ¹s terror at the end of the first episode is remedied through claustrophobic refuge under the table, and here the agoraphobia of the wide playgrounds juxtaposes his continuing fear. Just as Joyce is clearly in charge of contrasting closed with open and domestic with recreational, he also rhymes the word cries with Stephen ¹s poem from the end of the first episode (Pull out his eyes / Apologise [4]). But the internal tension of the words here shows a developing awareness of and expertise with linguistic play, and should be read as Stephen ¹s. Instead of the simple abba rhyme scheme of the apologise poem, the language here fractures itself in a more sophisticated fashion. The f/b sound of foot-ballers is reversed by the sequential pairing of orb and flew, but not before greasy leather, sandwiched between them, finds its alliterative match at the end of the sentence with grey light. The play is kept up with f and r sounds of the next sentence, beginning with fringe and finding more reversal with rude feet and feigning to run. Stephen sets up phonic chiasma whose crossed lines befuddle the binary; the Manichean world of black-and-white blurs as Stephen ext ends his tonal range into new harmonious and discordant octaves.When motifs develop across the novel and not just a passage, however, we must concede them to Joyce ¹s structural control. Stephen ¹s later prediction that There would be cloudy grey light over the playground (20) and his eventual aesthetic triumph of ‹A day of dappled seaborne clouds reconfigure his growing sensitivity to his interior periodic prose under Joyce ¹s own attention to periodicity, to the rhythmic pattern of the novel (143). The pun has always been a weapon of play, a double-edged sword that cuts into the ignorance of a monochrome world. Joyce wants his reader to combine appreciation of both narratological and linguistic structures. When Stephen notes that belt was also to give a fellow a belt, that the word functions as both a device of self-aid and as a violent action to others, we must remember this as Stephen experiments with other binaries (5). The printed names of cold and hot on the fa ucets in the school lavatory strike him as queer (7). That water, the most miscible of substances, should be defined only under two temperatures contradicts Stephen ¹s own recognition of the scale of degrees: He felt cold and then a little hot (7). At this point in the narrative, this information is just that, factual examples whose intellectual content outweighs any emotional connection we may feel to hot and cold.By Stephen ¹s late adolescence, he explores the same hot/cold binary within a far more intimate framework. When the dean of studies at his university asks Stephen if fire is beautiful, the student ¹s response bespeaks why he is, indeed, a student and not a priest: ‹ŠIn so far as it satisfies the animal craving for warmth fire is a good. In hell, however, it is an evil (159). The confining religious view of fire receives a jab here, and the reader feels something in Stephen ¹s response beyond a simple philosophical shift. The next paragraph again adds the intellectual fuel of Joyce ¹s structural command to Stephen ¹s passionate voice: Like Ignatius [the dean] was lame but in his eyes burned no spark of Ignatius ¹ enthusiasm. Even the legendary craft of the company, a craft subtler and more secret than its fabled books of secret subtle wisdom, had not fired his soul with the energy of apostleship (160). The repetition of fire imagery‹burned no spark and fired his soul‹still uses the style indirecte as a means of extending the analytic and emotional reach of the words. The reader is able to face two ways.As the prose is a fusion of Joyce and Stephen, the novel maintains a vocal rhythm that coincides with Stephen ¹s theory of aesthetic appreciation of an object: Šyou apprehend it as balanced part against part within its limits; you feel the rhythm of its structure. In other words, the synthesis of immediate perception is followed by the analysis of apprehension (183). By turns immediate perception and analyti c apprehension, Portrait, and its component episodes, are also selfbounded and selfcontained upon the immeasurable background of space or time which is not it (183). Yet, as we see from the progression of fire imagery, much is lost in the appreciation of the singular as opposed to the total. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, then, with its titular call to the reader to recognize its inherent artistic self-production, is a component part of two larger works: Ulysses and Joyce ¹s own life. Although Joyce may not have known he would later write Ulysses, he probably did know that he would keep Stephen Dedalus as a recurring character in some later work, as he often spread his characters across several narratives (especially in Dubliners). In this sense of playing off Ulysses (especially the first three episodes featuring Stephen), Portrait achieves Stephen ¹s first definition of rhythm‹the relation of part to part in any esthetic whole (177). Portrait ¹s episodic s tructure on its own satisfies Stephen ¹s second definition‹the relation of an esthetic whole to its part (177). Viewing the entirety of Ulysses as the ocean and Portrait as the stream, Portrait finalizes Stephen ¹s definition of rhythm: the relation of any part to the esthetic whole of which it is a part (177). The autobiography of Portrait rises beyond the lyrical because it assumes the polyphony of Ulysses, and the lambent radiance of the shorter novel ¹s fading coal retains heat from the fireplace of the epic.This may seem like specious reasoning; by this rationale, anything written now (such as this paper) has the potential to be a greater achievement by virtue of its placement within a future opus. A safer place to look for a reservoir is within Joyce ¹s life after he left Dublin. The word polyphony has become a literary catch phrase that derives from its etymological roots of many voices. Gary Morson explains in Narrative Freedom: As Bahktin coined the term, a polyphonic novel is one in which a special relation obtains between author and hero. That relation allows the hero to be truly free, capable of surprising not only other characters but also the author. The problem of a conventional autobiography in presenting polyphony is that the author and central character are the same person, or altered versions from temporal distance, and the conversation remains monotonous (single-toned, not necessarily boring). Joyce nears solving this describing Stephen through an ironic filter. Two prime examples of this come in Stephen ¹s anticipation of an epiphany. In Chapter Two, Stephen fantasizes about meeting the unsubstantial image of Mercedes and, alone, surrounded by darkness and silence, being transfigured (54). The abrupt end of the episode leads to a scene of the Dedalus family ¹s eviction‹Joyce ¹s realistic version of physical transfigurement, actual dislocation of the figure. An even more self-parodying irony occurs in Chapt er Four, when Stephen sees a bird shortly after deciding to free himself from religion:What did it mean? Was it a quaint device opening a page of some medieval book of prophecies and symbols, a hawklike man flying sunward above the sea, a prophecy of the end he had been born to serve and had been following through the mists of childhood and boyhood, a symbol of the artist forging anew in his workshop out of the slugging matter of the earth a new soaring impalpable imperishable being? (145)Joyce ¹s vivisection of his own literary techniques and of the reader ¹s ability to read the text highlights an essential difference between Joyce ¹s irony and typical autobiographical irony. Joyce is not simply an older, wiser version of Stephen. Exile has changed him; although the final image from Stephen ¹s diary is that of the smithy of my soul, the artist still must forgeŠthe uncreated conscience of his race (219). He must make something out of nothing, and not just alter the p reexisting. Exile is Stephen ¹s only option of escaping the chorus around him, and Joyce makes the reader understand that exile is a way, ultimately, of silencing the pernicious effects of those voices on the expatriate. Exile has given Joyce the ability to understand his former self such that his irony is a result of having shed his sagging accouterments of personality. Joyce is no longer Stephen Dedalus; the ironic distance is the span of knowing a character so intimately, but still being able to reject the dual movements of desire and loathing and beholding the character with objective stasis. James Joyce is Stephen Dedalus ¹s as yet uncreated conscience, and the final continuum‹that of an author who can slide toward or away from his subject with ease‹moves Portrait out of the genre of autobiography and into that of tragic drama.Works Cited:Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. USA: Barnes Noble Books, 1999.Morson, Gary Saul. Narrative and Fre edom: The Shadows of Time. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1994. 91.

Homosexuality - peoples choice - Free Essay Example

Homosexuality has existed for many years. Majority of the time homosexuals get criticized and are viewed as sinners. People still dont understand what homosexuality is, and what causes a person to be homosexual. Braverman (1973) in her book gives a description and definition of what homosexuality is. She mentions that homosexuality is an erotic preference for individuals of ones own sex. Nowadays individuals who identify themselves as homosexuals call themselves gay (Bravermen, 1973). There are many stereotypes and myths about homosexuality. People believe that these individuals are homosexuals because they arent sure what their gender identity is. When in reality, gender identity is a whole different topic. Another myth or stereotype is that homosexuals are pedophiles, but there is no evidence or studies that support this claim. Homosexuals are normal humans just like everyone else, they are ordinary people with ordinary interests (Bravermen, 1973). Although it is hard to understand and really know how these individuals feel. There have been plenty of models that scientists have created. One of these models is Casss Model of Homosexual Identity Formation. This model is based on the assumptions that homosexuality is something that occurs between the individual and the environment (Kenneady Oswalt, 2014). There are six stages to this model. The very first stage focuses on consciousness awareness, in which the individual notices his behavior and feelings are different from what society and the norm is. The second stage to this model is identity comparison. This is when the individual accepts he/she is homosexual and feels good to be identified as homosexual. In this stage the person can also deny his sexual preferences (Kenneady Oswalt, 2014). The third stage is identity tolerance. This stage is when individuals start to look for others whose sexual preference is the same. This makes them have a higher self-esteem and create clos e relationships with people who they can identify with. The following stage is identity acceptance. This stage is when the individual has a more positive self-image of themselves. The next stage is identity pride; which explains how these individuals start feeling pride for their sexual preferences. At this stage individuals become more informed about homosexuality. The last stage is identity synthesis. This is when individuals are fully identified as homosexual, and they see it as an important part of their image. This is when they fully comprehend why they feel a certain way, and they start to feel good about themselves even though people might seem them as different (Kenneady Oswalt, 2014). This model is one of many others that try to inform what homosexuals have to go through, and what their process is. Although it doesnt explain why individuals are homosexuals it does provide beneficial information to understand them better. Nowadays there has been many theories and studies that try to explain what causes individuals to feel sexually attracted by members of their own sex. There has been a lot of controversy on whether homosexuality is something individuals are born with, or something that they choose to be. There are studies that prove that sexual orientation is a choice, because these individuals change their sexual orientation. The biological side of this issue focuses more on explaining genetic differences in homosexuals and heterosexual men. Some of these experiments have focused on studying the brain, fraternal birth order research, genetic scanning, and many others. There has been plenty of studies that focus on proving the biological side of homosexuality. Although the studies are scientific, there are a couple of problems that make the studies not one hundred percent reliable. One of those studies was done by Bogaert (2003). In this study they researched the relationship or correlation between body size, fraternal birth order, and sexual orientation (Bogaert, 2003). Their results showed that there is a relationship between late birth order and homosexuality in males. Which results in homosexual men having a bigger number of brothers than heterosexuals. The study didnt find any significant correlation between sexual preferences and body weight. Although the study proved that fraternal birth order in biological brothers had a correlation with homosexuality, the study can be weakened because the results arent generalizable. The results of this study are only applicable to biological male brothers and cannot be applicable to biological sisters. T he results show that males are the only ones that are affected by this phenomenon but not females. If the results of a study are not able to be generalizable to all the population then the study can present certain limitations, and it affects the accuracy and reliability of the results. Another flaw in this study was found by Jones Kwee (2018), they mention that the sample used was nonrepresentative. The sample of this study was enlisted from the Toronto Gay Pride Parade and other LGBT communities (Jones Kwee, 2018). Nonrepresentative samples affects the study because this sample can cause many biases. One of those problems this sample caused is that later-born gay men was overrepresented because the sample they got was from a Gay Parade, which is obvious that these gay men have officially came out as homosexuals and are proud of their sexual orientation. (Jones Kwee, 2018). This sample could have been overrepresenting the later-born gay men and underrepresenting the earlier-born gay men at the Parade. This can result in naturally exaggerating the fraternal birth order effect in this sample (Jones Kwee, 2018). Although the results of the study proved that fraternal birth order research is correlated with homosexuality, the sample they used was biased because the y only gathered their sample from the Toronto Gay Pride Parade. This makes the study questionable whether if the findings are accurate or not. Gavrilets, Friberg, Rice (2018) criticizes and gives many reasons why the Fraternal Birth Order Effect is not the main explanation of homosexuality. The FBOE focuses on explaining homosexuality by using the fraternal birth order. Although it has good evidence, the problem with this theory is that it cant explain homosexuality in individuals that dont have any older brothers (Gavrilets, et al., 2018). Another reason is that the FBOE cant explain female homosexuality. There hasnt been any evidence that shows that the FBOE theory also works for female homosexuality. Gavrilets et al. (2018) points out that the FBOE is inconsistent because there is a low concordance of sexual preferences in twins. Since these brothers are twins they should both be equally affected because they have the same genes and were developed in the same fetal environment (Gavrilets et al., 2018). Another reason why FBOE cant be the explanation for homosexuality is because the researchers have made many predictio ns that have not been tested. Some of these predictions is that there is a higher number of homosexuals in more religious families, and that this will result in homosexuals having a larger number of offspring. Another prediction is that there will be a higher number of homosexuals in nonWestern societies where the families are usually large (Gavrilets et al., 2018). These predictions have not been tested, which makes the study run into some problems. Although the FBOE seemed to be in the right path to explain homosexuality, it still needs many things to work on before its findings can be generalizable to all the homosexual population. Another study that points out the biological side of homosexuality was written by, Mustanski et al. (2005). This study is one of the first studies that reports a full genome scan of sexual orientation in men (Mustanski et al., 2005). The purpose of this study was to find if there is any correlation between genetics and sexual orientation in men. The sample of this study was gathered through advertisements. They utilized individuals from 146 families, 73 families were previously studied by other experimenters. The other 73 families were new families not previously tested (Mustanski et al., 2005). There are some sample biased found in this study because the samples were found through advertisements through local homophile publications. In these advertisements the researchers clearly stated that the purpose of the study was to look for genetic factors in homosexual men. Since the subjects recruited are volunteering themselves, they can influence the results because the subjects can be inclined to favor the study. This can be considered limitations to the study because the participants can intentionally affect the results, which will become a problem when trying to generalize the findings (Jones Kwee, 2018). Another aspect to have in mind is that the results of this study showed that there was no evidence of a linkage relationship in the Xq28 region to homosexuality. This is interesting because the original study that was done by Hamer (1993) found that the Xq28 region of the X chromosome was linked to homosexuality. This can cause the credibility of this study to be questionable because Mustanski et al. (2005) wasnt able to replicate the previous findings. Another problem with this study was that the media headlined that Mustanski et al. (2005) had found specific chromosomes (7, 8, and 10) to be linked to homosexuality. When in reality Mustanski et al. (2005) mentions that they found two regions for suggestive linkage and one region of near significance. They never stated that these chromosomes were one hundred percent linked to homosexuality. Overall, their findings werent proven to have statistical significance. Although this study showed some evidence, in the future there should be replications of this study to show that the findings are significantly important. Another study that has taken place was written by Byne et al. (2001). This study focuses on human brain structure, and whether there is any good evidence that suggests that the brain has a relationship with sexual orientation. They examined the human hypothalamus and looked for any differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Their results showed that there was a difference in the interstitial nuclei of the human anterior hypothalamus (INAH1â€Å"4) in heterosexual men than women (Byne, et al., 2001). Although the researchers thought these results meant something important for their study, it didnt. The differences in INAH1-4 didnt mean that males had a bigger size or a denser neuron. It just meant that women have fewer neurons in that specific area (Jones Kwee, 2018). The findings were not significant to the study because the difference in INAH1-4 wasnt important. The researchers also found that the INAH3 volume of homosexual males wasnt much different from heterosexual males and heterosexual females. Which basically means that the differences in INAH3 were not statistically significant in comparing heterosexual males or females. Byne et al. (2001) states sexual orientation cannot be reliably predicted on the basis of INAH3 volume alone. Researchers concluded that even if they had found a significant difference between the INAH3 of homosexuals and heterosexuals, it wouldnt have mattered, because they cant predict that homosexuality has a correlation with INAH3. This is not enough evidence to make this type of statement. Later in the study, researchers found out that the nonsignificant difference they had found earlier in heterosexual and homosexual men was not attributable to numbers of neurons, because homosexual and heterosexual men were found to have comparable number of neurons (Jones Kwee, 2018). This makes the study step on a limb becau se the findings they had made werent useful. Although the study doesnt show any differences between homosexuals and heterosexual men, there is probably a difference, but this difference might not be the same as the one between males and females. Another problem with this study was that Byne et al. (2001) mentions that if these differences exist, they dont mean that they are proof of prenatal, or that they biologically determine sexual orientation. Although the differences in INAH3 might be caused by prenatal hormones, there is a chance that other differences might emerge later in the development and the neurons that survive become part of the circuit (Byne et al., 2001). This means that although there might be a difference in INAH3, it doesnt mean that its something biological or something they are born with, because there are other variables that might influence this difference. Many of these differences can mean the result of learning and not necessarily something biological. Based on this study, it is obvious that there isnt sufficient evidence to affirm that there is a relationship between brain structure and sexual orientation. There have also been studies that explain homosexuality as a choice, and people decide their sexual preferences. These researchers believe that homosexuality is something people choose to be and not something they are born with. One of these researchers has made multiple studies on sexual preference and homosexuality. One of the many longitudinal studies by Diamond (2003) focuses on homosexual women who were interviewed three times in a 5-year period. The purpose of the study was to see if these women would relinquish their sexual identity in the 5-year period that the study took place. The aim of the study was also to see if by relinquishing their sexual identity they would have different histories, attractions, and behaviors (Diamond, 2003). There were 80 non-heterosexual women who participated in the study. They interviewed the participants before and after the 5-year process. The results of the study showed that over the 5-year period; one fourth of the women relinquished their l esbian or bisexual identities. Half of these women went back to being heterosexual, and the other half stopped labeling their sexual identity (Diamond, 2003). This study proves that homosexuality is a choice. If homosexuality was something that people are born with, they wouldnt be able to change it whenever they felt like it. The study proves that these women changed their sexual identity because they had the choice to do it. They were able to do it because they are the ones that decide what sexual orientation they are better identified with. Another study by Diamond (2000) also proves that homosexuality is something people have the choice to decide. This study is similar to the other study previously mentioned, but the difference is that it was only a 2-year period. There were 80 women who participated in this study. The researcher gathered the information via interviewing the subjects. The results of the study showed that although there was general stability in their sexual attraction, half of the women reported they had changed their sexual identity (Diamond, 200). This evidence demonstrates sexual identity is chosen and not biological. Warren (2014) in her article mentions that choice is the only thing that sets us apart from animals and plants. She explains that as humans we choose thousands of things. One of those choices is what sexual orientation people prefer. Humans are able to choose if they want to come out as gay or if they want to stay heterosexual. It doesnt matter if a person is gay or straight, they still have the right to make choices (Warren, 2014). Both of the studies conducted by Diamond proved that these individuals can change their sexual orientation, and that homosexuality its not something biological. Another