Cossman 1

The Importance of Stream of Consciousness in James Joyces Works

Iggy Cossman Miss Nichole Wilson AP English Literature & Composition 12 February 14

I have read and understand the sections in the Student Handbook regarding Mason High School's Honesty/Cheating Policy. By affixing this statement to the title page of my paper, I am certifying that I have not cheated or plagiarized in the process of completing this assignment. If it is found that cheating and/or plagiarism did take place in the writing of this paper, I understand the possible consequences of the act, which could include a "0" on the paper, as well as an "F" as a final grade in the course.

Iggy Cossman

Cossman 2

Research Paper Outline

I. Introduction:

a. Lead Story: Age 5: Stephen goes to the bad Clongowes School - a bland square of gray and gross full of "dullards" - where he becomes schoolyard hero after tattling on Father Dolan, Hurroo! Age 13: Stephen is a bright and studious student at Belvedere College, and he constantly reads The Count of Monte Cristo over and over again, longing for a Mercedes of his own, and fulfills his lustful nature after stumbling upon a Dublin whore. Age 17: He has become obsessed with the hungers of the body, and indulges in those over his religious practices. Father Arnall delivers a sermon at the College that falters Stephen's mind and ego, he concludes that taking precedence in religious practice is the only secure way of gaining entrance into Heaven. Age 19: Every day of his life revolves around prayer and practice, avoiding the "flood of temptation" (Joyce 140) that violated his youth. He prefers a secondary role in Church to one in the center. One day, he stumbles upon a girl who reminds him of a "beautiful seabird" (Joyce 158), and soon awakens from a dream to find himself filled with joy unfelt before, soothing in its radiant presence. Age 20: I go now, leaving physically what I have already had emotionally years ago. The tides of open seas and the welcoming of narrow roads bid me forth to join the company of my kinsmen and leave this lonely wretch.

b. Beyond the Lead Transition Paragraph: The above paragraph is a summarization of The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. It was the first novel by the author to incorporate free indirect discourse - or, stream of consciousness - heavily in the writing. It was lightly explored in The Dead in his previous novel, but would become more predominant in his next two novels, Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. Stephen Dedalus returns in Ulysses as one of the

Cossman 3

main characters alongside the Blooms, and having already grown to know him in the previous novel, it makes the reading of Ulysses slightly easier to understand even though we are reading inside the minds of three different characters throughout that story. And although Gabriel, Stephen, Leopold, and Molly all have different personalities and aspirations, the stream of consciousness Joyce uses allows us to see the strong similarities amongst the characters that would otherwise be undetectable.

c. Transition into your Thesis Statement: The stream of consciousness technique mastered by James Joyce in his novels allowed him to reveal that the specific challenges an individual faces is paradoxically universal; at the heart of the specific is the universal.

II. Body Paragraph 1 (You can have more commentary/concrete details than what is shown here).

a. Topic Sentence (State your Main Point): The first universal issue faced among all the characters is their jealousy.

b. Commentary (to set up your Concrete Detail): Gabriel is jealous of the passionate Michael, Stephen is in love with Emma - a reflection of Joyce's love for Zora Barnacle and jealousy he had for her at times - and Leopold is dealt dealing with Molly's affair.

c. Concrete Detail (to defend your Topic Sentence): While watching his wife sleep, Gabriel thinks of Michael, "He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love." (Joyce 114).

Cossman 4

d. Commentary (to analyze your previous Concrete Detail and introduce your next one): While we do not see directly inside Gabriel's mind, the narrator's distant voice tells us what he is thinking. He is mad that Gretta had loved someone before him, and probably much more than she had loved him. In Ulysses, much of Leopold's conflict deals with Molly's affair.

e. Concrete Detail (to further defend your Topic Sentence and Commentary): In the Penelope chapter, Molly tells herself that most men do not have, "a particle of love in their natures" (Joyce 767).

f. Commentary (to make sense of your entire paragraph and come back to your Main Point and Thesis): The Penelope chapter is just one long sentence that is a monologue of Molly's thoughts. Her thoughts on men show that she does even believe that Leopold is capable of loving her, which explains why it was so easy of her to have cheated on him in the first place. Although both Gabriel and Molly have different feelings on the concept of love, through the stream of consciousness, we can see where that difference lies. Gabriel simply wants to be the most loved by Gretta, whereas Molly does not even think that love truly exists.

III. Body Paragraph 2 (You can have more commentary/concrete details than what is shown here).

a. Topic Sentence (State your Main Point): The way the characters perceive food is another example of how Joyce portrays the characters similarities throughout his novels.

Cossman 5

b. Commentary (to set up your Concrete Detail): The foods reflect how the characters are feeling at the current moment in their stories.

c. Concrete Detail (to defend your Topic Sentence): As he is preparing to deliver a speech at his aunt's annual dinner party, Gabriel feels anxious, which can be seen in the way Joyce describes the banquet of food as a battlefield. While looking down at the table, Gabriel notes that, "A pudding in a huge yellow dish lay waiting behind it were three squads" (Joyce 97).

d. Commentary (to analyze your previous Concrete Detail and introduce your next one): Gabriel is worried about the upcoming speech and his previous altercations with other members of the party at the time. Leopold Bloom, on the other hand, eats food in a disgusting manner to hide his emotions.

e. Concrete Detail (to further defend your Topic Sentence and Commentary): As Joyce describes Mr. Bloom's eating habits, "Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine."

f. Commentary (to make sense of your entire paragraph and come back to your Main Point and Thesis): Bloom likes his food grotesque. He stuffs himself full of rotting food because he is feeling rotten at that time.

IV. Body Paragraph 3 (You can have more commentary/concrete details than what is shown here).

Cossman 6

a. Topic Sentence (State your Main Point): The characters perceive the food with all their senses. How it feels, smells, looks, tastes. The incorporation of senses in his works is another way Joyce makes a connection among his heroes.

b. Commentary (to set up your Concrete Detail): The stream of consciousness technique puts the reader inside the mind of the characters in the novel. Joyce had to deal with making these senses seem natural and not artificial, and in doing so, his voice and conflicts permeate through every character's senses, showing a deeper connection between the two.

c. Concrete Detail (to defend your Topic Sentence): *Insert essay on smell, need to find it again on Google, has to deal with the paradoxical conflict of Joyce creating a "natural" sense of smell for Stephen*

d. Commentary (to analyze your previous Concrete Detail and introduce your next one): There has been other scholarly essays arguing this point, and have also argued how Joyce's own personal problems can be seen in the way his characters perceive things around them.

e. Concrete Detail (to further defend your Topic Sentence and Commentary): Near the very beginning of Stephen's tale, he notes that "His mother had a nicer smell than his father" (Joyce 1)

f. Commentary (to make sense of your entire paragraph and come back to your Main Point and Thesis): Dedalus's father is an alcoholic who acts rudely towards Stephen as they age. We can already see that Stephen has a preference for his mother over his father in his life from a very younger age, even though his mother plays a very background role in the novel. In Joyce's life,

Cossman 7

his father was also very abusive towards Joyce and played a negative role in his life (Find citation for this, you found this information somewhere).

VII. Conclusion you may briefly summarize for your reader, but be sure to extend your analysis and leave your reader with an intriguing concept that will leave him or her thinking about your topic.

When asked why he always writes his stories in the setting of Dublin, James Joyce had said, "If I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal" (Ellman 505). Joyce himself had even said that the specific is paradoxically universal. Growing up in Dublin, he knew all its ins and outs, and he makes numerous references to the specifics of this place in all of his works. Although not everyone understands the allusions he makes, everyone knows an Aunt Dante or the Vances or a Clongowes school. These things were important in Joyce's life, and so they showed up in his works. You do not need an Aunt Dante to understand who she is or what she represents. She is just a name for what is a universal embodiment. If something's been done once, it's been done a thousand time. It is just like when you notice a pattern in something, and then start noticing it everywhere you look. The pattern is specific to you, but is a pattern seen throughout the world nonetheless. James Joyce simply made this idea obvious in his works through his stream of consciousness. Whereas one person may see an army of people, Gabriel sees an army of food. Two people might see a portrait and get two different feelings; they can also look at two different portraits and get the same feeling. Joyce's works are not only autobiographical, they are universal.

Cossman 8

Iggy Cossman Miss Nichole Wilson AP English Literature & Composition 12 February 2014 The Importance of Stream of Consciousness in James Joyces Works Age 5: Stephen Dedalus goes to the bad Clongowes School - a bland square of gray and gross full of "dullards" - where he becomes schoolyard hero after tattling on Father Dolan, Hurroo! Age 19: Every day of his life revolves around prayer and practice, avoiding the "flood of temptation" (Joyce 140) that violated his youth. He prefers a secondary role in Church to one in the center. One day, he stumbles upon a girl who reminds him of a "beautiful seabird" (Joyce 158), and soon awakens from a dream to find himself filled with joy unfelt before, soothing in its radiant presence. Age 20: I go now, leaving physically what I have already had emotionally years ago. The tides of open seas and the welcoming of narrow roads bid me forth to join the company of my kinsmen and leave this lonely wretch. Rotten Dublin, the stenchiest of all smells, shall haunt my life no longer! When it comes to writing styles, one of the hardest ones to understand would be the stream of consciousness narrative mode. James Joyce would become the author known to make this style first incorporated by douard Dujardin in his novel Les Lauriers sont coups, which would heavily influence Joyces writing style - extremely popular in the 20th century after publishing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The distant narrator that could see into Gabriels mind in the shorty story The Dead in his previous novel Dubliners would be the first

Cossman 9

hint of Joyce using this technique, but it would not become more predominant until he published his next, and final, three novels, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. Stephen Dedalus is the literary alter-ego of James Joyce in his works, and is a protagonist in both A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. After leaving Dublin for Trieste in his first novel, Stephen returns in Ulysses as one of the main characters alongside Leopold and Molly Bloom, and having already learned of his character in the previous novel, it makes the reading of Ulysses slightly easier to understand even though we are reading inside the minds of three different characters throughout that story. And although Gabriel, Stephen, Leopold, and Molly all have different personalities and aspirations, the stream of consciousness Joyce uses allows us to see the strong similarities amongst the characters that would otherwise be undetectable. The stream of consciousness technique mastered by James Joyce in his novels allowed him to reveal that the specific challenge an individual faces is paradoxically universal; at the heart of the specific is the universal. Whether its through the hardships they face in love, their perception of food, or even through all their senses overall, the trials one person faces is not isolated to just them. Although each trial may bear a different name, they still reside under the same literary roof. The name of one of the trials each of Joyces characters face is jealousy. Gabriel is jealous of the passionate Michael, who stole Grettas heart before him; Stephen is in love with Emma; and Leopold is dealt dealing with Molly's affair A reflection of James and Noras love life. After a long and bitter debate over Michael, Gabriel finds himself unable to sleep, and resorts to watching his wife, Gretta, sleep, and contemplates of the love she had before, "He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love."

Cossman 10

(Joyce 114). While we do not see directly inside Gabriel's mind, the narrator's distant voice tells us what he is thinking. He is mad that Gretta had loved someone before him, and probably much more than she had loved him. However, in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen grows up with a girl named Emma Clery, whom, for him, idolizes the concept of the perfect woman. After, by chance, he stumbles upon her at an older age and strikes up a conversation, he writes in his diary that, I liked her and it seems a new feeling to me (Joyce 297). Emma was no longer simply a girl which inspired him to write poems, but just an average girl that he liked simply for who she was. While Stephen may have given in to physical temptation at a younger age in the Dublin Red Light District, as he matured, he learned to like women for who they are, not for what they were. While Stephen has definitely had a change of character In Ulysses, we see a man who has come to accept his wifes affair in the character of Leopold Bloom. In the final, eighteenth episode of the novel, Penelope Molly Bloom tells herself that most men do not have, "a particle of love in their natures" (Joyce 767). The Penelope chapter is just one long, strung-along sentence that is a monologue of Molly's thoughts. In this episode, her thoughts on men show that she does not believe that Leopold is even capable of loving her, which explains why it was so easy of her to have cheated on him in the first place with her concert manager Blazes Boylan. Although both Gabriel, Stephen, Leopold, and Molly have different feelings on the concept of love, through the stream of consciousness technique that Joyce employs, we can see where the differences and similarities lie. Each character has a different motivation for acting the way they do. While all three men want to be loved by their women, it is for different reasons; for Gabriel, it is so he can feel the power that comes from controlling his wife; for Stephen, he desires love because it is a natural feeling and it empowers his writing that much more. Sylvie Hill, while writing her Masters Research Paper on Sexual Frustration and Artistic Failure in

Cossman 11

Joyces work, discusses the sad nature of Stephens love life, arguing that, [Stephen uses] Emma as a muse, and snatching the souls of prostitutes to write his poems (Hill 3). He seeks physical intimacy because it fuels his writings. Many writings by authors show off their sexual frustration, and Stephen Dedalus, although fictional, is no different. However, we do see Stephen perceive Emma in a different light near the end of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This suggests that Stephen, at least at one point in his life, saw woman as something besides a sexual conquest to fuel his writing and achieve fame and fortune. We learn later in Ulysses, though, that neither the harlots, nor the writing, have brought him any closer to love or literary fame (Hill 1), and that Stephen has returned to his old way of sexual gratification through prostitutes and himself. Likewise, Leopold Bloom has come to accept the fact that his wife cheats on him, and even avoids the cheater Boylan, when he sees him across the street. Both Leopolds and Stephens love lives are embodiments of Joyces own perceived failure at his with Nora, and shows that even with the story being told in the minds of those characters, the actions and thoughts of said characters show underlying themes of Joyce in this piece jealousy, depression, betrayal. Even the food is perceived by the characters with strong emotions and character. It is not only the feelings towards other people that shows off the similarities between the characters, but even their feelings towards something as minor and insignificant as food. The foods reflect how the characters are feeling at the current moment in their stories. As he is preparing to deliver a speech at his aunt's annual dinner party, Gabriel feels anxious, especially after having two traumatic experiences with women earlier that evening. This can be seen in the way Joyce describes the banquet of food as a battlefield. While looking down at the table, Gabriel notes that, "A pudding in a huge yellow dish lay waiting behind it were three squads" (Joyce 97).

Cossman 12

Gabriel is worried about the upcoming speech and his previous altercations with other members of the party at the time. Stephen looks to food as an escape from his worries, which can be seen from when he is a child, observing, plump turkey which had lain, trussed and skewered, on the kitchen table (Joyce 28) to when he is criticizing himself for his gluttonous enjoyment of food (Joyce 119). Stephen often resorts to different sins to make himself feel good, and his realization upon this after the horrendous sermon by his old school teacher, shows a different side to Stephen that is not seen elsewhere in any of Joyces novels. Leopold Bloom, on the other hand, eats food in a disgusting manner to hide his emotions. As Joyce describes Mr. Bloom's eating habits, "Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine." Bloom likes his food grotesque. He stuffs himself full of rotting food because he is feeling rotten at that time. People protrude their thoughts and imaginations onto the mundane without even realizing it. The imagery used to describe each piece of food in his works is done with very specific precision by Joyce. He does not outright tell you how the characters are feeling, but instead, shows you through their observations and senses. How something feels, smells, looks, tastes is another way Joyce makes a connection among his protagonists. The stream of consciousness technique puts the reader inside the mind of the characters in the novel, and Joyce had to deal with making these senses seem natural and not artificial, and in doing so, his voice and conflicts permeate through every character's senses, showing a deeper connection between the two. Krissy King, in his essay, A Key to His Consciousness: Smell in A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man talks about the hard work that Joyce went through when he was writing A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and brings forward how this can be seen through him describing the olfactory senses of Stephen, The level of Joyces conscious control over Stephens subconscious oscillates throughout Stephens

Cossman 13

development and reveals much about the process Joyce underwent in writing Portrait (King 1). There have been other scholarly essays arguing this point, and have also argued how Joyce's own personal problems can be seen in the way his characters perceive things around them. Near the very beginning of Stephen's tale, he notes that "His mother had a nicer smell than his father" (Joyce 1) Dedalus' father is an alcoholic who acts rudely towards Stephen as they age. We can already see that Stephen has a preference for his mother over his father in his life from a very younger age, even though his mother plays a very background role in the novel. As we know that Stephen is the literary alter-ego of James Joyce, it can be implied that Joyce himself had had a bad experience with his father growing up, and even at an older age, as can be seen by Stephens fathers growing hostility, there was never atonement between the two of them. We also Stephen continuously long for physical intimacy from women, something which he never gets from anyone besides prostitutes. While Joyces life is not exactly the same as Stephens, we can see that there is a strong resemblance between the two of them; if not in their actions, in their thoughts and their actions. When asked why he always writes his stories in the setting of Dublin, James Joyce had said, "If I can get to the heart of Dublin I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal" (Ellman 505). Joyce himself had even said that the specific is paradoxically universal. Growing up in Dublin, he knew all its ins and outs, and he makes numerous references to the specifics of this place in all of his works. Joyce had even stated that he wrote Ulysses based off of Homers Odyssey, and it was clear that he wanted to, show that the epic and the heroic is in our lives every day (Kaplan 180). What may seem like just an extra odd, although ordinary day to the reader is in reality, the day that Joyce met Nora Barnacle, his future bride. This benign day turned into extraordinary quest shows that Joyce believed that even

Cossman 14

the most normal of circumstances, the most normal of people, can have a quest as epic as Odysseus. Although not everyone understands the allusions he makes, and his stories can become extremely difficult to read at times, everyone knows a Leopold or an Aunt Dante or the Vances or a Clongowes school. These things were simply important symbols to Joyce's life, and so they showed up in his works. You do not need an Aunt Dante to understand who she is or what she represents. She is just a name for what is a universal embodiment. If something's been done once, it's been done a thousand times Ulysses, which had been named the greatest novel of the 20th century by the Modern Library was simply a retelling of the Odyssey in Joyces eyes. It is just like when a group of people begin to notice a pattern, and then start noticing it everywhere they look. The pattern is specific to them, but it is a pattern seen throughout the world in all sorts of places nonetheless. James Joyce simply made his ideas obvious in his works through his stream of consciousness. Whereas Stephen may see a banquet to fulfill his gluttonous lust for physical relief, Gabriel sees an army of food. Where two people might see a portrait and see two different things, they can also look at two different portraits and possibly see the same thing. Joyce's works are not only autobiographical, they are universal.

Cossman 15

Works Cited Ellman, p. 505, citing Power, From an Old Waterford House (London, n.d.), pp. 6364 Hill, Sylvie. His Cheeks Were Aflame: Masturbation, Sexual Frustration and Artistic Failure in Joyce's Portrait of Stephen Dedalus. Thesis. Carelton University, n.d. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print. Joyce, James, Morris Leopold Ernst, and John Munro Woolsey. Ulysses. New York: Random House, 1946. Print. Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Modern Library, 1926. Print. Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Viking, 1964. Print. Kaplan, Robert M. "Bloomsday 100: The Making of a Literary Legend." Australasian Psychiatry (2004): 179-82. Web. 08 Feb. 2014. King, Krissy. "A Key to His Consciousness: Smell in A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man." WR: Journal of the Arts & Sciences Writing Program 3 (2010-2011): n. pag. Print.

Cossman 16 Works Referenced

"100 Best Novels". Random House. 1999. Web. 10 Feb 2014. Brain, Emily. "Stream of Consciousness and the Novel." Web log post. PSYCHOANALYSIS AND MODERN CULTURE. Blogspot, n.d. Web. 7 Feb. 2014. Chan, Michael. James Joyces MethodRegarding the Stream of Consciousness. Modernism Lab Essays, n.d. Web. 8 February 2014. Dujardin, douard. Les Lauriers Sont Coups. N.p.: n.p., 1887. Print. Homer, and Thomas Hobbes. Homer's Odyssey. London: Printed by J.C. for W. Crook ..., 1675. Print. Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. New York: Viking, 1939. Print.