Joyce's Pattern of Paralysis in Dubliners Author(s): Gerhard Friedrich and Florence L. Walzl Source: College English, Vol.

22, No. 7 (Apr., 1961), pp. 519-520 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/372869 Accessed: 15/11/2010 22:26
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REBUTTAL Professor Mills' stubborn refusal to walk out of the outmoded classroom. Like so many of the critics of television, Mills places a great deal of emphasis on the teacher's "silences, hesitations, fumblings
towards truth . . . searching with his stu-

519

dents for something not yet fully known.

S..." I do not, of course, wish to cast any

aspersions on the Professor's professional competence; but I cannot help thinking that if he really is uncertain about his material, he should remain in the classroom. For there is indeed no room on a television program for an instructor who, like his

students, is fumbling with uncertainties. But let us hope there will soon come a time when Professor Mills will have mastered his subject and stopped "searching with his students for something not yet fully known." He will then be able to present his materialin a clear, straightforwardmanner, without confusing the students with unansweredquestions. And when that time comes, he too will be ready to enter television as a Master Teacher. J. Burlington Sloe (Lawrence W. Hyman) Brooklyn College

JOYCE'S PATTERN OF PARALYSIS IN DUBLINERS

Florence Walzl's "Patternof Paralysis in Joyce's Dubliners" (College English, Jan. 1961) is in several respects seriously incomplete and misleading. That Joyce himself chose to publish Dubliners as the organic sequence of fifteen stories which it is, and not as a truncated and subdivided 3-4-4-3 scheme, however appealing the conception of "a symmetrically balanced four-part grouping" may be, must be acknowledged as evidence of his surpassing genius. Professor Walzl treats "The Dead," "as a later addition"which supposedly "obscures Joyce's early pattern," only "incidentally," though the fifteenth story is not only Joyce's finest, but of supreme importance to the book's paralytic progression and its spiral of cumulative awareness.It is Gabriel Conroy who most nearly comprehends the liberating vitality which underlies the conclusion that "the prognosis for the patient is death";in him alone the "shock of recognition"-as Melville's phrase aptly continues -"runs the whole circle round"; and any interpretation of Dubliners which underplays "The Dead" as absolutely essentialto the perfection of Joyce's scheme falsifies his accomplishment. Professor Walzl's ingenious assignmentof specific "paralytic sub-images" or "plot images" exclusive to each group of stories proves indeed largely abortive. Having asserted that the paralytic sub-image of the second group is "entrapment" or "the trap," while "sterility dominatesthe third group," she slips into admitting that Farrington, in "Counterparts"(third group), is "trapped by economic need and too weak to rebel." Is Chandler in "A Little Cloud" (third group) any less trapped than Eveline in the story by that name (second group)? Is not Mary in "Clay" (third group) trapped by her unattractiveness?Or, for that matter, do not "The Sisters"demonstrate"sterility" as much as "disillusionment"? The thematic distance between the opening story, "The Sisters," and the last two stories, "Grace" and "The Dead," is not as great as Professor Walzl's article would have it. She maintains that "at the end Joyce suggests, as he had in all the stories of public life (fourth group), that people who live meaninglesslives of inactivity are the real dead," which is certainly inherent even in the first story. To say that "The Sisters" is but "a story of physical paralysis having moral overtones,"means to overlook the fact that the paralytic is an unspiritual priest who long ago broke the chalice ("that was the beginning of it") and is referred to as a "simoniac,"and the description of "Grace"as a story of "spiritual paralysis having physical effects" gives therefore an illusory sense of inversion rather than of correspondence and projection. As to the concept of "paralysis,"while Professor Walzl quotes secondary and tertiary sources illuminating it, she fails to draw attention to the fact that Joyce introduced the term outright into the first story of the sequence, and only there, indeed in the opening paragraph, and that he did so after the separate printing of

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COLLEGE

ENGLISH In two ("Eveline,""After the Race," "Two Gallants" and "The Boarding House") the main characters choose or accept the trap at a time in their lives when they could have made revitalizing choices. In group three ("A Little Cloud," "Counterparts," "Clay" and "A Painful Case") the characters are pictured as having been trapped for a considerabletime; hence the emphasis is on the sterility of their lives. One, Mr. Duffy, has a second chance, but the paralysis resulting from his earlier deliberate choice makes him incapable of action. The three others are offered no real alternatives. As to the relation of the opening and close, note my statement that "the first group would have depicted the painful disillusionment of individuals in a decadent society; the last . . . shown social groups too corrupt to be aware of their decadence" (p. 227). I do not think the "thematic distance" great. In fact, I am insisting on thematic similarity. Both opening and close depict a paralyzed society in the persons of older characters. The difference is in point of view. The first three stories depict the painful epiphaniesof young boys as to the condition of their society; the last three depict groups of maturepeople put in situations involving politics, the arts and religion and comfortably insensible to their corruption. The society at beginning and end is depicted as culturally and spiritually paralyzed. As to use of the word objective: in the context I was characterizing the fourteen stories as a whole and used it in Webster's sense of detached. I was not referring to point of view. Limitations of space made comment on the numerous paralysis images and their variations incomplete. In general, I tried to avoid the obvious as was true of the opening paralysis image in "The Sisters" which has elicited much explication already and also those fully discussed in recent or readily available criticism as the gnomon image which Professor Friedrich has himself elucidated very interestingly.' Fl6rence L. Walzl University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee)

"The Sisters" in The Irish Homestead, in a carefully revised and expanded version. Such deliberate keynoting of the book's theme is all the more worth noting because Joyce's prelude identifies "paralysis"with "gnomon" (as well as with "simony"), which as a slanted and incomplete, disabled square is the geometrical and literary equivalent-the epiphanic Joycean patternof the paralyzed human condition. Incidentally, Professor Walzl states that "the original fourteen stories are all brief, objective episodes whose significance is largely implied." As a matter of fact, the first three stories, relating experiences of apparently orphaned boyhood, are all told in the subjective first person, past tense; this focus is abandoned for an enlarged third-person observation in all the subsequent stories, though in "The Dead" Joyce manages to create the illusion of both a sweeping objective and an intensely subjective comprehension. Gerhard Friedrich Cedar Crest College
REPLY ON DUBLINERS

My purpose was to study the relationship of symbolism and structure in the 1905 arrangement of stories in Dubliners, with the balancedopening and close dealing with the theological virtues, rather than the changes effected by the later addition of "The Dead." Note my subtitle "A Study of the Original Framework." I agree that "The Dead" changes the effect of Dubliners: its greater length and development do that alone. However, in the relation of plot structure to theme, I feel that "The Dead" very brilliantly complements Joyce's basic plan in the 1905 version. Its plot combines double epiphanies, each of which is anticipated in the earlier structure of the book. Like the early stories (up to the pivotal eighth), "The Dead" presents a revelation to the individual about himself. Like the final stories it presents also an epiphany which exposes a culturally sterile society. As to the characters in group three, all are trapped. Note my statement: "These charactersare already trapped by life, hav"The GnomonicClue to 1Gerhard Friedrich, ing made constraining choices earlier" (p. Modern Language 225). I believe there is a difference in degree James Joyce's Dubliners," of paralysisbetween groups two and three. Notes, LXXII (1957),421-424.