James Joyce †A Little Cloud (in: Dubliners) Essay

A exact Cloud has non generated significant critical debate, despite Warren Becks unorthodox interpretation of the denouement in 1969. Chandlers relationship humorh his son non with his wife Annie or journalist/ fri difference Gallaher could be the crucial, epiphanal element of the story Joyce portraying a father who is just lineage to learn what the heart is and what it feels (A Portrait 252), a macrocosm whose conscience is awakened, despite his flaws. However, scholars have generally agreed that the ineffectual booster station ab single-valued functions his infant son and refuses to generate responsibility for his own shortcomings. The story ends with the following paragraph critical Chandler felt his cheeks suffused with shame and he stood back out of the lamplight. He listened while the paroxysm of the kidskins sobbing grew less and less and tears of remorse started to his eyes. (81) Though its likely that Chandler is genuinely sorry for having frightened his son, most Joyceans insist that the protagonist cries out of self-pity, that his epiphany, if he does let one, is egocentric of a man who whitethorn dream and suffer however who will never produce.Except for Beck, many veteran Joyce scholars affirm that A Little Cloud develops the famous paralysis-theme and that it complements, in tone and circumstance, the other pieces which precede the final story, The Dead. Walzl believes that The Dead seems to reverse the simulate of increasing insensibility that Dubliners other-wise traces and that no one prior to Gabriel, the protagonist, undergoes a com-parable change or has such an enlightenment. Similarly, Ghiselin suggests that A Little Cloud fits into the over-all schema of Dubliners by representing the sin of envy. Ruoff asserts that the story describes a would-be mechanics pathetic failure to transcend a narrow existence of his own creation, and Bernard Benstocks inter-pretation mentions that Chandler regresses to adolescent self-pity. I ndeed, all focus on Chandlers sloth, his cowardice, his self-delusion, and his final rage and humiliation assert that he is shamed, not ashamed. But what with Joyces use of remorse?Probably the most important reason for assuming that Chandler is not enlightened by his experience involves several of Joyces own statements. A Little Cloud was written in the early months of 1906, when Joyce was 23 and the father of a six-month-old son, Giorgio. But In 1904, speaking somewhat Dubliners, he had told a friend that he wanted to betray the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city (Letters 55). Another frequently quoted letter asserts, It is not my blur that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories (Letters 63-64). The combination of paralysis and odour, then, while justified by many details in the works themselves, may have also clouded our perception of scattered, positive sensations which some of the pieces generate.As Gillespie argues, T he opinion that this negative attitude dominates the final form of the stories oversimplifies Joyces emotional attitude toward his outlandish and unjustly circumscribes the artistic potential of the work. Similarly, Garrison observes that Joyces explicit statements concerning his artistic intentions in Dubliners are not very useful as a basis for interpretation. Although Joyces defense of his work provided us with an opportunity to clarify his intent, it probably was not meant to narrowly limit or define our reactions as referees. If Joyce at least partially intended the final story, The Dead, as a tri simplye to the more positive aspects of Dublin culture (Letters II 166), it is not absurd to discern a hint of this attitude in A Little Cloud.Joyce once told his sister, The most important thing that can happen to a man is the birth of a child, and since his only son and first-born child was rough six months old when A Little Cloud was begun in the early months of 1906, life-ti me circumstances are relevant to this discussion. But such issues do not necessarily help us interpret the story, for Joyce might, after all, have been drawing a portrait of an unfit father. Reviewing the storys link to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man while examining information about the young writer should enrich our understanding of his state of mind, reveal key similarities and differences between Joyce and his protagonist, and test the validity of an alternate reading of this story.In general, Chandlers lean is melancholic, but it is a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and simple gratification (68). He is fastidious about his appearance and, probably, careful about his work even though he finds it tiresome (65). Joyce also emphasizes Little Chandlers shortcomings throughout the story. He lives in a little house, reads by a little lamp, drinks small whiskies, displays childish white front teeth, and is given short answers by his prim wife. Joy ce invites us to imagine an ordinary man, liquid capable of a dream, but ruled by circumstances and his own, considerable inadequacies. Joyce employs important imagery which firmly links this story to central Joycean themes The thought that a poetical moment had touched him took life within him like an infant hope A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind. He was not so oldthirty-two (68, emphasis added). Linking infant hope with a light so early in this story hints at Joyces womb-to-tomb interest in the consubstantiation of father and son as well as procreation in the literary sense (Ulysses 32, 155). By the time Joyce wrote A Little Cloud, both physical and artistic generation had become realities. Of course, the reader soon realizes that Chandler wont succeed, despite his soul, for he is not original and hopes to take advantage on popular trends, although he realistically admits that he will never be popular and hopes only to appeal to a little circle of family min ds (68). Recalling Joyces claim in 1904 that only two or three unfortunate wretches may eventually read me (Ellmann 163) offers an interesting echo.The location of Chandlers poetic mood is also relevant, for it may be based on one of Joyces own experiences. A similar incident occurs at a crucial point in A Portrait. In Chapter 4, Joyce presents a rare interaction between the protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, and his brothers and sisters during the family tea. Structurally, this scene occurs at an important juncture. Immediately preceding the epiphany of profane joy which Stephen experiences on the beach while watching a girl wading, this episode also follows the interview with the religious director of his school, after which Stephen decides not to become a priest. As he walks home to a squalid, over-crowded house, interesting parallels to A Little Cloud occur. Like Chandler, he crosses a bridge, symbolically connected to opposing attractions, but clearly, like Chandler, moving toward a new possibility. Stephen notices a shrine to the Virgin which is in the middle of a hamshaped encampment of poor cottages (162).Unlike Chandler, however, Stephen does not idealise the image, for he actually lives here, and he laughs to think of the man considering in turn the four points of the sky and then regretfully plunging his spade in the earth (162). Without even a hint of rain, the man must begin work. The cloud image in this scene of Portrait is intentionally delayed. Stephen, the university student, then enters his home and finds his brothers and sisters seated at the table. He realizes the contrast between his privileged position as the eldest son and theirs The sad placidness greyblue of the dying day came through the window and the yield door, covering over and allaying quietly a sudden instinct of remorse in Stephens heart. All that had been denied them had been freely given to him, the eldest but the quiet glow of evening showed him in their faces no sign of ran cour. (163) After one of his sisters, who is as nameless as Chandlers son, tells him that the family has once again been evicted, her similarly anon. little brother begins to sing.The others join in, and Stephen thinks, They would sing so for hours till the last pale light died down on the horizon, till the first dark nightclouds came frontwards and night fell (163). But Joyce does not end Stephens musings on a negative note, just as he does not seem to end A Little Cloud with a protagonist who pities himself more than his screaming son. Stephen remembers that Newman had heard this note also giving utterance, like the voice of Nature herself, to that perturb and weariness yet hope of better things which has been the experience of her children in every time. (164). Despite their circumstances, the children sing. Faced with the guilt of primacy, the oldest son is forgiven by his brothers and sisters. Again, Stephens vision is spiffing to Chandlers. He will retain the mood of thi s experience, be more receptive to future encounters, and sustain an ethos which will allow him to reject home and family to pursue an artists life, perhaps with a family of his own making.Stephen is an artist Chandler only longs to be one. However, in a collection of stories which includes a series of married men who smite children (Mr. Hill in Eveline, Farrington of Counterparts, and Old Jack of Ivy Day in the Committee Room), Chandler faces the truth about himself after merely shouting at his son. His experience prepares us for Gabriels, just as the family tea prepares us for the strongest epiphany of Portrait. And, although Joyce would work as a clerk in Rome a few months after bill A Little Cloud off to the publisher and felt superior to his fellow employees who were forever having something wrong with their testicles or their anuses, Chandler, unlike them, is fastidious about his manners and appearance and at least longs for an artists life. The first portion of A Little Cl oud also reminds us of Joyces sentimental, poetic temperament while living in Paris as a medical student from December 1902 until April 1903, when he was called home because of his mothers illness. Stanislaus reports, He told me that much when he had no money and had had nothing to eat he used to walk about reciting to himself for consolation, like Little Chandler in Dubliners, his own poems or others he knew by heart or things he happened to be writing then. (My Brothers 231-21)All three have an opennesss to life and desire and are free to struggle against fortune. Through the encounter with Gallaher, Chandler appears provincial, timid, curious about immoral sexual practices, but he definitely emerges as the better human being, and inches the reader toward sympathy. We can safely assume that, whatever Chandlers weaknesses, Joyce had an even lower opinion of Gallaher, letting Chandler considering himself superior in birth and education. (75) Unlike OHara, a character in the story who fails because of boose and other things (70), Chandler is abstemious, employed, married, and a parent (unlike most of the Irish middle class, which was experiencing tremendous economic hardships and either postponed marriage or abandoned it altogether). On the other hand, the reader experiences Gallahers inflated ego and patronizing attitude toward dear dirty Dublin and toward his friend.Incapable of the kind of wit which might successfully redeem his position, Chandler is ultimately defeated however, our sympathies lie not with the victor but with the young clerk and father. Gallaher may have had the ability to gasify by the nets of nationality, language, religion, an aim to which the protagonist of Joyces next major work aspires (A Portrait 203), but he is little more than a bragging, untamed scribbler in the worst Swiftian sense. A new notion in the Dubliners tales is that escape from Ireland does not necessarily equal salvation. If you wanted to succeed you had to get a way, Little Chandler thinks, echoing the thoughts of the boy in An Encounter (real adventures . . . must be sought abroad). And yet Gallaher, who got away, has succeeded in only the most seeming(prenominal) sense. Despite having seen London, Paris and heard talk of Berlin, he is shallow, boorish, and alone.The story reveals that Chandler, however remote from being either a poet or the old hero which Gallaher initially calls him, extends physically and morally the more appealing character. Still, Chandler himself probably feels anything but heroic, and during the gap between scenes, we imagine him returning, deflated, to his family. Like the dog viewing his reflection in the pond, Chandler drops his bone in envy of Gallahers, preferring the exotic narrative not of his own experience. His mood at the beginning of the final scene in the story is reflective, self-pitying, and, ultimately, enraged. However, the excitement of his sons suffering (If it died) and the coldness of his wife s accusation eventually result in unselfish shame and genuine contrition. Chandlers dreams complement, not dominate, his daily world.Allusion was a serious business in Joyces creative paradigm. Despite the irony of a candle-maker or candle-seller as a failed artist, Little Tommy Chandlers tears suggest that he has turned from the worship of a false god (Gallaher and, perhaps, Romanticism) to the true religion of hearth and home through the unconscious hinderance of his son as savior, as little lamb of the world. The final clause of the story, tears of remorse started to his eyes, is precise. Joyce does not write tears of self-pity nor does he promote ambiguity by merely saying tears started to his eyes. When Chandler backs out of the lamplight, he passes the torch to the next generation, genuinely contrite.Unlike Gallaher, Stephen Dedalus, and Joyce himself, Chandler will remain in Dublin, return to his daily tasks, and pay off the furniture. Yet, he may also foster the growth of a n artist. He is, indeed, a prisoner for life, but the prison walls offer the hope of graffiti, for the child represents creativity as well as responsibility, and the story offers an early treatment of a central Joycean theme.