The Plum Plum Pickers Explication
In the passage from The Plum Plum Pickers by Raymond Barrio, Barrio suggests that there is a more definitive view of what it means to be alive and more importantly to exist by effectively using imagery and exploring the substance of the setting to form an opinion about existence. Barrio adequately uses repetition and allusions to create a smooth transition from the setting to character development to eventually to build a significant climax of the brief excerpt of the story. In doing so, the author establishes his theme or message about existence and making a bridge between modernist and post-modernist mindset.
In the first section of the passage, there is an absolute influence in emphasizing the mood through imagery and incorporating the images by using shortened sentences to create the feelings of the farm workers. Immediately there is a contradiction of terms as it applies to the text’s connection to the title, “he was trapped in an endless maze of apricot trees…” (line 1), the title implies that the foreigners are plum pickers, the apricot trees show that there is probably a play on words. Plum, aside from being a fruit, can mean a desirable or excellent thing. To the workers, the plums may be represented by the antagonist Manuel’s struggle. It is equality and power that may be the “plums” of the people. As the section proceeds, the next notable feature of Barrio’s style is the short sentences as well as the repetition that occurs within the phrases. The constant use of words like, brute, wreck, beast and even referencing the Sun and the effect it has bearing down on the people below. These words are not commonly associated with the happy times that come with work. The words represent the struggles the people on the farm face during the day. Analyzing the first couple of paragraphs it is important to note how quickly the transition is between the sections signifying the uneasy speed of quickly life transitions and how just as quick as time came it goes away just as quickly. The imagery not only helps clear a mood it also helps develop a conclusion about the central characters. The use of words like beast and predator make the people feel as though they are animals and have no concept of what is human. It is at this point that Barrio introduces his primary theme of his work.
Though using many of the same features present in the first section, the second section, paragraphs 3-6, explore more of the character development. In the third paragraph Barrio uses the same short sentence techniques, but only in this excerpt there are little to no vowels present in these sentences. This builds onto the personification of the humans as machines and animals. Shortly thereafter the antagonist, Manuel, has a moment of humanity. “His half-filled bucket slipped from his grasp and fell in slow motion, splattering the fruit he’d so laboriously picked.” After this line we are finally given a name to the two most powerful figures in the story, Manuel and Roberto Morales. When using these names Barrio uses another play on words to provide an in-depth perspective about how the roles of a protagonist and an antagonist are reversed in the scenario. Manuel’s name can be interpreted as he is a representation of “man” or that he represents the “manual” labor that is involved with farm working. Roberto Morales the unlikely protagonist of the story can be represented as one who “robs” morals or is himself without the moral capability to accept and forgive. Finally, in the end of the passage, much like Lady Macbeth and Pontius Pilate before him Roberto is described as having washed away the shame he faced being “one of them” he has moved on to higher plane while still being trapped on the surface of Earth. Ironically, Manuel can be seen as a very similar Christ like figure of who fought the same battle as Manuel.
Finally, in the concluding paragraphs Barrio sets up a climax by beautifully incorporating all the aspects of his earlier sections and finally setting the scene of the “final showdown” with Morales. Interestingly, Barrio only clarifies that Manuel is the only real human of the bunch, “The other exhausted animals studied the tableau through widening eyes. It was so unequal.” The author then shows that the only true human succeeded by fighting for what was theirs. “Then with his last remaining energy, Manuel lifted his foot and clumsily tipped over his own last bucket of cots.” After being self-assured he is the winner, Manuel reflects that there would have to be some kind of punishment, but he knew he would be looked at as a human rather than the machines and animals they thought they were. Barrio makes an allusion to the story of Don Gaspar de Portola who explored the western coast of America as it is also the place where the story takes place. The story of Gaspar was that he was sent by the Spaniards to colonize the western coast of California. He ended up making a big miscalculation and ended up causing the lives of his crew, but the lesson he learned was that he did not give up the fight even though he would face consequences. And in the latest lines of the passage he finally outright states the theme of his work, to explain what it means to exist. “Men are built to experience a certain sense of honor and pride. Or else they are dead before they die. In retaliation he fought for his pride and his sense of honor.
The passage itself suggests what it means to be human and why it is there are heroes within all of us. The passage is a great example of how easy it can be to sacrifice traditional writing for simpler techniques that employ a means of understanding a much broader topic.
Showing posts with label Analysis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Analysis. Show all posts
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Joyce Paper
How Stephen Changes
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce develops the character of Stephen Dedalus by exploring the attraction to art as well as women to greater show the effects of the two in comparison to the roles in actual existence. Through the novel Stephen is a victim of his own unconscious mind and leads him to a journey of guilt and ultimately a loss of innocence. Joyce as well suggests that Stephen, no matter the circumstance, is still a teenager coming of age in, modern society, that one infant boy finds the predominant male figure a threat and needs to find comfort in the mother or alternative female figure.
In the passage in Chapter 1 (pg. 26-27), Stephen is confronted with a rather childish joke played on by the bullies at the school, furthermore this explains Stephen’s progress in the Oedipal stages of personality as well as behavior. The conflict at hand is the criticism of the mother figure in Stephen’s life, phrased by the question, “Do you kiss your mother every night before you go to bed?” At first Stephen says “I do” (26) and the mere shame is enough to spur the imagination of young Dedalus. In this case Stephen’s subconscious is affecting his behavior around his peers. It is in this passage that the diction commonly used to indicate such phallic imagery is further explored by Joyce. Stephen tries to laugh again to relieve himself of the guilt of having been tricked. “He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment.” (27) Stephen is often times bogged down by these figures that are dominating him.
The passage was further analyzed by Sheldon Brivic in his critical essay on A Portrait, in which he proclaims that the exchange between Wells and Stephen shows, “This refers not to Stephen being at home with his mother but to an imaginary mother Stephen kisses in the present.”(282) Also, on a grander scale Wells’ comment is an emotional scar for Stephen and more importantly his identity which splinters his actions and emotional control.
The choice is a respectful one because he faces the possibility of losing a maternal figure, but on the other hand he may disobey this premature belief that he may lose the attention or competition for the maternal feel and touch. In a state of imagination and self-doubt Stephen talks of his decision to answer the question. After this answer he ponders, “Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother?…Why did people do that with their two faces?”(27) The use of contradictory thoughts and feelings guides the views that Stephen finds in the intolerable acts of others. For instance when the boys steal the wine from the sacristy (57) “must have been a terrible sin to steal the flashing gold thing into which God was put on the altar.” (57) Joyce makes the contrast that sin is so important than the childhood desires much like the one Stephen is drawn to by the Oedipus Complex involving his mother.
From this point, Joyce makes connections to the sin one must feel indulging in the passions that are associated with the development of children. After the communion Stephen is imaginarily burdened by God as he is his newfound father in the growth process.
In a new passage in chapter 2, Joyce emphasizes the breakdown of the former male figure of his father and the burden of the church coming down on his father more than it should Stephen himself. After his family is in shambles, his father is a scapegoat to Stephen who can now feel more artistic freedoms. “There’s a crack of the whip left in me yet, Stephen, old chap, said Mr. Dedalus, poking the dull fire with fierce energy. We’re not dead yet.” (70) As described by Brivic, there is a “paternal defeat” (285) which brings about the anxiety that Stephen had succumbed to in his passionate encounter of his sin:
“….he was different from others. He did not want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how: but a premonition told him that this image would, without any overt act of his encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place.” (pg. 69)
It would be easy to conclude that Mercedes, is a desired mother figure, but Joyce does not intend this to be the preeminent cause of concern for young Stephen. Rather, Joyce uses the imagined incident to guide his character to very well succeed in the locating of the real figure he desires. Arguably in the home of the church and in the heart of the oldest text to date Joyce gives Stephen the Virgin Mary. Here Joyce makes an interesting choice of comparison. He takes a popular Freudian belief and a holy spirit to test the limits of the Oedipus Complex as it applies to Stephen. Joyce takes a virgin figure (Mary) and demonstrates just how far Stephen can control the urge to violate himself in the sin of lust. This is contrasted by the view that Freud thinks that children find sex “icky” and “gross,” but feel that it is awful that their mother was involved with another man. Joyce intentionally uses the Virgin to confirm the changing of the guard as it applies to Stephen. It is assumed that from now on Mary is to be the mother of Stephen and that Stephen in turn is the reincarnation of Jesus who had been killed for his sins against humanity.
The vacancy left by his family’s seemingly abandonment of Stephen allows him the artistic freedom he so truly desires. With a change of setting, Stephen feels “freer” (70) than ever before and his memory of the old town brings back heart “warming” feelings about life. He “missed the bright sky and the sun-warmed trellises of the wine shops,” (70). Once again warmth and heat are being associated with a longing memory and context. Alas, this is also used later in regards to his second dream sequence in which he is receiving communion, “He sat by the fire in the kitchen, not daring to speak for happiness. Till that moment he had not known how beautiful and peaceful life could be” (pg. 134) Stephen’s desire for his former land in retrospect visualizes the desire to get back the mother he had grown to accept and love to the greatest of artistic ability and will. The uses of the flashbacks and dream sequences each demonstrate Stephen’s inner conflicts over religion, morality, and sin. In the growth process he is shielding himself from the horrors of reality, but embracing the artistic freedom and the knowledge of the road ahead.
Furthermore, this story can be broken down into different stages and how the growth of Stephen is important to better understanding the ultimate goal of Joyce’s writing. In the stages there is always a hope that Stephen gets to “her” and that he can be self-fulfilled. In the natural progression there is also the possibility that his saved up emotions can lead to fulfillment. Joyce’s abusing of these “epiphanies” all begin with the repetition of the phrase “he was sitting” (71-72) all these lead to the next stages of Freud’s belief pattern. In humanity, most bottled up emotions result in anger, however, Stephen absorbs this infuriation with society. Joyce creates the artistic freedom because for a rare instant, Stephen is paralleling Joyce in his own novel. At this point they seem to know each other by heart and the severe misunderstanding of behaviors and events both seem to inspire. Joyce writes to explore his own path and what Stephen can do to change Joyce and vice-versa.
In Chapter IV, he goes to the beach which is a significant setting change, which resembles of the first stage in the psychoanalytic diagram presented by Sheldon Brivic in his essay (291). “His soul had risen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her grave clothes.”(154) The reference to the imagined “bird-girl” (153) exposes Stephen’s newfound freedom stating that “beauty is without shame” (154), however, the warmth that “she” provides is only a memory conjured up by the unconscious part of his brain. Ironically, the harsh realities return in chapter V, as stated by Brivic:
“His fantasies of transcendence are contained in a framework that shows them to be illusions, but without them Stephen could not build his vision…the opposing vectors… allow the structure to embody the vitality (pulse) of Stephen’s mind.” (293)
This becomes a turning point in the reasoning for his art, the “why” and “how,” he creates this “art.” He (Stephen) can now use art to document his history and use it as a way to forget the memories that held him back so long. The retrieving of the art as a fulfillment of history and its forgetfulness, initiates a balance of power between life and art and how these two no longer so associated. Stephen’s idea of this balance is contradicted by the literal interpretation of stasis (balance). On pg. 183, Stephen argues that, “the mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing,” however the idea of a stasis is that two planes are at one, paralleled in every way, shape, and form. Stephen’s argument can be broken down even further into a simple effort of emotions not being able to coexist in the same world as art; therefore one can not be mixed with the other. Stephen accuses kinetic (active) emotions are purely physical emotions:
“Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to…what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system… [But] Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens…an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty.” (184)
Joyce seems to write this segment of the story to have an argument with his own conscious represented here by Stephen as a means of aggression. In this crossfire, desires are matched with ideas and Stephen acknowledges the difference between an emotion that is kinetic and one that lacks the heart and soul of the others. According to Simon Lesser, “The peace of stasis is arrived at by balancing opposed psychic forces in a pleasing way.” Also, Lesser demonstrates that a failure to communicate these emotions in Stephen’s art embodies the work as disgraceful and lewd as well as cheap and prohibitive.
This greater struggle Stephen has forming an alliance with his art concurrently relates to his feelings about Ireland and his later conversion to a stance in which he is a non-conformists to the state in taking socialism. His “motherland,” Ireland, to Stephen is like a “strumpet” that now “works” solely for the state of England. With the scary images of such treachery and anarchy seem like the depleted state of his voyaged trip for his mother. By the time Chapter V arises, Stephen no longer feels the need to be nurtured by a “mother.” Instead, Stephen has found his calling, his freedom, by fittingly: Abandoning All Hope Ye Who Enter Here (in this case, a creative freedom). Stephen, being isolated by the end of the novel, finds that one must be alone to attack their nation. He would not be able to find the strength needed to do this if he does not learn from the psychoanalytic approach to his life.
Stephen is given the power to relinquish all the disturbing thoughts and events that he had pondered about for so long and all those things could not change Stephen and what he really was. The transition Stephen makes is not one in which is immature to wise in the ways of art of development. Stephen is trapped in this situation because he is caught in between the transition from a boy to a teenager, between what he has been taught and what is logical, and between the real world and his imagination.
In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce develops the character of Stephen Dedalus by exploring the attraction to art as well as women to greater show the effects of the two in comparison to the roles in actual existence. Through the novel Stephen is a victim of his own unconscious mind and leads him to a journey of guilt and ultimately a loss of innocence. Joyce as well suggests that Stephen, no matter the circumstance, is still a teenager coming of age in, modern society, that one infant boy finds the predominant male figure a threat and needs to find comfort in the mother or alternative female figure.
In the passage in Chapter 1 (pg. 26-27), Stephen is confronted with a rather childish joke played on by the bullies at the school, furthermore this explains Stephen’s progress in the Oedipal stages of personality as well as behavior. The conflict at hand is the criticism of the mother figure in Stephen’s life, phrased by the question, “Do you kiss your mother every night before you go to bed?” At first Stephen says “I do” (26) and the mere shame is enough to spur the imagination of young Dedalus. In this case Stephen’s subconscious is affecting his behavior around his peers. It is in this passage that the diction commonly used to indicate such phallic imagery is further explored by Joyce. Stephen tries to laugh again to relieve himself of the guilt of having been tricked. “He felt his whole body hot and confused in a moment.” (27) Stephen is often times bogged down by these figures that are dominating him.
The passage was further analyzed by Sheldon Brivic in his critical essay on A Portrait, in which he proclaims that the exchange between Wells and Stephen shows, “This refers not to Stephen being at home with his mother but to an imaginary mother Stephen kisses in the present.”(282) Also, on a grander scale Wells’ comment is an emotional scar for Stephen and more importantly his identity which splinters his actions and emotional control.
The choice is a respectful one because he faces the possibility of losing a maternal figure, but on the other hand he may disobey this premature belief that he may lose the attention or competition for the maternal feel and touch. In a state of imagination and self-doubt Stephen talks of his decision to answer the question. After this answer he ponders, “Was it right to kiss his mother or wrong to kiss his mother?…Why did people do that with their two faces?”(27) The use of contradictory thoughts and feelings guides the views that Stephen finds in the intolerable acts of others. For instance when the boys steal the wine from the sacristy (57) “must have been a terrible sin to steal the flashing gold thing into which God was put on the altar.” (57) Joyce makes the contrast that sin is so important than the childhood desires much like the one Stephen is drawn to by the Oedipus Complex involving his mother.
From this point, Joyce makes connections to the sin one must feel indulging in the passions that are associated with the development of children. After the communion Stephen is imaginarily burdened by God as he is his newfound father in the growth process.
In a new passage in chapter 2, Joyce emphasizes the breakdown of the former male figure of his father and the burden of the church coming down on his father more than it should Stephen himself. After his family is in shambles, his father is a scapegoat to Stephen who can now feel more artistic freedoms. “There’s a crack of the whip left in me yet, Stephen, old chap, said Mr. Dedalus, poking the dull fire with fierce energy. We’re not dead yet.” (70) As described by Brivic, there is a “paternal defeat” (285) which brings about the anxiety that Stephen had succumbed to in his passionate encounter of his sin:
“….he was different from others. He did not want to play. He wanted to meet in the real world the unsubstantial image which his soul so constantly beheld. He did not know where to seek it or how: but a premonition told him that this image would, without any overt act of his encounter him. They would meet quietly as if they had known each other and had made their tryst, perhaps at one of the gates or in some more secret place.” (pg. 69)
It would be easy to conclude that Mercedes, is a desired mother figure, but Joyce does not intend this to be the preeminent cause of concern for young Stephen. Rather, Joyce uses the imagined incident to guide his character to very well succeed in the locating of the real figure he desires. Arguably in the home of the church and in the heart of the oldest text to date Joyce gives Stephen the Virgin Mary. Here Joyce makes an interesting choice of comparison. He takes a popular Freudian belief and a holy spirit to test the limits of the Oedipus Complex as it applies to Stephen. Joyce takes a virgin figure (Mary) and demonstrates just how far Stephen can control the urge to violate himself in the sin of lust. This is contrasted by the view that Freud thinks that children find sex “icky” and “gross,” but feel that it is awful that their mother was involved with another man. Joyce intentionally uses the Virgin to confirm the changing of the guard as it applies to Stephen. It is assumed that from now on Mary is to be the mother of Stephen and that Stephen in turn is the reincarnation of Jesus who had been killed for his sins against humanity.
The vacancy left by his family’s seemingly abandonment of Stephen allows him the artistic freedom he so truly desires. With a change of setting, Stephen feels “freer” (70) than ever before and his memory of the old town brings back heart “warming” feelings about life. He “missed the bright sky and the sun-warmed trellises of the wine shops,” (70). Once again warmth and heat are being associated with a longing memory and context. Alas, this is also used later in regards to his second dream sequence in which he is receiving communion, “He sat by the fire in the kitchen, not daring to speak for happiness. Till that moment he had not known how beautiful and peaceful life could be” (pg. 134) Stephen’s desire for his former land in retrospect visualizes the desire to get back the mother he had grown to accept and love to the greatest of artistic ability and will. The uses of the flashbacks and dream sequences each demonstrate Stephen’s inner conflicts over religion, morality, and sin. In the growth process he is shielding himself from the horrors of reality, but embracing the artistic freedom and the knowledge of the road ahead.
Furthermore, this story can be broken down into different stages and how the growth of Stephen is important to better understanding the ultimate goal of Joyce’s writing. In the stages there is always a hope that Stephen gets to “her” and that he can be self-fulfilled. In the natural progression there is also the possibility that his saved up emotions can lead to fulfillment. Joyce’s abusing of these “epiphanies” all begin with the repetition of the phrase “he was sitting” (71-72) all these lead to the next stages of Freud’s belief pattern. In humanity, most bottled up emotions result in anger, however, Stephen absorbs this infuriation with society. Joyce creates the artistic freedom because for a rare instant, Stephen is paralleling Joyce in his own novel. At this point they seem to know each other by heart and the severe misunderstanding of behaviors and events both seem to inspire. Joyce writes to explore his own path and what Stephen can do to change Joyce and vice-versa.
In Chapter IV, he goes to the beach which is a significant setting change, which resembles of the first stage in the psychoanalytic diagram presented by Sheldon Brivic in his essay (291). “His soul had risen from the grave of boyhood, spurning her grave clothes.”(154) The reference to the imagined “bird-girl” (153) exposes Stephen’s newfound freedom stating that “beauty is without shame” (154), however, the warmth that “she” provides is only a memory conjured up by the unconscious part of his brain. Ironically, the harsh realities return in chapter V, as stated by Brivic:
“His fantasies of transcendence are contained in a framework that shows them to be illusions, but without them Stephen could not build his vision…the opposing vectors… allow the structure to embody the vitality (pulse) of Stephen’s mind.” (293)
This becomes a turning point in the reasoning for his art, the “why” and “how,” he creates this “art.” He (Stephen) can now use art to document his history and use it as a way to forget the memories that held him back so long. The retrieving of the art as a fulfillment of history and its forgetfulness, initiates a balance of power between life and art and how these two no longer so associated. Stephen’s idea of this balance is contradicted by the literal interpretation of stasis (balance). On pg. 183, Stephen argues that, “the mind is arrested and raised above desire and loathing,” however the idea of a stasis is that two planes are at one, paralleled in every way, shape, and form. Stephen’s argument can be broken down even further into a simple effort of emotions not being able to coexist in the same world as art; therefore one can not be mixed with the other. Stephen accuses kinetic (active) emotions are purely physical emotions:
“Our flesh shrinks from what it dreads and responds to…what it desires by a purely reflex action of the nervous system… [But] Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens…an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror, a stasis called forth, prolonged and at last dissolved by what I call the rhythm of beauty.” (184)
Joyce seems to write this segment of the story to have an argument with his own conscious represented here by Stephen as a means of aggression. In this crossfire, desires are matched with ideas and Stephen acknowledges the difference between an emotion that is kinetic and one that lacks the heart and soul of the others. According to Simon Lesser, “The peace of stasis is arrived at by balancing opposed psychic forces in a pleasing way.” Also, Lesser demonstrates that a failure to communicate these emotions in Stephen’s art embodies the work as disgraceful and lewd as well as cheap and prohibitive.
This greater struggle Stephen has forming an alliance with his art concurrently relates to his feelings about Ireland and his later conversion to a stance in which he is a non-conformists to the state in taking socialism. His “motherland,” Ireland, to Stephen is like a “strumpet” that now “works” solely for the state of England. With the scary images of such treachery and anarchy seem like the depleted state of his voyaged trip for his mother. By the time Chapter V arises, Stephen no longer feels the need to be nurtured by a “mother.” Instead, Stephen has found his calling, his freedom, by fittingly: Abandoning All Hope Ye Who Enter Here (in this case, a creative freedom). Stephen, being isolated by the end of the novel, finds that one must be alone to attack their nation. He would not be able to find the strength needed to do this if he does not learn from the psychoanalytic approach to his life.
Stephen is given the power to relinquish all the disturbing thoughts and events that he had pondered about for so long and all those things could not change Stephen and what he really was. The transition Stephen makes is not one in which is immature to wise in the ways of art of development. Stephen is trapped in this situation because he is caught in between the transition from a boy to a teenager, between what he has been taught and what is logical, and between the real world and his imagination.
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