Thursday, December 10, 2009

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man




By far, I thought A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was the most complex book we read this semester; and perhaps one of the most complex books I've ever read. Consequently, I have thought a great deal about this blog post. James Joyce weaves such a layered and intricate character throughout a number of life experiences, it's incredibly difficult to pull apart individual aspects of his composition. Even though my question deceivingly appears broad and fairly simple to answer, I feel like especially with novel, it's near impossible. Stephen Dedalus is one of the most multifaceted characters I've ever discovered. I couldn’t possibly sum up his attributes in one blog, but I’m sure going to try.

As the novel begins, we find Stephen just beginning to come into his own world. It is oddly childlike, but lacking that childlike wonder and innocence. Young Stephen is pushed around at school (but never stands up for himself, I might add), immediately deals with family issues, and is unable to make a connection with many people in his world. In the first part of the novel, happiness is found in fantasy, in his imagination. Stephen becomes entranced with becoming someone else. He pretends to be Edmund Dantes of the Count of Monte Cristo and fully accepts such a role even in public. Happiness isn’t in reality. It’s not that he feels utter sadness in his own life; it’s that he feels most comfortable in such a make-believe land. And with comfort, comes happiness.

When Stephen begins to grow into his teenage years (I’m assuming since we are never really sure of his age), he begins to experiment with a multitude of different ways for happiness in his life. He experiments with prostitutes, being extremely pious, and slamming his emotions one way or another throughout his schooling and university days. He experiences such vigorous emotions all throughout the text, but I sincerely don’t think happiness is one of them. But now that I’m thinking about it, I can’t think of a point in the novel where there is one main emotion that is being portrayed through any character. There is anger, sadness, potential humor, fear, and possibly happiness thrown in somewhere, but it’s never one sole emotion. But on the same token, it’s not like some of the other works we’ve read this semester where there is just tragedy after tragedy. It’s not like Oedipus Rex or Kind Lear where all we tend to feel is remorse and devastation.

I’d say if I had to pinpoint a happy moment for our hero, it’s when he is listening to no one but himself, such a time that essentially doesn’t exist until the very end of the novel. It’s when he has the knowledge to block out all other perspectives and opinions and focuses on himself. I think this occurs most at the very end, when Joyce is writes again in first person. He takes on a journalistic form, and I feel that it’s the first time we see Stephen authentically expressing himself and feeling satisfied with his life. And I truly think that’s as close as he’s going to get. I think Joyce, through this entire novel, is proving that Stephen Dedalus is not capable to achieving utter happiness. He will forever be molding and changing into different emotions and creations. He’s so unconventional, and it’s fitting that his emotions would not be either.

In fact, nothing in this novel is conventional, including the existence of happiness within its pages. It's fragmented and often times impossible to see.

But that does not mean it's not there.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

The Playboy of the Western World


Out of all the works we have read in class thus far, The Playboy of the Western World is the one that presents the clearest form of happiness in its text. I found this play to be juxtaposed with humor and misery. Happiness is coupled with despair throughout the three acts as they walk hand-in-hand down the Irish village lane. Synge displays a fantastic amount of humor and wit that only an Irish author could possess. Humor spills out of the ditzy village girls, from ridiculous and random events like the donkey race at the top of the third act, and even from the love triangle that is created between Christy, Widow Quin, and Pegeen. From that humor stems happiness and an air of lightheartedness that provides the reader with a sense amusement.

I think that the villagers also find happiness in creating a frenzy when the new meat comes to town. Once Christy arrives, there is a sudden break from the daily lull of the country village as new thoughts and rumors begin to swirl around the foreigner. As he quickly becomes.. involved.. with many of the characters, I think each individual is secretly celebrating. Although some may deny their enjoyment, I think they're finding happiness in Christy simply because he is new and exciting and he gives them something to discuss. Through the eyes of Christy, they embellish the outside world, and they find pleasure in creating this almost inhuman portrayal of Christy and all that he represents to the villagers. And as the frenzy picks up pace as the play progresses, I think that their excitement and happiness rolls along with it.

But just when the humor seems to overthrow the plot line, reality rears its ugly head and we are subtly grounded back down to the harsh realities of the arid land. Beneath the fast paced humor and excitement that seemingly spirals out of control to the point of no earthly return lies a much darker aspect of small town life. Synge is writing about an extremely impoverished population at this point in history. They are being severely oppressed by their friends to the east. And under their light hearts lurks a harsh reality of struggle and their fight for survival. As Christy often spouts phrases that mention God and how they have been treated unfairly, I begin to get the impression that a deeper anguish rests in all of them. The characters must deal with murders, betrayals, and poverty amidst a multitude of other daily struggles. Yet somehow I found this play to be extremely upbeat and oddly optimistic. It combines such extremes and somehow they are able to coincide in the same place. Yet I think happiness ultimately prevails because that is the emotion these characters are choosing to hold onto. I think they have to. If they let go of that humor and that enjoyment, they would have nothing else to live for. For them, happiness is their reason to live. So they bribe people to love them, and drink unimaginable amounts, and hold arbitrary donkey races.

It must be an Irish thing.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

King Lear


As difficult as I thought it was to find some sense of happiness in Oedipus Rex, I think I was almost more lost when I first started thinking about King Lear. Being a Shakespearean tragedy, the story does not lend itself very easily to happiness and positive feelings. There's not a great deal of places throughout the play where the audience or the characters experience a sense of euphoria or elation. As complex as the story is, there just doesn't seem to be a bunch of places where we can close our book and feel super happy for the characters, or ourselves. But as I started looking a little more closely at the text, I found Shakespeare doesn't necessarily hand out happiness openly, but rather sneakily tosses in some opportunities for happiness to occur. He places the "Fool" with the King for a majority of the text, proposing that if he would only listen to the wisdom how Fool has to offer, he could seek happiness. All the while the Fool himself seems to be aware that happiness is obtainable, especially since he knows how to attain it, but it simply cannot for this is Lear’s journey, not his. He appears to be one of the few who has the capacity to acknowledge happiness, but I feel he holds himself back because he feels the King needs to figure things out for himself. There are also places in the text where Shakespeare strategically shows the potential for happiness, especially towards the end of the play. When Cordelia returns to Lear, they share a brief encounter with joyfulness and the hope that the future is promising. But then she is hanged, and he subsequently dies because of it. All throughout the plot there are multiple letters, hopefully bearing peaceful news. But alas, it never comes. When Edgar heroically saves his father after his attempted suicide, we believe that maybe, just maybe, there is happiness around the corner, waiting for the characters. But, Gloucester dies anyway. I don’t believe happiness is absent from the play. I just believe that Shakespeare does a fantastic job of placing it just out of arm’s reach.

With that being said, I feel like Shakespeare tries to hint at the fact that life, or this story at least, has potential for happiness but if offset by one wrong decision or bad choice. It will then have a domino effect to become a tragic plot. If Lear had simply thought about his actions before rashly diving power to Regan and Goneril, none of this would have happened.

Or, maybe it would have. It’s just a theory.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Oedipus Rex


Oedipus Rex makes it incredibly difficult for happiness to make an appearance. I mean, really, it's tough to find happiness in a story that deals with murder, incest, guilt, and gouging out eyes... and I'm an optimist. Since we are dealing with an ancient Greek legend, we can typically assume that it will be a story of either tragedy or comedy. The Greeks weren't known for evoking multiple emotions throughout a story, unlike Steinbeck. I suppose if I was going to pull happiness out of the tale, it could possibly be the happiness that Tiresias possesses in knowing Oedipus' fate and watching him blindly stumble into it anyway. But this is assuming Tiresias revels in Oedipus' unfortunate and predetermined journey and is otherwise happy when he can say "I told you so" at the end of the play.

Before giving up on the rest of the happiness in the land of Oedipus, I think a different angle is necessary to explore happiness. This story, spun countless different ways over its thousands of years, has been told to thousands of individuals for entertainment. It was originally played out, never written down, in order to entertain the Greeks amidst their daily lives. Even if it's a tragedy with little to no happiness or joy involved, it was still serving as an escape from reality and fun for those listening. I'm guessing that the thousands of individuals who have heard/read/told this story since then have found some sort of happiness in form of entertainment. Even if that does mean that we like hearing about gouged out eyes..

East of Eden


My summer book, East of Eden, is so unbelievably complex and intricate that it's sometimes difficult to pull out individual strands of happiness from the pages. There are so many characters pulling the reader in so many ways that it's tough to understand their actions, let alone their emotions. But I think that's what John Steinbeck was striving to do. I think if he was thinking about inserting happiness into his novel, he wanted to do so that it blurred the lines of happiness and sorrow, joy and anger, and his ultimate debate of good and evil. The point is that is the characters experience happiness in so many variations as they live out their lives in the Salinas Valley.

Take Samuel Hamilton, a character I perceive to be extremely good and moral. His greatest joy and his happiness comes from his children, his wife, and his podunk farm that rarely supplies enough food for his family of 11. Happiness exists on the Hamilton farm when one daughter is mar
ried, or a son starts his own business, or when there is a good harvest. Sam chooses to see happiness and optimism in his harsh valley of life.

But then, there's Kate. Kate; a character so cynical and so evil that I truly don't believe she could exist in our reality. Everything about her is wicked and ill-i
ntended. But ironically enough, I think that she almost finds happiness more than any other character. To Kate, happiness is manipulation and deception and murder. Through her evil actions, she ultimately ends up pleasing herself, whether she acknowledges it or not. Her happiness is twisted and immoral in most of our eyes, but who are we to judge someone else's happiness?

Between Samuel and Kate, there are multiple characters who greet happiness along with the ebb and flow of their life. Adam, the father of Cal and Aron, finds happiness in, unfortunately, Kate. Lee, Adam's housekeeper, finds it in his studies of the translations of the Bible, and by giving Adam and his family advice. Liz, Sam's wife, finds it in ordering others around and maintaining a household of such order that it would put any accountant to shame.

The point is that happiness, as I mentioned in my first post, is impossible to place one definition on. Every being experiences it in different ways at different moments in their lives. In East of Eden, the tangled web of lives led throughout the multi-generation story provides examples of just that. Life is in fact all those things, evil, good, anger, joy, sorrow, and happiness. I think it's all of them, going on at the same time.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The Big Question

What is Happiness?
It's a topic so thought about, so ingrained in who we are, that it was written into our constitution that we must pursue it along with life and liberty. So, what is it? Well according to Wikipedia, happiness is, "a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy". But then that inevitably leads to more questioning as to what is love, or satisfaction, or pleasure, etc. It's simple and to the point, yet it has perplexed many generations before us as to what is its proper answer truly is. And after all these years of philosophizing, pondering, wondering,and searching, what do we have to show for it? It is indeed written in the most important document in our country and we do like to casually throw the word around pretty frequently in our daily lives.

But before this blog in its entirety is dedicated to pursue happiness in life and literature, I feel obligated to express my feelings on the matter. I think that I'm setting out to do something impossible. Because I don't think happiness is anything. I think that it has 6.7 billion different definitions and explanations, for every single person on this planet has a different idea of happiness. And among the 6.7 billion people, we find happiness to be defined differently at any given m
oment of our lives. For what is happiness when we're 6 is different than what happiness is when we're 6.5, or 16, or 66. It depends on who we are and what we value in life in that given moment. It is as simple as sitting on a dock at sunset, or it can be flying on a private jet to a secluded island. It is tangible and intangible, spoken and silent, and we can acknowledge its presence or we can be blissfully unaware that it has touched us.

How many definitions of happiness does that add up to? Well, what is 6.7 billion times any one moment that any one being has ever lived? I don't know; I've never been good at math. But we can explore it and hope that it leads to better our understandings of ourselves and of life around us. I love this question because it doesn't have an answer
. It can't have an answer. It won't ever have an answer. And really, isn't that the best kind?