Immediately noticable, the narrator gets closer to Dedalus in this section of the book than in the previous one. This serves to give the reader deeper insight into the conflict of the character concerning religion. This issue is established at the beginning of the section rather heavy handedly as we see how intrinsically the nature of time and Dedalus' own anachronistic feelings are tied to his views on religion. On page 24 the first non-dialogue line begins one theme running through the section: "Fabled by the daughters of memory." This is followed by Stephen's visceral and ingrained memory of the distant past. We see him here feel the wieght of time and the past as immediate issues. The use of the word fable sets the connections to The Odyssey prominently, as does the role of the olympian muses.
On page 25 we see Stephen ponder the mutability of the past, the probability wave of things having gone differently than they did. "Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinte possibilities they have outsted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind." The reader is thrust into the unresolved ponderings of Stephen wherein history is created out of either endless possabilities, or else functions within a mode of determinism. But by the next page, we see Stephen find a resolution for his query in, "Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms." In his acceptance of things existing as they are and in no other manner Stephen finds tranquility, but as we see in his conversation with Mr. Deasy, not God or religion.
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake." (34) Stephen can accept that things are as they are, yet he still finds them oppressive in their nature. Deasy's response that all history is is moving towards "the manifestation of God," prompts Stephen to point out the commonplace sounds of children playing as God. Since Stephan sees History as unchangeable and unending (in that he sees it as cyclical and determined), God would manifest in the mundane, the everyday. In this way, "his shadow," the shadow of Christ, that Stephen sees as cast upon all people, is the inescapable cycle of history that is constantly butting up against the present.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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