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Joyce's Pattern of Paralysis in DublinersAuthor(s): Gerhard Friedrich and Florence L. WalzlSource: College English, Vol. 22, No. 7 (Apr., 1961), pp. 519-520Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/372869

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REBUTTAL 519

Professor Mills' stubborn refusal to walkout 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, fumblingstowards truth . . . searching with his stu-

dents for something not yet fully known.

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

aspersions on the Professor's professionalcompetence; but I cannot help thinkingthat if he really is uncertain about his ma-

terial, 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 timewhen Professor Mills will have masteredhis subject and stopped "searching with

his students for something not yet fullyknown." He will then be able to presenthis material n a clear, straightforwardman-

ner, without confusing the students withunansweredquestions.And when that time

comes, he too will be ready to entertelevision as a Master Teacher.

J. BurlingtonSloe

(Lawrence W. Hyman)Brooklyn College

JOYCE'S PATTERN OF PARALYSIS IN DUBLINERS

Florence Walzl's "Patternof Paralysisin

Joyce's Dubliners" (College English, Jan.1961) is in severalrespects seriously incom-

plete and misleading. That Joyce himselfchose to publish Dubliners as the organicsequence of fifteen stories which it is, andnot as a truncated and subdivided 3-4-4-3

scheme, however appealingthe conceptionof "a symmetrically balanced four-partgrouping" may be, must be acknowledged

as evidence of his surpassing genius. Pro-fessor Walzl treats "The Dead," "as alater addition" which supposedly "obscures

Joyce's early pattern,"only "incidentally,"thoughthe fifteenth story is not only Joyce'sfinest, but of supreme importance to thebook's paralytic progression and its spiralof cumulativeawareness.It is Gabriel Con-

roy who most nearly comprehends the

liberatingvitality which underlies the con-clusion that "the prognosis for the patientis death"; n him alone the "shockof recog-

nition"-as Melville'sphrase aptly continues-"runs the whole circle round"; and anyinterpretation of Dubliners which under-

plays "The Dead" as absolutelyessential tothe perfection of Joyce's scheme falsifieshis accomplishment.

ProfessorWalzl's ingeniousassignmentof

specific "paralytic sub-images" or "plotimages"exclusive to each group of stories

proves indeed largely abortive. Having as-serted that the paralytic sub-image of thesecond group is "entrapment" r "the trap,"

while "sterilitydominatesthe third group,"she slips into admittingthat 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 trappedthan Eveline in the

story by that name (second group)? Is not

Mary in "Clay" (third group) trapped byher unattractiveness?Or, for that matter,do not "The Sisters"demonstrate"sterility"as much as "disillusionment"?

The thematic distancebetween the open-ing story, "The Sisters,"and the last two

stories, "Grace" and "The Dead," is notas great as Professor Walzl's article wouldhave it. She maintains that "at the end

Joyce suggests, as he had in all the storiesof public life (fourth group), that peoplewho live meaningless ives of inactivity arethe real dead,"which is certainly inherenteven in the first story. To say that "TheSisters"is but "a story of physical paraly-sis havingmoral overtones,"meansto over-look 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

descriptionof "Grace"as a story of "spirit-ual paralysishaving physical effects" givestherefore an illusory sense of inversionrather than of correspondence and pro-jection.

As to the concept of "paralysis,"whileProfessor Walzl quotes secondary and ter-

tiary sources illuminating it, she fails todraw attention to the fact that Joyce in-troduced the term outright into the first

story of the sequence, and only there, in-deed in the opening paragraph,and thathe did so after the separate printing of

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520 COLLEGE ENGLISH

"The Sisters" in The Irish Homestead, ina carefully revised and expanded version.Such deliberate keynoting of the book'stheme 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, dis-abled squareis the geometricaland literaryequivalent-the epiphanicJoycean pattern-of 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, thefirst three stories, relating experiences of

apparentlyorphaned boyhood, are all told

in the subjective first person, past tense;this focus is abandoned for an enlargedthird-person observation in all the subse-

quent stories, though in "The Dead" Joycemanages to create the illusion of both a

sweeping objective and an intensely sub-

jective comprehension.

Gerhard Friedrich

Cedar Crest College

REPLY ON DUBLINERS

My purposewas to study the relationshipof symbolism and structurein the 1905ar-

rangementof stories in Dubliners,with thebalancedopening and close dealingwith the

theological virtues, rather than the changeseffected by the later addition of "TheDead." Note my subtitle "A Study of the

Original Framework." I agree that "TheDead" changes the effect of Dubliners: its

greater length and development do thatalone. However, in the relation of plotstructureto theme, I feel that "The Dead"

very brilliantly complements Joyce's basic

plan in the 1905version. Its plot combinesdouble epiphanies,each of which is antic-

ipated in the earlier structureof the book.Like the early stories (up to the pivotaleighth), "The Dead" presents a revelationto the individual about himself. Like thefinal stories it presents also an epiphanywhich exposes a culturallysterile society.

As to the charactersin group three, allare trapped. Note my statement: "Thesecharactersare already trappedby life, hav-

ing made constraining choices earlier" (p.225). I believe there is a differencein degreeof paralysisbetween groupstwo and three.

In two ("Eveline,""After the Race,""TwoGallants" and "The Boarding House") themain characters choose or accept the trapat a time in their lives when they could

have made revitalizing choices. In groupthree ("A Little Cloud," "Counterparts,""Clay"and "A Painful Case") the charac-ters are pictured as having been trappedfor a considerable ime; hence the emphasisis on the sterility of their lives. One, Mr.

Duffy, has a second chance, but the paraly-sis resulting from his earlier deliberatechoice makes him incapableof action. Thethree 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 dis-illusionment of individuals in a decadent

society; the last . . . shown social groupstoo corruptto be awareof their decadence"

(p. 227). I do not think the "thematicdis-tance" great. In fact, I am insisting on the-matic similarity. Both opening and close

depict a paralyzed society in the personsof older characters. The difference is in

point of view. The first three stories depictthe painful epiphaniesof young boys as tothe condition of their society; the last three

depict groupsof maturepeople put in situa-tions involving politics, the arts and reli-

gion and comfortably insensible to their

corruption. The society at beginning andend is depicted as culturallyand spirituallyparalyzed.

As to use of the word objective: in thecontext I was characterizingthe fourteenstories as a whole and used it in Webster'ssense of detached. I was not referring to

point of view.

Limitations of space made comment onthe numerous paralysis images and theirvariations incomplete. In general, I triedto avoid the obvious as was true of the

opening paralysis image in "The Sisters"which has elicited much explicationalreadyand also those fully discussedin recent or

readily available criticism as the gnomon

image which Professor Friedrich has him-self elucidated very interestingly.'

Fl6rence L. Walzl

University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee)

1Gerhard riedrich, TheGnomonicCluetoJamesJoyce's Dubliners,"Modern LanguageNotes,LXXII(1957),421-424.