Deirbhile in her lecture on storytelling quoted Ruth Sawyer on the nature of folk stories
inherent unity. She said these stories are, "polished like a pebble in a streambed, weathered over time; complete." This is a highly
applicable statement to both James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, and Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes,
which we have read these last two weeks. For, beyond the obvious similarity that these texts are, as Harry Levin remarks, what
the German critics call Bildugsroman, novels of development, both are the well-worn stories of a youth spent in the tragedy
of an Irish Catholic family. Storytelling being a central activity to the Irish insures that both of these tales are rich with imagery and
feeling. Making it terrible difficult not to feel the thrill of climbing into a field and eating apples and milking cows surreptitiously or
the pain of an unjust 'pandying' over broken classes.
One of the essential similarities between the two texts is their acceptance of sin in the face of greater horrors. In the case of Joyce's
Stephen, it is lust of the body and pride of the ego, which are stumbling blocks to his conscience in a world filled with priests and
their well-pocketed flock of sheep. He considers briefly the call to service in the Church, and in a telling sequence he sees a priest
come out of the church with 'the mirthless face of a sunken day', at this he decides to embrace his own aesthetic of life. Frank's
interaction with the Church is less settled partially due to his being born into a place where the orthodoxy had less control over one's
life. Ah, to be born on the sinful shores of 'Amerikay', 'tis a blessing indeed. Yet, he too is drawn to the quietude of the Church and
her practices, learning Latin to be an altar boy, only to have the door slammed in his face. Eventually his circumstances and hormones
force him to embrace his inner nature and turn from the hypocrisy of the Church and her faithful. As Richard Ellmann points out,
"...the fall into sin, at first a terror, gradually becomes the essential part of the discovery of self and life."
The stigma of poverty is another theme which, being part of their Irish Catholic childhood, is a constant backdrop in Portrait
and the central antagonist in Angela's Ashes. Even though Stephen gets to go to the Jesuit schools with the other 'rich' boys,
we see his family falling further into poverty through the inaction of the father. With Frank the subject of his memoir is one shockingly
painful continuous recollection of the depth of poverty about him, again largely brought on by the inaction of the father. Here of
course the 'craving' makes the whole of the poverty problem exponentially worse. This is also a major aspect to the plot of John's
Ford film The Informer, where we are shown the power money has on a besieged psyche. The anti-hero Gippo is literally attacked
by a reminder of his impoverishment and the means with which to extricate himself throughout the opening scenes. At the insistent
suggestion of a Wanted placard, he commits the sacrilege of 'peachin' on a fella' for a reward of £20. In the film The Field,
there is a more thorough fleshing out of the ideas we have discussed about the poverty of Ireland's Catholics. The overarching
implication of eight hundred years of cultural conquest, especially the Penal days, and the effect the Great Hunger had on those
who did not emigrate, or abandon ('sell') their faith, continuing on in their impoverishment, is played out in the character of Bull
most effectively. For it is in the conflict of the law of money (commerce) and his law of the land, that we see the echoes of Churchill's
quote, "What does it matter if they are free, as long as we own them." His indictment of the role the Church played during the
Great Hunger is suggestive of the latent animosity at the heart of the Irish relation to Catholicism.
As Padraig pointed out the Christian Brothers have a great deal to do with the spiritual impoverishment, which Joyce's Stephen
rebels against in his attempt to become 'the priest of eternal imagination'. Even though he did not receive an education from these
men, Stephen's entire education was at the hands of Jesuits who used violence sparingly, yet used it none the less. In Frank's
education, being a 'lane' boy, he was forced to attend the National Schools, largely run by the Christian Brothers, where the level of
violence and spiritual degradation was overwhelming. The list of offenses that would cause a boy to be hit is extensive and
demoralizing. It is particularly telling of the Master's nature towards their charges when initially asked if they are good boys, Frank
and Malachy respond yes, and the Brother says, "are they yanks or what?" This same violence is mirrored in The Field,
where the Tinker's daughter says, "All fathers beat their children, they wouldn't be children if they didn't." This continual abuse
creates a victim mentality, coupled with the guilt invoked in fear of Hell it is crippling. In an insidious similarity it is corollary to the
ideas Collins discusses in Cultural Conquest in regards to English colonialism and its effect on the Irish.
The Christian Brothers melded the ideas of Nationalism and Puritanism together in such a way that it was inevitable that one would
become. the perfect solider for Ireland and the perfect solider for Christ. Their intent was to 'knock the spirit/spunk out of you', for
their greatest fear was the individualism unfettered by the nets of conformity. Joyce's Dadaelus, by nature of his name, is surely
meant to escape. While it is implicit in Frank the yank, he too will sidestep the snares of catechism through his desire to be like his
Father and Pa Keating to "not give a fiddler's fart what the world thinks." Many don't. The Jainsonist (sp) ethos which teaches
self-denial and self-abuse through an anti-joy anti-life stance reflects the same fear of the womb exhibited by the warriors in
Condren's The Serpent and The Goddess. This hypocrisy twists them, as the dislike for the poor has done for the 'gentlemen'
Jesuits, in to a gross caricature of the model Christianity strives towards.
A similar unrealized romantic notion was the 'Celtic Twilight' authors' idealization of the Irish. Beckett and Joyce felt Yeats & co.
painted an unrealistic image of the 'noble peasantry', they also felt that they wrote as if they had no bodies, devoid of sexuality, in a
word ethereal (like Yeats and Maude Gonne's astral/spiritual marriage). It is telling that little physical love is shown throughout
these family stories, in Joyce, McCourt, the Brian Friel play Philadelphia, Here I Come! and The Field, family seems
to be a pathos to escape from. In fact the silence between family members plays a key role in the last two. As Frank McCourt puts
it succinctly, the "shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother, moaning by the fire", this is the miserable model
that sings with the realism of poverty and misfortune. Exemplifying this dichotomy is the misery of an Irish Catholic childhood where
Gaelic is a badge.of poverty and DeVelera's inane notion that the individual was responsible for the 'national' language's heroic survival.
It is escapism, which is the primary reaction to the miseries of 'eight hundred years of oppression'. Fathers drown their soora' in a
pint or five, and the Mothers stare into the dying ashes, in a reciprocal acceptance of the state they have fallen into. It is no wonder
children like Frank dream of taking flight to 'Amerikay' and Dadaelus seeks exile on the continent to escape the snares that mirthless
men have set for them. For if you don't give your life for faith, you give it for the Five Green Fields, or more often than naught both.
The Scar points out that the song Bold Fenian Men aptly suggests the truth of Stephen's remark that "Ireland is a
sow who eats her farrow," in the constant supply of willing martyrs for the green. Death is a rather terminal form of escapism.
One of the most powerfully important aspects of Angela's Ashes, is Frank's avoidance of analyzing his situation and using
the language of victimhood to qualify his misery. In both Stephen and Frank we see individuals who by refusing to be defined by the
misery of their situation and fixating on the sorra' of centuries long oppression, sidestep the trap of their environment and cross the
boundary into life out of death. Childhood is a place in time where barriers are easily crossed, when the magick of transformation
through imagination is still possible. Frank seems to be ever looking for the positive in his various encounters with desperation. This
is why his tapestry of stories is so compelling.
Ireland's history is one long sordid tale of misery and misfortune, and yet there is a resilience that runs through these desperate
tales. Only in telling these tales of escapees can others hope to break the chains of determinism and take on Dadaelus' wings.
When we step into the imaginal space of dreamtime, we get a sense of our own connection to the human condition. We place
ourselves in that border space where Stephen and Frank stepped out of the trap. In an act of sympathetic magick we take on the
characteristics and conceptions of those who by dent of imagination are, "transforming the daily bread of experience into the
radiant body of everliving life." We take of the fruit of that second tree in the Garden, 'and become as Gods'.
It is through this embracing of life and shedding of guilt that Stephen and Frank can come back through the door of death like the
Dying God and return with their stories. In turn these stories become the maps by which others can make the same journey, like
Perseus's string through Dadaelus's labyrinth. This crossing of borders is seen in children's song like Connla, in the character
Gippo being in a neither/nor position in The Informer, or the prayer for Shame (sp) in The Field. It is this unity of
cooperative dualism, these borders between worlds, which suggest where we should look for answers to our own miseries and
misfortunes, so as to avoid the trap of martyrdom set for us by those mirthless men for Pete's (not Christ's) sake.