A Small Cloud has non generated important critical argument. despite Warren Beck’s irregular reading of the denouement in 1969. Chandler’s relationship with his boy – non with his married woman Annie or journalist/ friend Gallaher – could be the important. epiphanal component of the narrative – Joyce portraying a male parent who is merely get downing to ‘learn [ … ] what the bosom is and what it feels’ ( A Portrait 252 ) . a adult male whose scruples is awakened. despite his defect. However. bookmans have by and large agreed that the ineffective supporter abuses his infant boy and refuses to take duty for his ain defects. The narrative ends with the undermentioned paragraph: ‘Little Chandler felt his cheeks suffused with shame and he stood back out of the lamplight. He listened while the fit of the child’s sobbing grew less and less: and cryings of compunction started to his eyes. ’ ( 81 ) Though it’s probably that Chandler is truly regretful for holding frightened his boy. most Joyceans insist that the supporter cries out of self-pity. that his ‘epiphany’ . if he does see one. is egoistic – of a adult male who may woolgather and endure but who will ne’er ‘produce’ .
Except for Beck. many seasoned Joyce bookmans affirm that A Little Cloud develops the celebrated ‘paralysis’-theme and that it complements. in tone and circumstance. the other pieces which precede the concluding narrative. The Dead. Walzl believes that ‘The Dead seems to change by reversal the form of increasing insensibility that Dubliners other-wise traces’ and that no 1 prior to Gabriel. the supporter. ‘undergoes a com-parable alteration or has such an enlightenment’ . Similarly. Ghiselin suggests that A Small Cloud tantrums into the over-all scheme of Dubliners by stand foring the wickedness of enviousness. Ruoff asserts that the narrative ‘describes a manque artist’s hapless failure to exceed a narrow being of his ain creation’ . and Bernard Benstock’s inter-pretation references that Chandler ‘regresses to adolescent self-pity’ . Indeed. all focal point on Chandler’s ‘sloth. his cowardliness. his self-delusion. and his concluding fury and humiliation’ assert that he is ‘shamed. non ashamed’ . But what with Joyce’s usage of ‘remorse’ ?
Probably the most of import ground for presuming that Chandler is non enlightened by his experience involves several of Joyce’s ain statements. A Small Cloud was written in the early months of 1906. when Joyce was 23 and the male parent of a six-month-old boy. Giorgio. But In 1904. talking about Dubliners. he had told a friend that he wanted ‘to betray the psyche of that unilateral paralysis or palsy which many consider a city’ ( Letters 55 ) . Another often quoted missive asserts. ‘It is non my mistake that the smell of ashpits and old weeds and offal bents round my stories’ ( Letters 63-64 ) . The combination of ‘paralysis’ and ‘odour’ . so. while justified by many inside informations in the plant themselves. may hold besides clouded our perceptual experience of scattered. positive esthesiss which some of the pieces generate.
As Gillespie argues. ‘The sentiment that this [ negative ] attitude dominates the concluding signifier of the narratives [ … ] oversimplifies Joyce’s emotional attitude toward his state and unjustly circumscribes the artistic potency of the work’ . Similarly. Garrison observes that ‘Joyce’s explicit statements refering his artistic purposes in Dubliners are non really utile as a footing for interpretation’ . Although Joyce’s defence of his work provided us with an chance to clear up his purpose. it likely was non meant to narrowly bound or specify our reactions as readers. If Joyce at least partly intended the concluding narrative. The Dead. as a testimonial to the more positive facets of Dublin civilization ( Letters II 166 ) . it is non unreasonable to spot a intimation of this attitude in A Little Cloud.
Joyce one time told his sister. ‘The most of import thing that can go on to a adult male is the birth of a child’ . and since his lone boy and first-born kid was about six months old when A Small Cloud was begun in the early months of 1906. life fortunes are relevant to this treatment. But such issues do non needfully assist us construe the narrative. for Joyce might. after all. have been pulling a portrayal of an unfit male parent. Reviewing the story’s nexus to A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man while analyzing information about the immature author should enrich our apprehension of his province of head. uncover cardinal similarities and differences between Joyce and his supporter. and prove the cogency of an alternate reading of this narrative.
In general. Chandler’s temperament is melancholy. ‘but it [ is ] a melancholy tempered by returns of religion and surrender and simple joy’ ( 68 ) . He is fastidious about his visual aspect and. likely. careful about his work even though he finds it ‘tiresome’ ( 65 ) . Joyce besides emphasizes Small Chandler’s defects throughout the narrative. He lives in a ‘little house’ . reads by a ‘little lamp’ . drinks ‘small whiskies’ . shows ‘childish white forepart teeth’ . and is given ‘short answers’ by his dainty married woman. Joyce invites us to conceive of an ordinary adult male. still capable of a dream. but ruled by fortunes and his ain. considerable insufficiencies. Joyce employs of import imagination which steadfastly links this narrative to cardinal Joycean subjects: ‘ [ T ] he thought that a poetic minute had touched him took life within him like an infant hope [ … ]
A light began to tremble on the skyline of his head. He was non so old–thirty-two’ ( 68. accent added ) . Associating ‘infant hope’ with ‘a light’ so early in this narrative intimations at Joyce’s womb-to-tomb involvement in the ‘consubstantiation’ of male parent and boy every bit good as reproduction in the literary sense ( Ulysses 32. 155 ) . By the clip Joyce wrote A Little Cloud. both physical and artistic coevals had become worlds. Of class. the reader shortly realizes that Chandler won’t win. despite his ‘soul’ . for he is non original and hopes to capitalise on popular tendencies. although he realistically admits that ‘he will ne’er be popular’ and hopes merely to ‘appeal to a small circle of kindred minds’ ( 68 ) . Remembering Joyce’s claim in 1904 that merely ‘two or three unfortunate wretches [ … ] may finally read me’ ( Ellmann 163 ) offers an interesting reverberation.
The location of Chandler’s poetic ‘mood’ is besides relevant. for it may be based on one of Joyce’s ain experiences. A similar incident occurs at a polar point in A Portrait. In Chapter 4. Joyce presents a rare interaction between the supporter. Stephen Dedalus. and his brothers and sisters during the household tea. Structurally. this scene occurs at an of import occasion. Immediately predating the epiphany of ‘profane joy’ which Stephen experiences on the beach while watching a miss wading. this episode besides follows the interview with the spiritual manager of his school. after which Stephen decides non to go a priest. As he walks place to a seamy. over-crowded house. interesting analogues to A Small Cloud occur. Like Chandler. he crosses a span. symbolically connected to opposing attractive forces. but clearly. like Chandler. traveling toward a new possibility. Stephen notices a shrine to the Virgin which is ‘in the center of a hamshaped campsite of hapless cottages’ ( 162 ) .
Unlike Chandler. nevertheless. Stephen does non romanticise the image. for he really lives here. and he laughs to believe of the adult male ‘considering in bend the four points of the sky and so regretfully immersing his spade in the earth’ ( 162 ) . Without even a intimation of rain. the adult male must get down work. The cloud image in this scene of Portrait is deliberately delayed. Stephen. the university pupil. so enters his place and finds his brothers and sisters seated at the tabular array. He realizes the contrast between his privileged place as the eldest boy and theirs: ‘The sad quiet greyblue of the deceasing twenty-four hours came through the window and the unfastened door. covering over and stilling softly a sudden inherent aptitude of compunction in Stephen’s bosom. All that had been denied them had been freely given to him. the eldest: but the quiet freshness of flushing showed him in their faces no mark of resentment. ’ ( 163 ) After one of his sisters. who is every bit unidentified as Chandler’s boy. tells him that the household has one time once more been evicted. her likewise nameless small brother begins to sing.
The others join in. and Stephen thinks. ‘They would sing so for hours [ … ] till the last pale visible radiation died down on the skyline. till the first dark nightclouds came away and dark fell’ ( 163 ) . But Joyce does non stop Stephen’s contemplations on a negative note. merely as he does non look to stop A Small Cloud with a supporter who pities himself more than his shouting boy. Stephen remembers ‘that Newman had heard this note besides [ … ] giving vocalization. like the voice of Nature herself. to that hurting and fatigue yet hope of better things which has been the experience of her kids in every clip. ’ ( 164 ) . Despite their fortunes. the kids sing. Faced with the guilt of primacy. the oldest boy is forgiven by his brothers and sisters. Again. Stephen’s vision is superior to Chandler’s. He will retain the temper of this experience. be more receptive to future brushs. and prolong an ethos which will let him to reject place and household to prosecute an artist’s life. possibly with a household of his ain devising.
Stephen is an creative person ; Chandler merely longs to be one. However. in a aggregation of narratives which includes a series of married work forces who beat kids ( Mr. Hill in Eveline. Farrington of Counterparts. and Old Jack of Ivy Day in the Committee Room ) . Chandler faces the truth about himself after simply shouting at his boy. His experience prepares us for Gabriel’s. merely as the household tea prepares us for the strongest epiphany of Portrait. And. although Joyce would work as a clerk in Rome a few months after get offing A Small Cloud off to the publishing house and felt superior to his fellow employees who ‘were everlastingly holding something incorrect with their testicles… or their anuses’ . Chandler. unlike them. is fastidious about his manners and visual aspect and at least longs for an artist’s life. The first part of A Little Cloud besides reminds us of Joyce’s sentimental. poetic disposition while populating in Paris as a medical pupil from December 1902 until April 1903. when he was called place because of his mother’s unwellness. Stanislaus studies. ‘He told me that frequently when he had no money and had had nil to eat he used to walk about declaiming to himself for solace. like ‘Little Chandler’ in Dubliners. his ain verse forms or others he knew by bosom or things he happened to be composing so. ’ ( My Brother’s 231-21 )
All three have an opennesss to life and desire and are willing to ‘struggle against fortune’ . Through the brush with Gallaher. Chandler appears provincial. cautious. funny about ‘immoral’ sexual patterns. but he decidedly emerges as the better human being. and inches the reader toward understanding. We can safely presume that. whatever Chandler’s weaknesses. Joyce had an even lower sentiment of Gallaher. allowing Chandler sing himself superior ‘in birth and education’ . ( 75 ) Unlike O’Hara. a character in the narrative who fails because of ‘boose’ and ‘other things’ ( 70 ) . Chandler is abstemious. employed. married. and a parent ( unlike most of the Irish in-between category. which was sing enormous economic adversities and either postponed matrimony or abandoned it wholly ) . On the other manus. the reader experiences Gallaher’s inflated self-importance and sponsoring attitude toward ‘dear dirty Dublin’ and toward his friend.
Incapable of the sort of humor which might successfully deliver his place. Chandler is finally defeated ; nevertheless. our understandings lie non with the master but with the immature clerk and male parent. Gallaher may hold had the ability to ‘fly by [ the ] cyberspaces [ … ] of nationality. linguistic communication. religion’ . an purpose to which the supporter of Joyce’s following major work aspires ( A Portrait 203 ) . but he is little more than a crow. rude scribe in the worst Swiftian sense. A new impression in the Dubliners narratives is that flight from Ireland does non needfully equal redemption. ‘If you wanted to win you had to acquire away’ . Small Chandler thinks. repeating the ideas of the male child in An Encounter ( ‘real escapades. . . must be sought abroad’ ) . And yet Gallaher. who got off. has succeeded in merely the most superficial sense. Despite holding seen London. Paris and heard talk of Berlin. he is shallow. boorish. and entirely.
The narrative reveals that Chandler. nevertheless remote from being either a poet or the ‘old hero’ which Gallaher ab initio calls him. remains physically and morally the more appealing character. Still. Chandler himself likely feels anything but heroic. and during the spread between scenes. we imagine him returning. deflated. to his household. Like the Canis familiaris sing his contemplation in the pool. Chandler drops his bone in enviousness of Gallaher’s. preferring the alien narrative non of his ain experience. His temper at the beginning of the concluding scene in the narrative is brooding. self-pitying. and. finally. enraged. However. the strength of his son’s agony ( ‘If it died! ’ ) and the coldness of his wife’s accusal finally result in unselfish shame and echt attrition. Chandler’s dreams complement. non rule. his day-to-day universe.
Allusion was a serious concern in Joyce’s originative paradigm. Despite the sarcasm of a ‘candle-maker’ or ‘candle-seller’ as a failed creative person. Small Tommy Chandler’s tears suggest that he has turned from the worship of a false God ( Gallaher and. possibly. Romanticism ) to the true faith of fireplace and place through the unconscious intercession of his boy as savior. as ‘little lamb of the world’ . The concluding clause of the narrative. ‘tears of compunction started to his eyes’ . is precise. Joyce does non compose ‘tears of self-pity’ ; nor does he advance ambiguity by simply stating ‘tears started to his eyes’ . When Chandler ‘back [ s ] out of the lamplight’ . he passes the torch to the following coevals. truly remorseful.
Unlike Gallaher. Stephen Dedalus. and Joyce himself. Chandler will stay in Dublin. return to his day-to-day undertakings. and pay off the furniture. Yet. he may besides further the growing of an creative person. He is. so. ‘a captive for life’ . but the prison walls offer the hope of graffito. for the kid represents creativeness every bit good as duty. and the narrative offers an early intervention of a cardinal Joycean subject.
