JAMES JOYCE

James Joyce is considered one of the most important modernist writers together with Virginia Woolf. He
was born in 1882 in Dublin. He spent the first years of his life in Dublin. He studied in a Jesuite school.
And then he attended Trinity College in Dublin where he studied modern languages, in particular he
studied french, italian.
Maybe because he studied languages, but considered himself more than a dubliner a European, he has
this cosmopolitan view. In fact then he was also in contrast with other Irish writers for the period such as
for example Yeats, was an irish poet that had created a movement called the Celtic revival. The Celtic
revival was a movement that wanted to promote the irish culture. Instead Joyce was against this
movement because on the contrary he believed that Irland had to be more European. Instead of
evaluating the past, Dublin had to be more modern. And for this reason he considered himself more than
a irish, but a European person.
In fact then in 1903 he decided to leave DUblin, and went to Paris. In Paris he attended a medical
school, but then his mother got hill and so he had to go back to Dublin.
And then he met the woman who became his wife, tha is Nora Barnacle. With this woman, he decided to
go to Trieste. He started to work as a teacher in a school, and in this school he meet Italo Svevo, an
important italian writer of the period, they became also friends and he had a strong influence on Svevo.
In 1914 the first work by Joyce was published, that was Dubliners. Actually the work was finished in
1905, but then was published at the beginning of the 1WW.
When the war broke out, Joyce and his family decided to leave Trieste and move to Zurich, which was
neutral during the 1WW.
In 1916 h wrote his second work, that is an autobiographical work called A portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man.
During his life, especially during the period in which he was in trieste Joyce had a lot of financial
problems because he spent a lot of money. And so he needed the financial support of people. Also Italo
Svevo gave money. But then in 1917, he had other problems, so he received other donations.
In 1918 he published his masterpiece which is Ulysses.
Then in 1920 he moved again to Paris. In 1922 he published Ulysses. It was very difficult to publish
works in England because it was considered an immoral book. First was published in Paris that was
more open minded, and then was published in England.
FInally in 1939 he published his last work, Finnegans Wake.
In 1940, when the 2WW broke out, Joyce and his family again decided to move to Zurich.
Finally, he died there in 1941.

The most important features of Joyce’s works

Instead of being interested in society, modernists were interested more in analysing the human mind, so
what happens inside our mind. They use the interior monologue to represent the stream of
consciousness.
Even if he spent most of his life not in Dublin, but travelling around Europe, but then he decided to set
all of his works in Dublin. Why? He wanted to give a real portrait of Dublin and Ireland. And so the best
way to do that was to be detached from it. If he described Dublin in an objective way, and he isolated
himself from Dublin, it was easier for him to do a real portrait of Dublin.
And also he decided to go in a kind of exile, because a big problem in Dublin was the power of the
church. The church of England had a really strong power and affected people in a negative way, with a
very strict morality that didn’t let people free to express their feelings, to rich happiness. Especially for an
artist is important to be free, to express what he wanted, and so for this reason he decided to leave
Dublin. Also his education was in a Jesus school.
Another features of his works is the fact that he explores facts from different points of view
simultaneously.
He gave a lot of importance to the inner world of the characters, so he’s not interested in society, but in
human mind.
Also the perception of time is a typical theme of Bergson, that is subjective.
And according to him, the role of the artist was to render life objectively, so he refused the art for a sake,
so he believed that art had a function, the artist had a function, and the function described human
conditions. And the best way to describe human condition, all the possible situations of human condition
was to do it in an objective way. He isolated and detached himself from Dublin.

The evolution of Joyce’s style

He started in a more traditional way, then his style evolved into real modernist style. So you can see this
evolution in different works that he wrote. In fact, the first work that he wrote which is Dubliners is
characterised by realism, disciplined prose, so it’s quite traditional. But he started to introduce different
points of view, and also free-direct speech (we can see all this in Dubliners).
Then, with the second work: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we find the use of the third-person
narration, Minimal dialogue and the language and prose used to portray the protagonist’s state of mind
and free-direct speech.
The third step of the evolution of his style was the real modern style, which is characterised by the use of
Interior monologue with two levels of narration and the Extreme interior monologue (Molly), and we see it
in Ulysses.

DUBLINERS
Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories. He describes different people who live in Dublin, for this
reason Dubliners. So he describes different stories and their problems, for example the problem of
alcohol. There are some workers that after work go to bars and they get drunk. Then there are other
stories, like the story of a man and a woman, they in a first moment were very happy, but the story ends
with a death.

As we can see from the title, Dubliners were the people who live in Dublin.
As we said before the setting is Dublin, and he decided to do that because he wanted to give a realistic
portrait of real people, of ordinary people who live an ordinary life.
It was published in 1914 in a newspaper called The Irish Homestead. But Joyce used a pseudonym that
is Stephen Dedalus. Stephen Dedalus was the protagonist of another novel that is A Portrait of the Artist
as a Young Man. So the people that he describes are not happy people, they were oppressed,
especially oppressed by the church.
Joyce said “The city seemed to me the centre of paralysis”, and actually paralysis is the common theme
of all his stories.

Structure the 15 stories were divided into 4 groups. Each group represents a stage in human life.
The first group is childhood, the stories narrated in the first group refers to childhood.
The second group is about adolescents.
Then, mature life.
And finally, public life.
We are going to read a story taken from the second group, about adolescents. This story is Eveline.
The opposite of paralysis is escape. So paralysis and escape are linked, but this dubliners, who are
characterised by this form of paralysis, tried to change their life, they would like to escape from this
paralysis, but unfortunately they can’t.

Narrative technique and themes Dubliners belongs to the first period of his literary production. It’s a
mixture between traditional narrative technique and the introduction of the new modern technique. For
example, they are characterised by naturalistic style, the style concise, there are a lot of detailed
descriptions.
But, we can find a combination of naturalism and symbolism. We can find symbolism in the fact that we
can find some details, some words that uses that had got a double meaning.
Another feature is that the story starts in media res, in the middle of the story.
And also, a modernist feature is that he uses free-direct speech and free-direct thought. So in this way
the reader is directly into the mind of the characters.
He uses Different linguistic registers, because since he presents different people from differents social
classes, from different ages, so the language that uses suits the age, the social class and the role of the
characters. So according to the different age of a character or the social class he used different
languages.
A very important feature of Joyce’s stories is the use of epiphany, Joyce use his word with a meaning
that is a moment of sudden spiritual manifestation, it’s a moment in which a character find a truth on
inself thanks to an external object. Thanks to that a character realise suddenly a truth about in himself of
himself. This is the climax of the story, the crucial moment of the story.

The main theme is paralysis. Paralysis that is a kind of physical paralysis caused by external forces, but
also it’s a moral paralysis that linked to religion, politics and culture, people who live in Dublin were
oppressed by religion, politic, by culture, and so they would like to escape from this condition of paralysis
but unfortunately they can’t.
In Fact the last part of the story is called The dead. They were destined to die in the place where they
were born.
TEXT
There is Eveline that is sitting at the window and she’s watching the avenue. She is tired, and she’s
looking at the people that are passing the street. Then, she starts remembering the time when she was a
child, and so that before there was a field in which children used to play. But This area changed because
a man from Belfast bought this field and he built houses in it. Joyce underlines the fact that he’s referring
to something of the past because he uses some words like “one time” or “children used to play…”.
He remembered children that used to play, he mentions some of them for example the Waters, the
Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, and then she, her brothers and her sisters. Then she also says that
Ernest was too grown up because he was the eldest brother, so too old to play with them.
Then there is some information about his father. His father was a bit violent, in fact used to have a
blackthorn stick. She does reference to the fact that her mother was alive in the past, and now not. Now
she, her brothers and her sisters were all grown up, and her mother is dead, Tizzie Dunn was dead, the
Waters moved to England. So everything changed.

Now she comes to the presents. She decided that her life is going to change. But before leaving her
home she looks around the house, all the familiar objects, that are also full of dust (riferimento al 2 rigo
“dusty”: also when she was to the window she smelled this dust). All his objects that hadn’t been touched
or moved for a long time do reference staticity. Then, she saw a picture of someone that was a school
friend of the father. When she asked some information about this man, he always said “he’s in
Melbourne”.
Eveline has decided to leave her home, but she asks herself “Was that wise?”, was it a good decision?.
So she considered the pros and cons, the advantages and disadvantages of her decisions: the
advantages are that in Dublin she has a house, a shelter, and food; but she had to work hard at home
and at business, she had to find a job and so she had to work very very hard.

Also she says that the place in which she works, she doesn’t know if miss the employee. But this woman
had always treated her badly. So she thinks that for Miss Gavan is something good if she leaves this job.

Then in this new home would be the same, maybe people will treat her with respect, and she would be
treated as a mother would be treated, so here we understand that maybe her mother didn't have a happy
life there in Dublin.
She thinks about the years in which she was frightened of her father because he was very violent, and
when there was her brother used to protect her, but then a brother died, and the others brothers used to
travel to work. And so she tell us what happened on saturday nights: she asked her father some moneys
because she wanted to go shopping and buy the food for sunday, because even if she worked she had
to give all the money that she earn to her father, and so when she didn’t have money she asked to the
father to give the money. But her father treated her badly when she asked for this money. And so she
had to work hard because she had to keep the house, and also she had to take care of her father. ((in
these lines the adjective “hard” is repeated many times, to underline how much difficult her life was)).

But now her life is going to change, thanks to Frank. Frank is a mariner. He’s a very kind man. She had
to leave with him. She remembers exactly the first time when they met, what they used to do together,
they used to go to the theatre, they like music. He used to travel a lot, so he tells her tales of distant
countries.
Eveline’s father didn’t like this man, in fact her father le ha proibito di vederla, avevano una relazione
segreta.

…..
 ULYSSES
Ulysses was published first in Paris in a newspaper in 1921. And then after many years, in 1936 it was
published in England, because at the beginning it was very difficult for James Joyce to publish Ulysses in
England because this novel was considered an immoral novel, an obscene novel, so it was not possible
for him to publish it. While it was easier for him to publish it in Paris because in that period Paris was a
more cosmopolitan, more open minded city. So it was published first in Paris.

The setting in time is just a single day: Thursday 16th June, 1904. This day was an important day for
Joyce because it was the day in which he met Nora Barnacle, who is the woman that then became his
wife.
The setting in place is Dublin.
So the novel is about one single day of three main characters in Dublin.

Plot The novel is about a detail account of the ordinary life of three ordinary people:
- Leopold Bloom, he’s juice origin, but he lives in Dublin; in that day we follow Leopold Bloom doing
very common activities: first in the morning he get up, he goes to his office, he meets some people,
some friends, then he goes to the hospital to visit a friend who’s there, he visit a pub, he goes to the
beach, he buy the newspaper, and finally at the end of the day he goes to a brothel, a place where
there are prostitutes, and in this place he meets a person. So Leopold Bloom represents the
common man, so he represents old humanity, he’s a man like the others.
- Molly Bloom is a semi-professional singer, had been married for a long time, but the relationship
was not very good and actually Molly Bloom is not faithful to Leopold Bloom. In fact in the afternoon
of that day, when Leopold Bloom is around Dublin, they have sex at home when Leopold Bloom is
not there. So, Molly Bloom represents sensuality and fecundity.
- Stephen Dedalus is a young man with literal ambition. He’s presented at the beginning of the novel
as a person who is looking for a house to live, because before he used to live with some friends in a
tower, but then he was expelled from this tower and so now he’s looking for a new house. And also
he’s looking around for a paternal figure. At the end of this day, when Leopold goes to the brothel,
he meets Stephen Dedalus there and decides to take him home, so Leopold Bloom represents this
kind of paternal figure that Stephen Dedalus was looking for. Moreover, Stephen Dedalus
represents the frustrating, the alienating artist. So, Stephen Dedalus, whose name was the name of
other character of another work that Joyce had written that was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man, so Stephen Dedalus represents Joyce himself. We remembered that Joyce decided to leave
Dublin because it was frustrating living in dublin. So Stephen Dedalus is a kind of alter ego of Joyce
him-self. He represents pure intellect, he’s a young man that is growing up and looking for maturity.

Name Ulysses reminds us of Ulysses, the main character of Odyssey. So why? There is a strong
relationship between Ulysses by Joyce and the Odyssey.
Similarities and Differences: Penelope was a very faithful woman unlike Molly, that was not faithful.
Leopold Bloom is a common man, Ulysses was a hero. Leopold and Ulysses, both travelled, but Ulysses
travelled around the Mediterrenia, he visited many foreign countries, instead Leopold Bloom travelled
just around Dublin. Dublin is the only city that he knows.
Stephen Dedalus can be related to Telemachus, because in Odyssey, Ulysses is Telemachus’ son, here
Stephen is not her son, but he looks for this paternal figure that he finds in Leopold.
Another similarity is that the Odyssey and Ulysses are also similar in the way they are structured, in the
sense that in the Odyssey there are 24 chapters that correspond to the 24 hours of Ulysses.
And also some events are narrated following the Omeric model, and so there is the correspondence that
we already analyse: Leopold = Ulysses; Molly = Penelope; Stephen = Telemachus.
Ulysses is divided into 3 parts: the first is Telemachiad, because in the first part Stephen Dedalus, who
corresponds with Telemachus, is presented (from chapter 1 to chapter 3).
The second part is called Odyssey (4-15).
The third part is called Nostos (16-18).

The epic method A method that James Joyce used in writing Ulysses was called the mythical method,
this definition “the mythical method” was given by a contemporary angloamerican poet called Thomas
Stern Elliot, defined the method used by James Joyce in writing Ulysses “the mythical method”. It is this
kind of parallelism that James Joyce used when he wrote Ulysses. This method is based on contrast and
similarities: antithesis and analogies between the two works.
Why did James Joyce decide to follow the Omeric model? He wanted to underline the lack of heroism, of
ideals in the modern world; by presenting the similarities between these two works, he wanted to show
that while in the past the protagonist was a hero, the modern man is not a hero, society in the modern
world there is not heroism. Even if the problems of the ancient world are the same of the problems that
the modern man has to face, but the problem is that the modern man is not a hero, he’s a common
man, so he’s not able to face the problem in the same way as people of the past face them.

Style, We’ve studied that James Joyce being a modernist novelist didn’t use the traditional narrative
technique, but he experimented the new narrative technique, in particular the use of the interior
monologue, the verbal transposition of the stream of consciousness; so he also used the cinematic
technique, the dramatic dialogue. There is a variety of style, and actually we can talk about a collage
technique, in the sense that like in a college he put together different styles, different linguistic registers,
also the language is rich in paradoxus, images, interruptions, symbols, slang expressions. He used the
different linguistic registers to give voice to the unspoken activity of the mind.

The novel is really really difficult to read, because there are many accusations and references to other
writers, a part of Omer, but also to Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Vigo.
He also used every single type of style: from Latin liturgy and Anglo-Saxon poetry, the language of
advertising slogans and popular magazines. There is a rich variety of styles.

The narrator that he used is an external narrator, that is non-omniscient.

Molly’s monologue The most difficult part to read is the last part of the novel, that is when there is
Molly’s monologue. Leopold when he comes back home, he finds Molly, his wife. There is this extreme
interior monologue, because Molly’s thoughts were free to move back, forwards in time, there is not
punctuation, there are some spelling and grammar mistakes, because when we think we do some
grammar mistakes, there is this flow of feelings of Molly, Joyce presents exactly what happen inside
Molly’s mind.

Ulysses and the Victorian novel As for the setting, while in the Victorian novel are set in London, in
city; Ulysses is set in Dublin.
Narrative technique: the victorian novel is in third person narrative technique; instead Ulysses the stream
of consciousness technique.
The subject matter was realistic or naturalistic in the victorian novel; instead in Ulysses the subject
matter is the character’s mind, what happens inside the character’s mind.
The character is represented from the outside; here is presented from the inside.
And finally the language of the victorian novel was realistic; here instead is the language of the mind.
Bloomsday The Bloomsday is a festival that is celebrated every year in Dublin on the 16th June, that is
the day in which Ulysses is set.
They celebrate Joyce’s masterpiece Ulysses, and during this celebration, people take part in this festival
follow exactly the same route that Leopold Bloom followed in the novel.
And during this route, they read some extracts from the novel, they drink, other locations of Joyce’s
pages are visited, some films are shown.
It’s a cultural event to celebrate Joyce and Ulysses.
This festival lasts for a week.

VIRGINIA WOOLF
Together with James Joyce, she’s considered the most important modernist writer.
Her life is really important to know because there are some events during her life that really affected her
as a person and also as a writer.
She was born in 1882 in London. She’s the daughter of a very important man of the period who was
Leslie Stephen , he was a writer, a critic, a man of letter and he knew many important novelist of the
period such as Brooke, Owenn, poets that used to attend his house. So Virginia Woolf since she was
little she became into contact with these famous writers, critics and philosophers.
But Virginia Woolf didn’t have the opportunity to go to school, to be educated at school and attend the
university, but she and her sister Vanessa were educated at home by her father because her father
believe that girls had to be educated at home, while boys had the opportunity to go to school and
university. So Virginia Woolf didn’t like this, she thought that it was a sexual discrimination adn she was
always resentfull to his father because of this difference that he made between she, her sisters and her
brothers. But anyway, since her father was man of letter, she had free access to her father’s library. So
anyway, se was well educated, even if she was educated at home.
But when she was a child, she had the first negative experiences of her life. When she was 13, her
mother died and she suffered a lot. And then another negative experience was when she was sexualy
abused by her step-brother, because both her parents were on their second marriages and so they both
had children, and so when she was really really young she was sexually abused by one of her step
brothers. She had her first mental breakdown, she became depressed, she became terrified of people
and she started to hear “Those horrible voices”, this is something that will follow her during her life.
When she felt really depressed, she said that she heard voices in her head.
Then she had another breakdown when her father died too in 1904. And once again this mental
breakdown led her to the idea of committing suicide, so she tried to commit suicide by jumping from a
window, but luckly she didn’t die.
She with her sister Vanessa and her brothers moved to Bloomsbury. Bloomsbury is an area in central
London, it’s an area near the british museum. And so she decided to live there and she joined a group
called the Bloomsbury group, that was a group of intellectuals, philosophers, among which there was
Leonard Woolf, which will be her husband. The members of this group were anti-victorian, they rejected
the victorian traditional values, they rejected traditional conventions, so they rebelled against victorian
values as far as sexual freedom. In fact they didn’t follow monogamy, but they had different relationships
man and man, woman and woman, bisexual relationship, and so of course they didn’t follow the victorian
stereotype of people.
As I said a member of this group was Leonard Woolf, Lytton Strachey and Forster, that is another
important novelist of the late victorian period.
Then, in 1913 she had another mental breakdown and for a second time she tried to commit suicide, and
this time her depression was close linked with her profession as a writer, because when she write and
publish a book, she was really afaid of the judgements of the readers. So she started panicking. In 1922
she met Vita Sackville West, who was a poet and she had a kind of sexual relationship with her, but this
didn’t mean that she didn’t love her husband, but she was mentally very open minded, she loved her
husband, she had an happy married life, but anyway she also had a relationship with this woman.
But then, when the second world war broke out, her anxiety and fears grew a lot and in 1941 she had
another mental breakdown, and so she decided once again to put an end to her life, this time definitely,
she puts some rocks into her pockets and drowned herself in the River Ouse, and she died.

Literary career
Her life is very important because it’s connected to her literary career.
We can see an evolution of her style in her novels.
Novels written in her first period had a style that was different from the style that she had in the following
novels.
Actually the first work that she published was The Voyage Out and then Night and Day, these two works
are quite traditional novels, so in the typical Victorian style.
Then she wrote Jacob’s room, instead she started to experiment with modernist techniques.
Then, Mrs. Dalloway is considered her masterpiece; that was followed by To the Lighthouse (gita al faro)
in which she uses the stream of consciousness technique.

Maybe because she was sexually abused and discriminated at home, she became a feminist writer in
the sense that she was really concerne with the position of woman, society, with the emancipation of
women, was a suffraggets, she took part on this group for the right of voto to women.
And as a feminist writer she wrote a book that is a kind of essay, the letter that she wrote to Cambridge
university were collected in this book called A Room of One’s Own.

“Shows Woolf’s concern with the questions of women’s subjugation and the relationship between
women and writing”

We understand her position about women and society and especially about female writers, because in
this book she asks herself, she was looking at a bookshelf in which there were many important novels,
and she realises that many novels were written by men. And she analyses the reasons why just few
women had the opportunity to write. And so she said that women had to stay at home, they had to take
care of the family, the children, so she hadn’t time.
She makes an example: she imagine that Shakespear had a sister called Julie and she was as intelligent
and as talented as Shakespear, but one Shakespear went to school, had the possibility to study Latin,
the classics then he went to the theatre, her sister instead had to stay at home even if she was really
talented.

Vanessa, her sister, then became an important painter. She married another member of the Bloomsbury
group.

The main aim of Virginia Woolf is to give voice to the complex inner world of feeling and memory, so in
essence like James Joyce she’s not interested in the external world, but she’s interested in the inner
world, in feelings and emotions of characters, and especially in female characters. And also she was
interested in human personality and in the continues shift of impression and emotions that are inside the
mind.
Narrator there is a disappearance of the omniscient narrator.
Point of view shifted inside the characters’ minds through flashbacks, associations of ideas, momentary
impressions presented as a continuous flux, so remembered the idea of Bergson.

Woolf vs Joyce
They both used the stream of consciousness, but while Virginia Woolfs never lets her characters’
thoughts flow without control, so she maintains a certain logical and grammar organisation. Unlike Joyce,
especially in Ulysses, he uses a more extreme interior monologue, so he doesn’t follow grammar rule, he
doesn’t follow pontoition.
Another comparaison is that while Joyce uses the epiphany, a moment of revelation in which a character
understands a truth about inself or herself thanks to an external object. For example in the case of
Eveline she has this revelation the night when her mother died, and before dying she said some strange
words in Gaelic because her mother was crazy. In that moment she had this revelation, and she
understood that she didn’t want to have the same life as her mother, so she had to escape, and Frank
was the person that would give her this opportunity to change her life. But we know that at the end she
decided not to leave. In Virginia Woolf there is something similar, but it’s called “moment of being”, it’s a
moment during a day of a person when someone understands reality behind appearances.

- Before committing suicide she wrote a letter to her husband.

She shows her love for him, but she confess that she actually can’t go on, that she continued to
hear this voices, and she couldn’t concentrate, she couldn’t continue her career as a writer, and so
she finally decided to commit suicide.

MRS DALLOWAY
It’s her masterpiece. It was written in 1925.
Plot It’s very simple. In essence it’s similar to Ulysses by Joyce because takes place in a single day in
june. And it’s about this woman, Clarissa Dalloway, that has to prepare a party for the evening, so in the
morning she goes out to buy some flowers that she needs for the party and she spent the day walking
around London. While she’s walking she had a lot of memories about her past, about her adolescence.
So she thinks about the happy moments that she spends especially in summer with her friends, her
boyfriends. She had a boyfriend called Peter Walsh, but then she decided not to marry Peter Walsh, but
to marry Richard Dalloway. Richard is an important person, an important man, a member of parliament,
and so by marrying Richard she had the opportunity to improve her social condition. At the end of the
day she goes back home, there is the party and at this party there are the majority of the people that she
had thinking about during the day, included Peter Walsh that after being refused by Clarissa went to
India, but now he’s back in London, and he’s one of the guest of Mrs Dalloway’s party. And there is also
some childhood friends such as Felly Sichen, with she had a kind of sexual relationship when they were
young. And there is another character called Septimus Warren Smith. He’s a young poet, a lover of
Shakespear. He was a soldier during the 1WW and now he suffers from shell-shock. He’s in London
because he’s looking for a doctor that could solve his problems of shell-shock. But, actually there is not a
treatment for shell-shock. Then he goes to another doctor, but this doctor is not able to save him and so
at the end Septimus decided to commit suicide jumping out of a window. So we can see a reference to
Virginia Woolf life. Clarissa doesn’t know Septimus, but even if they had never met, they had spent that
day walking around London, so sometimes they had actually met but they didn’t know each other, there
are not a conversation between them, but they follow that they live that day in the same area. For
example while Clarissa is buying flowers, Septimus was out of the flowers shop, and so they hear the
same sound, for example there is a plane that is flying over London, and so they can hear the same
things.
So at the end of the party, Dr Bradshow and his wife they said that they are late because Septimus had
committed suicide.

TEXT
This is the final part of the novel, the moment when there is Clarissa’s party. Doctor Bradshaw, that was
Septimus' doctor and his wife are late at the party and they explain to Clarissa the reason why they are
late. Clarissa, after she talks to them, goes to another room and she starts thinking. She asked herself
why Mr Bradshow had taken that at her party, she’s very irritated because in the middle of her happy
party, the doctor and his wife were talking about death. A young man had killed himself, so they tell
Clarissa that a young man, Septimus, had committed suicide. Clarissa didn’t even know Septimus and
She only knew that this man had committed suicide, so tried to imagine, to feel the same sensation that
this man felt at the moment when he committed suicide. Every time that Clarissa was told about an
accident she experiences in her body the sensations that that person who had the accident felt. It was a
habit for her to experience the same sensation. She physically experiences other people's sensations.
She imagined that this man jumped out of a window, then hit the rashkis pikes; and then she imagined
the sound that the body made when he touched the ground. This person as soon as touched the ground
felt this sound in his brain and then he died. She want to know the reason why this man done this terrible
action and why the bradshaw talked about it at her party.

There is an association of ideas, in the sense that this man had thrown himself out of a window and she
associates she had done once thrown a coin into a Serpentine, an artificial lake in London. Septimus
had thrown his life. This man had decided to die instead Clarissa and the other people that are at the
party went on living. She thinks that people continued to arrive at her party. During the tour that she had
done during that day, she had thought of all the memories, especially referring to her adolescents when
she spent her summer in Bourton, and Peter, that was her boyfriend, adn Sally, was one of her best
friends. So since they are living, they are growing. She says that the life that she lived was a kind of
superficial social life, full of corruption, chatter; instead this man by dying he has avoided all that.Death is
a challenge. Even death is a way to communicate something. And people that find it difficult to reach the
centre of life, to live life fully, because their life escapes them, and so they find themselves alone and the
only solution is to die. This young man who had killed himself he had thrown his life. And here, there is a
quotation by Shakespear: if we have to die, it is better to die in the moment when we are happy. And this
is a quotation that she said herself once, coming down, in white, because she’s usually wearing a white
dress.

Septimus was a young poet, with literally ambitious, he was a lover of Shekespear, so he had this
ambition of a poet, of a thinker, and he had gone to dr William Bradshow, who was considered a great
doctor and a person who was really polite to women, but he was capable of being a sensitive person, so
maybe he had forced his soul. This young man had gone to the doctor but since this doctor was an
insensitive person, and so he had made life intolerable for Septimus, he wasn’t really able to understand
Septimus problems. Shell-shock was not understood in that period, there was not a therapy for it. And so
this young man considered his life intolerable and for this reason he had committed suicide.

Parentesi.--> lei pensa a qualcosa, ma in quel momento another thought comes to her mind

That morning she realised that there is this incapacity of living life to the end. Our parents given us life
into our hands, and we should live this life to the end, but she felt in her heart a terrible fear: the fear of
not being able to live her life fully till the end. Richard, his hasband, who is there and is reading the
Times, she feels like a little bird protected by Richard, and she thinks that if there wasn’t Richard, maybe
she had escaped. She underlines the fact that Richard was a kind of protective figure for her. Maybe
Septimus didn’t have the same protection that she hs and so he couldn’t tolerate life anymore. Even if
she’s really afraid of living, she continued to live thanks to the presence of her husband Richard.
The fact that she went on living, in essence was a disaster, a kind of punishment, because she saw
other people dying, and she had to continue to go on living. Other people died around her but she had to
continue living. Then, she underlines once again that maybe her life is a bit superficial, she had wanted
success. Remember that she didn’t marry Peter and she decides instead to marry Richard, because
Richard was a more respectable man, so she could have a better position. During her life she wanted
success. And here she mentions another woman, Lady Bexborough and the rest of other people who
are there are people who wanted success.

This extract is full of subordinate sentences. In this internal monologue, the structure of the sentences
gets more and more difficult to follow.

In this paragraph she underlines the fact that she had never been so happy. She meditates on the pass
of times, she says nothing could be slow enough, nothing lasts too long. While she’s thinking, she also
makes some actions such as straightening in the chairs, pushes one book on the shelf, and she
continues to meditate on the passing of time. Once again there is this references to Bourton, when she
was looking at the sky, or when she was in London she couldn’t sleep and she looked again at the sky,
and the she walks to the window, so she went closer to the window.

Clarissa goes next the window and she opens the carteen and she looks, and she sees in the opposite
house an old lady that was looking at her. This old lady was going to bed, she also looked at the sky
again. She continued to talk about this old lady who’s going to bed in the opposite house. It was
fascinating watching her, and also this old woman goes to the window. Here Clarissa asked herself if this
old woman could see clarissa. She finds a contrast between her house which was full of people that
were laughing in the other room, and then in the opposite house there was this old woman who was
alone, she lives in a quiet house, and she’s going to bed alone.
Then, “the clock began striking” is repeated 3 times, because once again she focuses on the passing of
times. This man killed himself, but she didn’t feel pity for him. The old lady in the other house turn off the
light house, and so now the other house was in dark. And here Clarissa makes another quotation by
Shakespear: “Fear no more the heat of the sun”, it’s referred to death, when we are in darkness, we
don’t feel the hit of the sun anymore, so death is considered like a shelt of achi of life. But Clarissa has to
continue her party, has to go back to her guests. Even if clarissa had never met Septimus, but in
essence in this moment she feels like him, she’s happy that this young man had committed suicide. And
then she joins the other guests.

In this last part it’s important to notice the moments of being, the moment when she looks to this old
woman in the opposite house and this old woman, going next the window, going to bed, turn off the
lights shows Clarissa that life going on for this woman who is alone but also for her, and the guests, they
had to continue to live.

GEORGE ORWELL
George’s life is important to know because his literary career is strictly linked to his life, to the
experiences that he had during his life. A very important step in his life corresponds to a work, a novel.
So it’s important to know his life.
George Orwell was born in 1903 in India. His parents were english, but his father worked in India as a
colonial official and so he was born there. His real name was not George Orwell, but was Eric Blair.
George Orwell was the name that he adopted when he started to publish his works. Then, when he was
very young, he decided together with his mother to go to England and so he actually studied in England.
He attended Eton college, one of the most important schools in England (Princi William attended this
school). But the years that he spended at Eton were not very happy because he had to study really hard
to get a scholarship, because Eton college is really expensive and his parents were not so rich to help
him, so he had to study very hard every year to get a scholarship. Also, he was not happy because he
was bullied by schoolmates, because he didn’t belong to the same social class as the other classmates,
so he suffered a lot during this period. But this period that he spends at Etan was so important because
he started to develop an independent mind personality. Also, he was a person that refuse the accepted
values, and also he believe in socialism,
Then when he left the college, he decided not to go to university, but he decided to follow his father's
career, and so he went to India again and he worked for the indian imperial police in Burma.
During the Victorian period, India was a british colony, maybe one of the most important british colonies.
But then, he didn’t like working in Burma and so he decided to return to England. Especially he didn’t life
the fact that...Britain dominated India, and so he said “escaped from every form of man's dominion over
man”, so he didn’t like the fact that Britain dominated India. And so he was a representant of Britain, that
had to control, that had to dominate over Indian people.
When he went to England he started writing. And he decided to adopt this pseudonym of George Orwell.
Why? George was one of the most common English names, George was also the name of the Saint
Patron of England. And so he adopted this name to indicate that was like a common man. And then
Orwell, that was the name of a river in England which is situated in an area that he really liked.
After that, he decided to studied a kind of social experiment in London and in Paris. He was really
interested in knowing the situation of poor people, so he wanted to know exactly how poor people lived
and so he decided to live first in London and then in Paris the life of poor people. So he lived in the
street, he did very ample jobs such as dishwasher in restaurants, in hotels.
And then, he wrote about these experiences. Then in 1946 he decided to go to Spain, to Catalonia, and
he became a journalist, a reporter, during the spanish civil war. He also joined the Workers’ Party of
Marxist Unification and fought on the republican side. He took an active part in the civil war and he was
also wounded at his throat, and for a period he couldn’t even talk.
Then, after this participation in the civil war, he went back to England. He adopted a boy.
Then, when the second world war broke out he couldn’t participate because he was physically unfit. So
he started to work for the BBC. In 1943, he decided to leave this job and instead he became a literary
editor at The Tribune, which was a socialist paper.
Finally, in 1950 he died of tuberculosis.

WORK
Every work that he wrote is connected with some life experience that he had.
The first work that he published was Down and Out in Paris and London, it’s a work in which he
describes this kind of social experiment that he made living with poor people in Paris and in London.
Then he wrote Burmese Days, that was a work based on his experiences in Burma when he worked for
the imperial police.
Then, The Road to Wigan Pier is about an experience that he made when he lived for a period in the
north of England. The north of England was mainly an industrial area. So he decided to live and work
there, so that he could report, he could have direct contact with these people, their problems. In fact in
this works he reports especially about the conditions of miners who worked in the industrial in the north
of England.
Then, another important work is Homage to Catalonia, is based on the experience that he had when he
went to Catalonia and he fought during the Spanish civil war.
Then in 1945, he wrote the novel that made him internationally famous, that was Animal farm.
After some years he wrote what is considered his masterpiece, that is Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The artist’s development

We have to start from his education, he studied at Eton, we said. He attended upper class people. But,
he was not happy to live there because since his childhood, he felt this contrast between his upper class
education and his background, because he didn’t belong to that class. SO he felt inside him an internal
division between his real origine and the education that he had received. So he rejected his english
background, and instead he was always on the side of the weakest, of the poor people.
When he decided to become a writer, he believed that the role of the artist is to inform, to revale facts
and also to draw conclusions from them. So the artist had a social function.
In fact the works that he wrote deal with social themes (the condition of the working class). But also his
novels deal with political themes, for example the danger of totalitarianism, the exploitation of the
masses, the violation of liberty and the failure of the revolutionary ideals: these topics are the main topics
of the works that we’re going to analyse.

Style
George Orwell used a totally different style from Virginia Woolf and James Joyce. He didn’t follow the
modernist style, characterised by the use of the interior monologue, the stream of consciousness, so it’s
totally different from that. He used a very very simple, clear, and direct language. Because his aim is to
inform people, and so to inform people he had to use a language that could be understood by
everybody.

Talking about the language was really interesting in his topic on the language, on the simplicity of the
language, in 1945 he wrote an essay called politics and english language. In this essay he said that
“good prose is like a window pain(vetrata)”: so the prose has to be clear that permits us to see what is
there outside. It’s important writing in a clear language because crotolling the language means
controlling the thoughts. So it’s necessary to have a clear language in order to have clear thoughts. If we
use a clear language, then we can also have clear thoughts.
In this essay Orwell established some rules, exactly 5 rules that he fought when necessary affected
writing: 1.we never have used metaphor, simili, that we have read in a paper if we don’t know the
meaning of that. 2.never use a long word where a short one will do (meglio usare short words). 3.the
writer had to use just the necessary words and avoid the use of excessive words. 4.never use the
passive where you can use the active 5.it’s better use english words, instead of using a foreign word, a
scientific word or a technical word.

Social themes
We can see a clear influence of Dickens, especially in the choice of the themes; so the realistic language
of the topic; misery caused by poverty; and also the deprivation of society.

ANIMAL FARM
Animal farm is a short novel about a farm where there are many animals that at a certain point
understand that without them they can do anything. So they decided to rebel against him.
These animals after they rebelled against the farmer's Mr Jones that exploited them, treated them, they
decided to rule the farm by themselves. But they followed some rules, and they also wrote these
commandments on the wall of the stable, and so every animal could read these commandments. For
example, they couldn’t walk on two legs, because who walks on two legs is an enemy, they refer to man.
But then some animals rebelled, for example the hen. And so there are other commandments that allow
animals with 2 legs to walk on their two legs. No animal shall wear clothes.
Then, they can’t sleep in a bed. No animal can drink alcohol. No animal shall kill any other animal.
And the last rule and the most important is All animals are equal.
A pig, Napoleon takes the control, and he starts changing these commandments. So they started to do
what at the beginning was limited. The first commandment was “whatever goes upon two legs is an
enemy and Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend”, was unified in a single
commandment that became a kind of slogan that was “4 legs good, 2 legs bad”. Then the pigs asked the
ship, that were considered the most stupid animals to repeat the slogan over and over again, but little by
little this slogan change in “4 legs good, 2 legs better”. As we can see, the meaning was totally different,
and actually was the opposite. Then the other commandment “no animal can sleep in a bed” changed
and they could sleep in a bed if they had shifts. And then the other commandments “no animal shall
drink alcohol” and now they could drink alcohol but without excess. Then, “No animal shall kill any other
animal” they added “without cause”, so it means that if they had a reason, they could kill another animal.
Until at the end there was just a single commandment, that was “All animals are equal”, but then they
added: “all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”, so it means that the
animals were not equals.
Napoleon, the leader, started to do pacts with other farmers, started business. And business is
something that at the beginning animals were against. So He started to drink, he started to kill animals
that were against him or that had doubts on his authority. He also starts to tell lies to the animals, so they
could only believe him and they don’t know the truth and they couldn’t rebel.
And at the end he starts to behave the same way as humans even and animals starts to ask them if their
condition was now even worse than when there were the farmers that ruled all the animals.
There is this scene at the end in which there are the animals that looked at the other animals and they
can’t distinguish between them, for example the pig starts walking on two legs, they wore the same
clothes as man. There is this final scene in which the animals look at the pigs and other men and they
can’t really distinguish between pigs and man. So at the end pigs and men are the same.

TEXT
This extract rebellion is taken from the beginning of the novel which is the moment when an old pig finds to
organise a meeting, a night meeting in which he asks all the animals to listen to him. And at the end he encourages
the animals to rebel against Mr Jones, their master.

In the first line this all pig, called old magiure, talks directly to other animals which are in front of him. All the other
animals are in front of him and they hear this speech. He starts with a question: “"Now, comrades, what is the
nature of this life of ours?”. In the text he uses a lot of rhetorical questions, because we already know the answer,
but he uses them in order to reinforce his ideas. He said that their life is miserable, laborious and short, and then
he explains the reason why he uses these 3 adjectives: they were born, then they receive very very little food, just
the minimal food that keeps them the possibility to survive. The animals that are able to work had to work till the
last moment of their life, and then when they are not able to work anymore, they are simply killed in a violent way.
After an animal is one year old, it means that he’s strong enough to work, he doesn’t know the meaning of
happiness or pleasure, no animal in England is free. The truth is that the life of an animal in England is misery and
salvery. Then he does another question: “is this simply part of the order of nature? Is it because this land of ours is
so poor that it cannot afford a decent life to those who dwelt upon it?” So it is because our land is so poor that he
can’t garantie decent life to animals who live in it. And then himself gives the answer, he said no because the soil of
England is good, fertile, the weather is good, and England is capable of giving food in abundance to a great
number of animals than the ones that now live in it. For example the single farm where they live could support more
animals, and all of them could live a comfortable life, and a life of dignity that now instead we can’t even imagine.

Again he asks another question, he said “Why then do we continue in this miserable condition?”, so why would we
have to live in this miserable condition if England could give us a lot more. And then again himself gives the
answers, because everything that we produce then is stolen by man. Man is the only enemy that we have. So the
solution was remove man from the scene. Even if man is not able to do eggs, milk, but he is too weak to pull the
plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Even if man is not able to do all that, he sets them to work,
forces animals to work and then he gives them the minimum to survive and then he keeps all the rest to himself. So
the solution is to eliminate man.

The only thing that the animal has got is their skin. And here he starts referring directly to the animals who are in
front of him. He starts with cows, and he asks how much milk has produced during his last year. Every drop of the
milk that you have produced has been drunk by man. Then he refers to hens, how many eggs have you done this
year?, the majority of the eggs that you have lade had been sold in the market by mr Jones and by his men to
make money.

Here, he refaìares to another animal who is Clover, a male horse, this Clover had 4 little horses and they couldn’t
have been the support and the placiur of her old age, but many of them were sold and you never saw them again.
He underlines the fact that the only thing that the animals had thanks for the work that they do is a small ration of
fool and a place where to stay, that is the stall.

Finally, there is the final message. He said our life is miserable, but the animals don’t die of a natural death but they
are killed before they reach the natural end of their life. So the message is rebellion, the only thing that animal can
do to improve their situation is to rebel against man, to eliminate man.

A few hours after he gave this speech, this pig died before seeing the result of this speech.