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Binary Oppositions and the Meaning of Joyce's Dubliners

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Binary Oppositions and the Meaning of Joyce's Dubliners ISSN 1923-1555[Print] Studies in Literature and Language ISSN 1923-1563[Online] Vol. 5, No. 2, 2012, pp. 63-69 www.cscanada.net DOI:10.3968/j.sll.1923156320120502.1926 www.cscanada.org Binary Oppositions and the Meaning of Joyce’s Dubliners Pyeaam Abbasi[a]; Hussein Salimian[b],* [a] Assistant professor of English Literature, Department of English, My intention was to write a chapter in the moral history of Faculty of Foreign Languages, University of Isfahan, Iran. my country and I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. [b] B. A. in English Literature, University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran. -- James Joyce * Corresponding author. Received 19 June 2012; accepted 23 August 2012. INTRODUCTION Abstract Robert Scholes in his Structuralism in Literature James Joyce is known, by Robert Scholes, as the first (1975) refers to James Joyce as the first structuralist. structuralist. Each Dubliners story is a systematized In Dubliners, Joyce makes each story a systematized combination of signs governed by rules that generate combination of signs governed by rules which generate meaning within the context of Dublin. Saussure believes the meaning within the context of Dublin and in that meaning is generated through a system of structured comparison with the other stories of the collection. Each differences in language. Differences in Dubliners appear story by itself is of little importance and what the whole in the form of binary oppositions from which Barthes collection means can best be achieved by an analysis of believes meaning comes. What the structuralist Joyce how they are organized to mean so. Therefore, this paper does is fixing signifieds that appear in the form of is an attempt to reveal the underlying principles that binary oppositions in the structure of Dubliners. Self- structure the meanings existing in Dubliners. negation and paralysis are the underlying themes as well According to Saussure (1857-1913), the Swiss linguist, as the main binary oppositions that crop up in the whole “meaning is generated through a system of structured collection. Binary oppositions such as man vs. animal; differences in language” (Baker, 1982, p.15). Barthes silence vs. speech; liberation vs. promise and past vs. believes that “meaning comes from some initial binary future that become fixed signifieds during the course of oppositions or differentiation” (quoted. in Scholes, 1975, the action are also of crucial importance to unifying the p.100-101). The organization of differences in the form of whole collection. The interconnectedness of stories creates binaries is central to Joyce and the grammar underlying a system in which meaning is generated. This paper is an the stories, and the semantically-defined themes that carry attempt to reveal the meanings generated in Dubliners Joyce’s views apropos of Dublin and her inhabitants are through repeated binary oppositions. generated from related dualities. In order to structurally Key words: James Joyce; Dubliners; Difference; understand the culture out of which certain concepts arise, the “system of relations of an underlying structure” Binary opposition; Passivity (Baker, 1982, p.15) seems indispensable. Scholes states that system refers to “a complete and self-regulating entity Pyeaam Abbasi, Hussein Salimian (2012). Binary Oppositions and the Meaning of Joyce’s Dubliners. Studies in Literature and Language, that transforms its surface features while retaining its 5(2), 63-69. Available from: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/sll/article/ systematic structure” (1975, p.10). This means that signs view/j.sll.1923156320120502.1926 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/ have meanings just within systems and the meaning of j.sll.1923156320120502.1926 each story as a text is determined by the system ruling the whole collection. System defines the semantic oppositions and the way signs, encased in a cultural frame, are combined and organized to generate meaning. 63 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture Binary Oppositions and the Meaning of Joyce’s Dubliners Like Ulysses, Dubliners is a map to the heart of the Walzl, 1965, p.437). The work is abound with symbolic city Dublin however, in contrast to Finnegans Wake overtones running through realistic events and names open to Post-Saussurian theories of play and parody, as an exploration of the dynamics of the inner and Dubliners has the potentiality to yield an underlying outer world – social and individual aspects of Dublin grammar revealing Joyce’s views of Dublin and life. By portraying the barren world of Dublin with her Dubliners. Therefore, contrary to Post-structuralists who unconscious characters unable to decide, act and react defy stability of meaning, Joyce here stabilizes certain in different situations, Joyce wanted to “criticize ... signifieds to create “meaningful entities” (McGowan, and unmask ... a culture that [he] despised because he 2006, p.3). What seems noteworthy is that “whatever considered it paralytic” (Letters I: 55). Though meaningful things mean, they will always come to mean by virtue independently, there is common thread running through of a set of underlying principles” (Ibid.). The same as the whole collection making it a unified picture of Dublin. structuralists who “usually begin their analysis by seeking Stories of Dubliners are quite meaningful in a literary general principles in individual works” (Rice & Waugh, system in which Joyce questions already-established 1996, p.23), Joyce seems to have realized that “all stories, discourses of nationality, language, culture, politics, and events, and individuals were variations of other same Catholicism that are influential in pitiful, degraded life of few types” (Eagleton, 2005, p.182) meaning that Joyce Ireland. The reader is, accordingly, reminded of Stephen in has arranged cultural signs and binary oppositions in a A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man where he believes way to generate a structural coherence as the basis of that “artists must not be bound by any doctrine, influence, his prevalent myth concerning Dublin. Dubliners is a or political cause, since these are nets or obstacles, to self-enclosed system of rules the study of which will be freedom and to the creative process” (Campbell, 2000, important to the aim of this paper. A close analysis of p.651). Dubliners embodies themes such as quest for Joyce’s language is, indeed, needed in order to detect the identity, paralysis, stasis, simony, alienation as well structures that generate the thought behind the meaning as deception and superstition all of which are made of Dubliners. By and large, language refers to a system of meaningful and effective through the binary oppositions values that may culturally support or oppose one another. that crop up in the stories. In “A Little Cloud”, Little Language has the capability to provide dualities that give Chandler feels “how useless it was to struggle against birth to ideas and carry meanings. The purpose, therefore, fortune, this being the burden of wisdom which the ages is to find an underlying structure concerning Joyce’s had bequeathed to him” (Joyce, 1993, p.49). Lowe-Evans theme and language that establishes meaning through refers to “Dublin’s moral turpitude” (1995, p.396) which certain dualities. The new perspectives on language fixes characters in a state of paralysis turning them into and its structures go back to Saussure’s exploration of living dead compelled to suppress their natural passion the relationship between language and meaning. As a to life wonderfully depicted in Eveline’s dedication to matter of fact, he believed that “in language there are “keep the home together as long as she could” (Joyce, only differences” (1960, p.120) and it was through 1993, p.25). This link between paralysis or inaction disparate individual paroles that one could get to langue and both death and religion underpins all the stories in that produces meaning. Accordingly, every story here is Dubliners. Characters face events which paralyze them taken as a parole and Dubliners makes use of a common from taking action or fulfilling their desires as though structure or langue to render binary oppositions. For they experience a kind of life in death. Dublin is shown, Saussure, language as a primary structure as well as a through certain dualities, as “a world of stultification, system of signs shapes and organizes the world, and absence and corruption” from which “the positive forces structures the reality. In fact, all the linguistic signs of a of ambition, energy, determination and revolutionary language as “a system of interdependent terms in which zeal are all excised” (Childs, 2000, p.202). Despite the value of each term results solely from the simultaneous the fact that Waugh sees Dublin paralyzed by “church, presence of the others” (Rice & Waugh, 1996, p.10) are colonialism, and petit-bourgeoisie greed” (1992, p.158), it interrelated and meaningful in the very context in which is the restriction imposed by discourses of culture, family, they are used. It is through language and Dublin’s culture nationalism, subservience, self-deception, language that Joyce shapes and reconstructs the disabled Dublin as game and indecision that changes every Dubliner into well as Dubliners’ mode of consciousness. a Prufrockian figure. Thus, certain cultural patterns are By penetrating into the heart of Dublin, Joyce wishes shaped out of the dualities which construct the universal to explore a universal underlying theme to suit “all the grammar of Joyce’s Dubliners. cities of the world [and show the nature of modern life epiphanized through binary oppositions in Dubliners]. In the particular is contained the universal” (Jones, BINARY O PPOSITIONS AND THE 1955, p.6). Joyce, in Irish Homestead, announced that he wrote Dubliners “to betray the soul of that hemiplegia MEANING OF DUBLINERS or paralysis which may consider a city” (quoted in In contrast with Post-structuralists’ interest in fluid Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture 64 Pyeaam Abbasi; Hussein Salimian (2012).
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