Concealing Dalkey Hill: Evasion and Parallax in Nausicaa Essay

Concealing Dalkey Hill Evasion and Parallax in Nausicaa T.S. Eliot decl atomic number 18d that Ulysses was a masterpiece because it demonstrated the futility of all prior literary styles. Indeed, the episodes of Oxen of the Sun and Aeolus could be taken as challenging primers on English style and rhetoric. This kaleidoscopic potential is seemingly reduced to a stark black-and-white vision in Nausicaa. As many critics have pointed out, Joyce stylizes Gerty MacDowells half of the narrative with a saccharine veneer which euphemizes her sexual encounter (itself a distanced and euphemized rendezvous) with Bloom. The first-time ref and seasoned critics alike are led into sneering at Gerty behind the safety of the authors overt critique of her superficiality only when Joyce reveals the psychological origin of her constant evasion - her lame leg, a condition which is only hinted at until Bloom notices it post-climax - are the first seeds of pity sown in the readers mind. The audiences a ppreciation of Gertys defect grows ten times worse (301) in light of Blooms uncharacteristically cavalier and scurrilous attitude towards a fellow outsider in which he, too, is guilty of his own brand of sexual evasion. As the reader implicitly identifies Blooms rather heartless outlook with his own, he compensates for his initial condemnation of Gertys character by sentimentalizing her with a Dickensian gloss - and thus is held as guilty of evasion as the episodes heroine and hero. Joyces manipulation of his audiences expectations is never deployed through explicit moralizing but through his parallactic style (a concept distinct from the stylistic cornucopia redeem elsewhere in the novel), a shifting mode through which he questions t... ...ernans, he reminds himself of the necessity for perspectival inclusion Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought to go home and laugh at themselves. Always want to be swilling in company. Afraid to be alone like a child of two. intend he hit me. Loo k at it other way round. Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers for Israel. (311) Blooms peace of the Citizens undoubtedly hostile remark may spring from either cowardice or his underlying sense of humanity, depending on how one takes it. And that parallactic means of interpretation is what Nausicaa requires - not only for interpreting the text, but for interpreting our interpretation. We, after all, are the ultimate voyeurs in an episode of purely visual interaction. To commit our literary resources to uncovering the spring alone, and not ourselves, is yet another instrument of evasion.