Fragments of A Painful Case and Paper Pills -- Painful Case Paper Pill

Fragments of A Painful Case and Paper Pills Although James Joyce and Sherwood Anderson mend their subjects in very diverse milieux (Joyces in Dublin Andersons in Winesburg, Ohio), two of their subjects speak the same language of idiosyncrasy. In Joyces A Painful Case, Mr. Duffy keeps on his desk a little sheaf of papers held together by a brass pin. In these sheets a sentence was inscribed from age to time and, in an ironical moment, the headline of an advertisement for Bile Beans had been pasted on to the first sheet (Joyce 103). In Andersons Paper Pills, Dr. Reefy records his thoughts on discard of paper that became hard balls and were thrown away (Anderson 36). These scribbled bits of subjectivity offer perspicacity into the constituions of Andersons doctor and Joyces painful case. Living in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was a citizen (Joyce 103), Mr. Duffy provides an physical exertion of the unwittingly mechanized indivi dual. Mr. Duffy attempts to preserve an interior life of introspection against the overcome and machine-like activities of city life (134) but he resembles nothing so oftentimes as a well-oiled machine. Duffy tries to live self-contained in the gap mingled with nature and culture, when these terms are defined so that we can ascertain the infants relation to the mother as somehow natural and the post-Oedipal child as unmatched who is in the process of assuming a position within the heathenish order as a whole (Eagleton 156). Associating with neither companions nor friends, church nor trust (Joyce 105), Duffy removes himself from familial and societal ties and from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances (104). The first threat to... ...uded the world. It became grave and then faded away and the little thoughts began again (37). In this oscillation of univocity and fragmentation, even the twisted apples have their day in the sun. As oppose to Duffys orde red collage, Reefys confounding lack of order -- in a different twist of Modernist irony -- assure his wholeness and his health. Works Cited Anderson, Sherwood. Paper Pills. Winesburg, Ohio. Ed. hindquarters H. Ferres. New YorkViking Penguin, 1977. 35-8. Butler, Christopher. Early Modernism Literature, Music, and Painting in Europe, 1900-1916. Oxford Clarendon, 1994. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory. Minneapolis University of atomic number 25 Press, 1995. Joyce, James. A Painful Case. Dubliners . New York Penguin, 1993. 103-14. ---. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.. Ed. Chester G. Anderson. New York Viking Penguin, 1977.