HCJ Year 2 - Synopsis Notes for Test

Alright, quite a lot of information in one lecture, but I've done my best to simplify my notes... Here goes;

James Joyce - Ulysses

James Joyce is described as an icon for Modernism (1880-World War 1). In Ulysses, Joyce describes the fragmentation of the society through his main characters. He ventures in to people's minds and tries to describe how human beings have diverse ways of looking and experience things, and therefore can experience the same event or thought with different views on it at the same time, which of course helps making this book even more confusing.

Joyce's style of writing, stream of consciousness, is a very confusing (most of this book I found extremely confusing) way of writing, and therefore it seems as if nothing really makes sense in the book, and sometimes, I'm not even sure the characters themselves know what they do, feel or think. Joyce breaks free from previous, conservative trends and ideas within literature and instead of relying on the previous narrative styles that consists of a beginning, middle and an end, his writing jumps all over the place - just like yours and my mind works in our daily life. With this writing style, the narrative ends up very decentred, and there is no single story, but many stories that overlap one another and never really reveals anything - because nothing seems to be definite.

Many of the feelings and experiences that are being described have close connection with Freud, such as when Molly Bloom considers her previous love affairs as 'experiences', and not as something that stays close to her heart. This work includes things that could be seen (and was seen) as pornographic and perverse, and was therefore banned. This also show indications on the Freudian way of considering things in life, as in 'humans have sex and therefore we should write about it', just as we write about everything else that happens around us.

Sigmund Freud

Freud was a sexist! He said that humans are motivated by sex, and it's a basic need, a basic instinct. He explained that this helped understanding how people thought, basically: no sex = no motivation. Freud described how people are not what they think they are because the society suppresses the individual and therefore it damages the individual - since sex, and orgasms, are basic needs (in Freudian terms) just like hunger and anger, a human being cannot survive without it - and as the society chooses to suppress these feelings, these needs the human becomes depressed and mentally ill.

But not everything seems to be about sex when talking about Freud. One of his most famous works is 'On the analysis of dreams', and this was the other major area in which he was interested in. Freud describes the human mind as consisting of a conscious and a subconscious part where the two opposites always exist in a constant conflict which leads to unhappiness. To find out how the conflict between the two can be solved, Freud concentrated on dreams as he described being the royal way to the subconscious. Because, through discussing dreams Freud said that you can find out what feelings, emotions, thoughts and needs are being suppressed in your body/mind and what can be done to change this.

Mainly Freud treated people with paranoia, different types of phobias, hysteria, fears and similar 'illnesses'. He is also famous for the concept penis envy where he describes all women being jealous on men and wanting to become one... [Silly thoughts... Lol!] But as we can see, a very common subject keeps repeating itself when it comes to Freud - sex.

George Orwell - 1984

In this book George Orwell describes how the government tries to control their citizens through language. For example, if they remove the word rebellion from the vocabulary, it cannot be used and therefore the action in itself will stop existing, and in this way the government can control their population to think and act in the ways they want.

1984 tells the story of how Winston Smith makes a living on censoring newspapers and erasing the past that the government does not want anyone to remember, this to be able to control the present and therefore also the future. "He who controls the present, controls the past - he who controls the past, controls the future" - so he is assigned to destroy the past to help the government control the future... Very shocking and something that is very scary and could probably happen in countries where no communication with other countries is allowed.

They produce a new dictionary with words that should be allowed and used, newspeak, and words change meaning such as 'love is hate' and 'peace is war', and the expression 'thought crime is death' occurs, which means that anyone thinking their own thoughts and trying to explore 'words' and 'actions' that are not within the dictionary will meet death in one way or another by simply just disappearing all of a sudden...

This can in some ways be linked with today's society where The Ministry of Defence (earlier called the Ministry of War) does not really deal in defence - more likely in the opposite...

John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath

This is a very extreme and controversial piece of work which is considered being a journalistic piece; some consider it propaganda, others as a journalistic campaign. John Steinbeck was the first, and only journalist so far, to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962.

Steinbeck based this book , The Grapes of Wrath, on a number of articles that he wrote as he lived and travelled with citizens of the United States that struggled through the great depression and left their homes, to find new opportunities and a new future in the promised land; California. The unfair and inhuman conditions that Steinbeck describes in the book was commented as exaggerated by some of the readers, but research shows that conditions were actually even worse during this time than he did describe. All the characters in the book are fictitious but do represent the majority of the people living and working under this period in time, and I think this is what makes the piece so vivid and strong.

The key narrative in this book focuses on migration (and the resistance to) - and this will always be a subject to discuss no matter when, even most likely in 200 years, because every generation, and every culture has its own migration story. From what I have read and heard about this book, and its author, it seems as if the main message that it wants to put through to fellow human beings living now is to cooperate and help each other. To work together and through these ways reach the best society possible - Socialism.

The book is written in a very descriptive way and you can feel yourself being there with the characters, suffering with them and sharing their daily hardness to battle the terrible conditions and tests they face throughout their journey. The dialogues are very colourful and intense (like our tutor Brian Thornton said; "fantastic!") and nails the characters in a way that I have not really seen before. Also, the book gives a voice to the voiceless, the powerless and the ones ignored and through this it can definitely be considered a journalistic (master) piece. This was of writing, visual writing, is closely connected with photojournalism that started to grow stronger during this period.

Emile Zola - Germinal

Just as Steinbeck's works, this is a very descriptive book that paints images in front of you, that adds colour, landscapes and portraits as you read along without seeing a single painting or photo throughout the entire book. Emile Zola is considered one of the first big photojournalists, and also the greatest Realism writer ever. He wrote books about prostitution in Paris, railway industries and so on, but his most regarded work is Germinal that describes a mining community where the citizens decides to strike only to find out that this move does not go the way they expected it.

Germinal is a brilliant book that makes me shiver every time I think about the well described parts of the shop keeper in the town being castrated by the angry citizens and the attempt to survive the flooded mine as it collapses and the only way out is up a rusty old metal ladder that cuts through their hands... This book could be seen as edging towards Modernism (body centred, pain etcetera) but is definitely classified as Realistic. Moreover, this work features women strongly as the sex that keeps the society up on its feet for as long as possible even though the conditions are absolutely inhuman.

I hope someone will find this useful!