Concealing Dalkey Hill: Evasion and Parallax in Nausicaa Essay

Concealing Dalkey Hill Evasion and Parallax in Nausicaa T.S. Eliot declared that Ulysses was a masterpiece because it demonstrated the futility of all prior literary paths. Indeed, the sequences 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 monochrome vision in Nausicaa. As many critics have pointed out, Joyce stylizes Gerty MacDowells half of the register with a saccharine veneer which euphemizes her sexual encounter (itself a distanced and euphemized rendezvous) with Bloom. The first-time commentator and seasoned critics athe likes of are led into sneering at Gerty back end the safety of the authors overt critique of her superficiality only when Joyce reveals the psychological ancestry 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 audien ces gustatory perception of Gertys defect grows ten times worse (301) in light of Blooms un regionistically 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 vile of evasion as the episodes heroine and hero. Joyces manipulation of his audiences expectations is never deployed with explicit moralize but through his parallactic style (a concept distinct from the stylistic cornucopia present 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 loss to be swilling in company. Afraid to be alone like a child of two. Suppose he hit me. Look at it other way round. Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers for Israel. (311) Blooms mollification of the Citizens undoubtedly hostile find may spring from either cowardice or his underlying feel of humanity, depending on how one takes it. And that parallactic means of interpretation is what Nausicaa requires - not only for rendition 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 work alone, and not ourselves, is yet another instrument of evasion.