Alessandra Mollica
First Year English (for English minors), Group “D”
May 26th, 2006
Second module - activity 4: “COMPOSING PASTICHES”
“The Burial”
it was a cold evening in Dublin I went to a party with some friends of mine in one of the liveliest pubs in the city during the party Hamish a very good looking boy didn't do anything but stare at me I was a little embarrassed but finally he broke the ice and approached me and asked me to dance with him we had a lot of fun together pretty soon the dance was over so the boy asked me if he could walk me home and I said sure we started to talk but I said it was cold so he let me borrow his jacket from that moment on we spent a lot of time together he was always very sweet with me I was really happy and glad to know him all the boys I had met before him were just boys who got a swelled head and had a bee in their bonnet about sex whereas Hamish was a very sweet romantic guy no kisses between him and me although there was attraction but until that moment nothing more than sweet smiles deep glances long walks very close to each other he kept on courting me making presents of sweets flowers love notes and even a ring I realised I had found the man of my life he treated me like no boy had done before and when we went to his home one day he showed me all the medals he had won as a basketball champion a very attractive successful guy but unfortunately I had to move with my family from Dublin to London because of my father's work so, before leaving, I met Hamish once again in front of his gate and gave him as a gift a basketball t-shirt and he smiled, and smiled, and time passed by and absence made my heart grow fonder but I didn't get any answer from him to my letters three years since the day I left I kept on living my own life dedicating myself to my career but once at a party I heard an Irish song like the one we had danced to the first time we met each other and from that moment on I didn't do anything but think about him over and over and I realised something was missing in my life couldn't think only about my career my family and friends I needed someone special that someone couldn't be anyone but him the only way to track him down was to go to his home so I took the first flight and as soon as I arrived in Dublin went over to his house and a man answered the door: “yes, miss” “is Hamish in?” “no miss, no” and the man started shaking his head and saying “I'm sorry, miss, I really am, he died, miss, six years ago murdered by hooligans from the other team, after winning his umpteenth championship, the last game...” six years ago? that meant three years ago I had met a ghost couldn't believe him so in the cold winter morning Hamish's father took me to the graveyard and showed me the tombstone and still draped on it were the remains of a piece of cloth, it was the t-shirt I had given him, yes it was, yes and the man stared at me but all I saw was the snow starting to fall all over Ireland it was falling upon every part of the lonely dark graveyard on the hill where my soul swooned slowly and all I could hear was the snow falling faintly on my tombstone, on the frozen fields of Ireland and when his father invited me to their home before leaving his mother kindly gave me a cup of tea and started recounting what had happened to Hamish but I just stared through the window at the falling snow, at the flakes burying my memories of the party, the most intense moments of my life lived with him, my hopes for our future with him faded like all the rest into the oblivion of the whirling snowflakes that continued to fall and fall and fall.
This is a story I have written attempting James Joyce’s style, taking inspiration from his short story “The Dead”. More than a story it is an interior monologue by Ophelia, while she’s at home in bed, thinking about something related to her past.
It’s characterised by:
completely broken syntax and grammar: subjects sometimes are missing and there’s no use of punctuation; this is just to emphasize the flow of thoughts, recollections and mental associations as they spring up in Ophelia’s mind;
the use of symbolism or rather a very precise symbolic system: firstly the name Hamish is quoted six times and he died six years from that time she discovered he had died; “six” in Greek is “ex”, which suggests the word “sex”; this word is quoted just once and it’s something that, by being missing, makes their relationship special, but at the same time its absence has made their love too platonic; secondly Dublin covered in snow: it’s a symbolic image for death and the symbol of paralysis; this atmosphere reflects Ophelia’s inner state, the image of the boy who lays buried and their love which fades too; so these elements are all symbolically connected;
the use of repetitions (“…an Irish song. That was the song…” , “…someone special. That someone couldn’t be…” and alliterations (“my soul swooned slowly”) in order to create musicality just as Joyce does in his short story “The Dead”;
the absence of a narrator: someone between the author and the characters; the “story” is told by the perspective of a particular character (Ophelia) than through an omniscient narrator;
Dublin as the setting of my story (like in all Joyce’s works);
peaks of intensity in the narration that the writer calls “epiphanies”, a sudden revelation in which “the soul of the commonest object seems to us radiant”; it’s a moment in which a sudden spiritual awakening is experienced, when ordinary thoughts and feelings come together in a “vision” (when at a party she heard an Irish song and remembered Hamish she suddenly knew what she wanted);
the stream of consciousness technique which basically consists of: the free association of words (broken syntax), the flow of thoughts and the loss of consciousness (state of mind, underlined by the word “swooned”);
a significant theme (in all Joyce’s stories): the feeling of paralysis, which pervades Dublin covered in snow (which Joyce himself once defined as the centre of paralysis), the graveyard, the dead boy, Ophelia’s heart and their relationship.