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Discuss Joyce’s Use of Free Indirect Discourse in ‘Counterparts' and 'a Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'

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James Joyce Discuss Joyce’s use of free indirect discourse in Counterparts and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce utilises free indirect discourse to convey the sense of an individual processing the world around him in an idiosyncratically subjective way. In many of Joyce’s portraits, whether of his Dubliners or of his semi-autobiographical Stephen Dedalus, the narrative is confined by the limitations of the character’s state of mind; as the individual consciousness pervades the narrative, Joyce is able to retain an authorial distance which can disorientate his readers to an arguably greater effect than stream-of-consciousness, or indeed any other type of narrative. In its hybrid of characteristics of both direct …show more content…

As Alleyne berates the clerk for taking an additional hour for his lunch break, the implication is not immediately apparent that Farrington is in the full throes of alcoholism and spends this time in O’Neill’s. However, as his boss fatuously questions how many courses he wants for lunch, Farrington becomes transfixed upon the head that is described as ‘polished’. The use of such a word may remind Farrington of polished glasses in an alehouse but it is certainly a word Farrington himself associates with alcohol. Indeed, the association between his work and alcoholism is completed upon the celebration of his wit in Davy Byrne’s tavern: ‘At this Farrington told the boys to polish that off and have another’. Thus, the use of the word ‘polishes’ engenders a transition in his mind between the workplace and the tavern, which in turn brings about the physical transition between the two. This transition seems to come about, ironically, as a result of Alleyne’s inadvertent comments about time spent in O’Neills. Thus, the narrative becomes suffused with the speech patterns of the character. That this should be more obvious within the public houses is fitting, as it within them that Farrington feels most within his element. In the scenes with his drinking mates, the

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