Chapter 4:

Summary

Names and Myths: Names have power and they have even more power when there are myths and stories behind them. Clark uses the character of Stephen Dedalus in Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to convey this point. The name Stephen has strong ties to Christianity whereas Dedalus comes from Ancient Greek myths where he was a maker. The character of Stephen Dedalus is also a maker, like his namesake, and is a blending of two unlike cultures.

Word Hoards: Word hoards are described as "an identifiable collection of words...drawn authentically from the experience of growing up in a certain cultural tradition" (54). Writers use their personal word hoards to make their writing sound truly authentic. For example, a writer from the Deep South can more effectively create and convey a character raised in the Deep South than someone who has only ever lived in a small town in the Pacific Northwest, and vice versa. Word hoards convey authenticity. Joyce's word hoard, for example, contains Catholicism and Irish culture and these appear prominently in his writing.

Rituals and Icons: In another Joyce story, "The Dead," Catholic and Greek iconography appears in the form of the main character's name, Michael Furey. The character is actually a frail, sickly boy, but his namesakes say otherwise. Michael is a warrior angel and in Greek mythology, the Fury is a vengeful, warrior spirit that punishes the wicked. The Catholic iconography stays strong throughout the story as a graveyard is filled with crosses, spears, and thorns, all symbols of Jesus Christ. These icons ultimately tie further back to Joyce himself as he was raised in Irish Catholic culture.

Writing lessons

1. When inventing a name for a character, remember you have a range of choices, from the perfectly appropriate (a baseball player named Charlie Spikes) to the coarsely ironic (the vaudeville character named Dr. Kronkite--krankheit being the German word for "disease"). By naming the dead young lover Michael Furey, Joyce unleased a contrasting range of connotations and associations. Why should a frail boy be named after the warrior archangel? Inside such questions, art is created. When you think of a name for your character--Pedro, Isabel, Butch, Constantine, Bruce, ask yourself, "Who else has that name?" and consider the associations.
2. We all have heard advice on the value of unambiguous clarity, using a precise word because of its specific, targeted meaning. But there are those wonderful days when words just won't cooperate, when, to borrow a phrase from Dylan Thomas, the sing out in their chains. The word forge is a perfect example. There is nothing fake in the declaration of Stephen Dedalus. He means forge the way a blacksmith means forge, not the way a crook writing a check means forge. Yet the tension inside this word must be realized and ultimately embraced--by the reader and the writer.
3. Write what you know. Draw from the word hoard you have accumulated. Get the most from the supply of symbolic language, narrative traditions, and myths you have developed from your education, religion, and experience of culture. Be conscious of the diction in your writing--that is, the levels of language used in a harmonic way. Start by making a list of the language clubs you belong to. For me it might include: journalist, scholar, rock musician, movie buff, Roman Catholic (with Jeiwsh relatives). The think of the language heritage that derives from each hobby, craft, culture, and professional disposition.
4. As we will discover in several texts, there is a huge difference between redundancy, which in writing refers to an unintended and unnecessary repetition, and the kind of creative repetition that marks a rhythm, an echo, or a refrain. That repetition can be clustered, but it also works when scattered throughout a text. It can be subtle, but Joyce shows us that the beauty that comes when it is bold, as in the creative variation "falling faintly" and "faintly falling." Be bold.

Critique

While the chapter is on James Joyce as a whole, one specific text can easily be incorporated into a high school classroom: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. By incorporating this text, a teacher can easily take the strategies presented in this chapter and use them in writing assignments. If not, several strategies can be taught without the text, such as discussing word hoards. The ideas that Clark presents are also broad enough that other texts could be found that fit the strategies presented even if they are not necessarily works by Joyce.

The creativity habit of mind from the "Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing" is very present in this chapter due the creation of names and their backgrounds. This chapter also brings to mind Joseph Harris' "The Idea of Community in the Study of Writing," in the sense that a person is part of multiple communities and should use those communities in their writing. A person's word hoard is built from the communities that they a part of, it's challenging for someone to write using words outside of their word hoard or their community. A person's knowledge of different rituals and icons is also directly connected to the communities that they are a part of.

This chapter addresses primarily fiction over non-fiction and is its main flaw. Some ideas (such as your word hoard) can be used in non-fiction but the primary connection with a word hoard has to do with fiction.