What are the symbols in James Joyces Clay?

Answer 1

In James Joyce's "Clay," the symbols include the clay figurine representing Maria's lost youth and beauty, the Halloween traditions symbolizing the passage of time and inevitable change, and the church bell ringing at the end of the story symbolizing the cycle of life and death.

Answer 2

The Blindfolded Narrative in James Joyce's Clay

Pierre Macherey in his A Theory of Literary Production (1966) introduces an idea that literary form is capable of transforming ideology into fiction and thereby of showing us its internal incoherences and contradictions. In fact, the writer [here James Joyce], by producing an ideology in the form of a fiction, makes us feel the gaps, silences and absences which in their purely ideological form are less apparent (Selden 155).

Likewise, Clay describes a deceptively simple story whose narrative self-deception attempts, and fails, to mislead the reader. The blind protagonist Maria simply fails to blind even the less attentive reader of the blind spots in her story. Having been portrayed as a product of the Irish Ideology, the "old maid" Maria appears as a figure who "seems to lack everything and therefore embodies total desire, a desire for the recognition and prestige that would let a poor old woman without family, wealth, or social standing maintain her human status in paralytic Dublin…" (Norris 206). It seems that Maria, endowed with an ideological awareness, unconsciously tries to fulfill a Lacanian lack-if not the social and personal shortcomings- of her own life. The story seemingly unfolds by means of the contrasts between the narrator's view of Maria and her own emotionally limited self-awareness.

Maria's job in the kitchen of a laundry established for the reform of prostitutes obviously does not secure her a proper social standing, yet her self-esteem as an important figure seems to stem from an ideological consciousness that has obscured her vision of reality. Maria has been "hailed" (interpellated) in the place of an important person in the society while in reality she is nothing more than a common dishwasher.

In fact, it is Maria's social standing, affected largely by the Ideological State Apparatuses (attending the ritual ceremony, for example), that determines her consciousness. Her isolated consciousness thus feeds upon the ideological self-awareness she has been entrapped in.

Halloween

Halloween (October 31) is "the Celtic New Year's Eve and Feast of the Dead, Christianized as the Feasts of the Blessed Virgin and All Saints (November 1) and All Souls (November 2). In Irish folk custom, it is a night of remembrance of dead ancestors and anticipation of the future through various fortune-telling games." Halloween as a ritual ceremony serves two important purposes in the story. Firstly, it is one of those Ideological State Apparatuses that almost controls Maria's life. Secondly, it emphasizes the notion of past and ancient values that are embodied in Joyce's stories. In fact, Maria as an allegorical representation of Mother Ireland is paralyzed by circumstances beyond her control or awareness. She can be taken as a version of the ancient symbolic representation of Mother Ireland dominated by imperial England.

The Charmed Lives of the Other(s)

Gordimer's Charmed Lives seemingly probes the static and equally pathetic condition of "two harmless and handicapped people" whose mechanical and unchanging lives in the story mirror the very dull lives of the native inhabitants of the South Africa. These two harmless people were brought out to the country, as two imported ideological models, before Kate Shand was born. The little Kate grows up as her mother subconsciously injects a potion of a false ideology into Kate's fragmented character, so that the watchmaker's and the doctor's faces become "bracketed for ever" in Kate's own face. The watchmaker Simon Datnow, as introduced earlier in the story, becomes an Other into which Kate looks up and builds her identity. In this respect, the glass cage, where the watchmaker works seemingly for no end, may also embody the Mirror Stage (also called looking-glass stage) where Kate's own image mirrored as a whole and complete being (as that of the Watchmaker) is but an ideal. The little Kate used to "stand for a long time with her face close to the glass cage [of the watchmaker]" who has been constructed as an ideal by Mrs. Shand. Upon trying "to get her husband to stand up to her" in vain, Mrs. Shand continuously champions the watchmaker against his timid husband's will to seemingly fulfill her marital lack: "Datnow, she gave her children to understand, was a natural gentleman, a kind of freak incidence among the immigrant relations." She subconsciously deludes her children to turn to the idealized watchmaker who is now and then symbolized almost as a Father figure for Kate.

The narrative structure, again like that of Clay, develops by the means of contrasts between what the mother (Mrs. Shand) strongly idealizes for Kate and what she herself comes to experience in the characters of the watchmaker and the doctor. This almost brings about a kind of disillusionment on the part of Kate who finally leaves the town where she finds the mechanical, charmed lives of the other(s) hardly accommodating of her expectation. The grown-up Kate finds no glamor in the empty lives of the watchmaker and the doctor, whom her mother still regards with high respect. Likewise, Kate becomes disgusted with the way the two men live; they are blind to their own state of affairs abused by an unknown power. The notion of survival is thus drawn as its most pitiful sense in the story. The watchmaker and the doctor both simply want to survive, regardless of what is happening around them. The whole story seems to be an allegory of an ideologically plagued town whose members including both the native Africans and the immigrants are paralyzed with an unknown power. They are constantly hailed in the roles they play blindly. Yet Kate never tells the reason for her leaving the town, the reason that "had taken shape for her, slowly, out of all her childhood, in the persons of those two men whom she had known…"

Quotes from the story can be found at the link below.

Answer 3

It symbolized death.

The primary game that Maria and the girls play is a traditional Irish Halloween game. In its original version, a blindfolded girl would be led to three plates, and would choose one. Choosing the plate with a ring meant that she would soon marry, water meant she would emigrate, probably to America, and soil, or clay, meant she would soon die. In modern times, a prayer book was substituted for the third option, suggesting that the girl would enter a convent.

"They led her up to the table amid laughing and joking and she put her hand out in the air as she was told to do. She moved her hand about here and there in the air and descended on one of the saucers. She felt a soft wet substance with her fingers and was surpr

Answer 4

"In the Dubliners, James Joyce's short story "Clay" stands out as a piece that has as its main character an ignorant woman who is essentially blind to the world around her. While many of Joyce's characters are struck with life-changing epiphanies, Maria does not recognize the signs - that are predictors of her future - even when they are painfully obvious to the reader. Working at the Dublin by Lamplight laundry, Maria thinks of her position as being of the utmost importance when in reality she is nothing more than a common dishwasher. Although Maria's budget is very limited, she nevertheless thinks that she is an independent woman and can afford the same things as women her age who are actually married. Maria believes that other individuals respect her and admire her, even though those same individuals either mock her unassuming nature or fail to notice her all together. Maria considers Joe's family to be the closest thing she has to having her own family. Meanwhile, Joe, his wife and his children simply put up with Maria once a year as if she was an unpleasant burden. Throughout the story, Joyce presents comparison after comparison of how Maria views herself versus how others view her. While Maria sees her life and the world around her through rose-colored glasses, the reality is rarely accommodating of her expectations."