Shashank Joshi
Two Gallants: critical analysis (of passage)
Two Gallants is a story where Joyce moves way from the gentle satire of the previous two stories and attempts a more political message, albeit at the expense of the large symbolic structures present in the later stories. Involving three characters, it would be inaccurate to claim they each represented a particular entity only; rather, Joyce blurs his symbols emphasizing the manner in which he has trouble perceiving reality (a theme explored more fully in Clay).
Yet what exactly is Joyce’s purpose for writing this story? Ireland’s political and moral weaknesses are explored and criticized, but looking closely at the character of Lenehan, I feel that Joyce is showing a rare moment of sympathy for paralysed Dubliners, portraying them as racked with pain, despite their sycophantic ways and moral flaws. Lenehan’s circular journey is hinted at in the opening sentence of the story: the “mild warm air … circulated in the streets,” and as well as being a comment on the stagnancy of Dubliners’ lives, its location at the beginning suggests that Lenehan’s search is preordained, and is ultimately futile. The passage that I will be examining focuses on Lenehan’s journey, which also acts as a deconstruction of traditional Romantic ideals. We are told he walked “listlessly” and the constant search for meaning has clearly left him exhausted and, as his “brain and throat were too dry,” parched both physically and intellectually. Crucially, “he turned to the left” at “Rutland Square,” and keeps walking; this turn, however, will lead him back to the original point and thus he condemns himself to stagnancy. Yet Joyce, by showing his pathetic existence where experience “had embittered his heart” and he feels “keenly his own poverty,” draws sympathy from the reader; I believe this is done to force the reader to suspend moral judgement, and leave us in the state of mental ambiguity that Joyce feels himself. The “dark quiet street” with its “sombre look” visually reinforces this underlying tension and confusion that pervaded Dublin and its residents. Some critics have suggested that one can draw parallels between Lenehan and Joyce, which naturally suggests that Lenehan’s fruitless walk is symbolic of Joyce’s quest for the perfect art form, described in Ulysses and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Thus the implications of the story are that Joyce has failed (or rather, Dublin has failed him), and reality has failed to live up to the artist’s expectations. However I think that Lenehan is too tainted a character to be a self-portrait; rather, it expresses particular regrets that Joyce feels.
