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/lit/ - Literature

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11190547 No.11190547 [Reply] [Original]

>20 page sermon about hell halfway through the book

>> No.11190561

>>11190547
i thought it was 50 pages... it's still really good.

>> No.11190589

If you mean Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I am very disappointed. That section was fucking excellent anon

>> No.11190606

>>11190547
Joyce? That is the fucking hard-rock heart of the book. I still remember details from it.

>> No.11190623

>>11190606
I was scared to masturbate for months after reading it

>> No.11190966

>>11190589
That's easily the most compelling and poignant section of the book, even if the opening is more remembered in the minds of the literary public.

>> No.11190972

>>11190547
That's the best part pham
>Imagine some foul and putrid corpse that has lain rotting and decomposing in the grave, a jellylike mass of liquid corruption. Imagine such a corpse a prey to flames, devoured by the fire of burning brimstone and giving off dense choking fumes of nauseous loathsome decomposition. And then imagine this sickening stench, multiplied a millionfold and a millionfold again from the millions upon millions of fetid carcasses massed together in the reeking darkness, a huge and rotting human fungus. Imagine all this, and you will have some idea of the horror of the stench of hell.

>> No.11191106

>>11190547
That's the best part of Portrait, you pleb.

>> No.11191115
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11191115

>writer stops midway through the book to address the audience directly and give us his feelings on god and the meaning of life

>> No.11191159

>>11190972
That and being one human piece of the pile of these nauseous corpses, having eternity to regret your decisions that led to the position. Every time I think refraining from sin is too difficult I think that there could be nothing worse than the regret when faced with an eternity of reflection, and of suffering. Nothing is more terrifying than that section of the book.

>> No.11191310

It is the most beautiful, interesting and arguably important part of the book.

Good bait OP

>> No.11191389

>>11191115
honestly better than using a turning the protag into mouthpiece with a monologue

>> No.11191408

>first sermon in book takes many pages, pretension and showmanship highlighted
>second sermon goes by unremarkably from a minor character taking care of a regular chore, readers hardly recall it

from moby dick

>> No.11191410

>>11191389
honestly better than cutting off the plot entirely and copy and pasting a sermon directly from Watchtower

>> No.11191411

>>11190972
I’m religious but honestly laugh at this and am undisturbed by it. It’s melodramatic.Hell is a spiritual/inward/psychological state of despair, remorse, and separation from God. It’s not something crude like God subjecting you to endless physical torments forever.

>> No.11191422

>>11191410
honestly better than the entire book being a couple books from the bible masquerading as the greatest work of contemporary criticism ever written under the title "A Parents Guide to Thomas and Friends" and authorship of "Georgi Parvanov"

>> No.11191434

The Unnamable has the most terrifying description of hell, because you experience it for the first half of the book. That stream of consciousness as he's frozen in reflection, and the thoughts swirling in tighter and tighter circles because he's already THOUGHT everything but has oceans of time...

>> No.11191474

>>11191411
The sermon is intentionally that way. It’s not describing Joyce’s belief; it’s portraying the intensity of Irish Catholicism in the mind of an erring adolescent and the sway that has over his actions. Later in life Joyce referred to Irish Catholicism as black magic—the quote here seems to be the exact thing he’s talking about, nothing more than scary voodoo.

>>11191159
Stephen ultimately triumphs over the fear you describe. He goes back to sinning after he realizes the church is not the way to the truth and certainly not a religion of life.

>> No.11191477

>>11191474
>>11191411
Obviously there’s some philosophic merit to parts of the sermon and what you say about hell being a state of detachment from “God”

>> No.11191578

>>11191411
begone prot.
>laugh at this
plen

>> No.11191604

>>11190623
the first thing i did after reading it was masturbate

>> No.11191731
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11191731

>Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

>> No.11191749

>>11191731
Best opening sentence ever written.

>> No.11193261

>>11191749
STATELY