Gail Jones Five Bells Analysis
The Individualism and Collectivism of Memory in Gail Jones’ Five Bells and W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants
Introduction
“What is past is prologue,” from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest adorns The National Archives in Washington D.C., where the United State’s foundational, formative documents are housed. Within the walls of the Archives, the nation’s past are housed for today and tomorrow’s citizens to view, analyze and reflect on the way these documents and the nation’s history have led to the present and may impact the future. This connection to the past and the way the past can place the elements of the present in context is a theme explored in both Gail Jones’ Five Bells and W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants. In both novels, the authors explore …show more content…
Of all her characters, James is the most melancholy of the individuals, consistently controlled by his traumatic memories so that not a single vignette of him is provided without connotations of death and flashbacks to his distressing experiences. The reader’s initial introduction to James is of a man that constantly feels the “downward tug of time” and is enveloped by memories “of a history he” does not want (Jones 4). James attempts self-medication in order to “change his errant chemistry.” Rather than describe his depression in terms of emotions, Jones instead utilizes the word “chemistry” to connote a scientific and detached expression of his sickness. In this way, the fact that James appears disconnected not only to his trauma but to any positive emotion as well. James is thus an empty shell, devoid of a soul and of human emotion. Even thoughts of his lost love, Ellie, border on the clinically obsessed, being compared to polydipsia, excessive thirst and dipsomania or drunkenness. It is evident that James’ grief has transformed any opportunity at his engulfment in positive emotions into yet another chance for James to lose himself completely in the typhoon of his
Introduction
“What is past is prologue,” from William Shakespeare’s The Tempest adorns The National Archives in Washington D.C., where the United State’s foundational, formative documents are housed. Within the walls of the Archives, the nation’s past are housed for today and tomorrow’s citizens to view, analyze and reflect on the way these documents and the nation’s history have led to the present and may impact the future. This connection to the past and the way the past can place the elements of the present in context is a theme explored in both Gail Jones’ Five Bells and W.G. Sebald’s The Emigrants. In both novels, the authors explore …show more content…
Of all her characters, James is the most melancholy of the individuals, consistently controlled by his traumatic memories so that not a single vignette of him is provided without connotations of death and flashbacks to his distressing experiences. The reader’s initial introduction to James is of a man that constantly feels the “downward tug of time” and is enveloped by memories “of a history he” does not want (Jones 4). James attempts self-medication in order to “change his errant chemistry.” Rather than describe his depression in terms of emotions, Jones instead utilizes the word “chemistry” to connote a scientific and detached expression of his sickness. In this way, the fact that James appears disconnected not only to his trauma but to any positive emotion as well. James is thus an empty shell, devoid of a soul and of human emotion. Even thoughts of his lost love, Ellie, border on the clinically obsessed, being compared to polydipsia, excessive thirst and dipsomania or drunkenness. It is evident that James’ grief has transformed any opportunity at his engulfment in positive emotions into yet another chance for James to lose himself completely in the typhoon of his