The Despicable Matthew O’connor in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood: a Formalist View Essay Example
Daly 1 Amelia Daly Dr. Jim Wilson Senior Seminar December 1, 2004 The Despicable Matthew O’Connor in Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood: A Formalist View
Toward the end of Djuna Barnes’s novel Nightwood, Matthew O’Connor’s last speech sounds like a belligerent rant. He is inebriated in a bar. However, his mind is as sharp as it has been throughout the novel. In general, at this point, he is talking of the fine line between reality and the stories people tell. It seems he has no qualms with telling untrue stories, for in his mind what people call “reality” is just as easily arguable. An ex-priest responds to him saying, “I like to know what is what” (160). Matthew says nastily back, “You do, do you? Well then, that’s why you are where you are now, right down in the mud without a feather to fly with” (160). Then he asks, “Who says I’m a betrayer” (161). Answering and justifying himself he shouts, “I say, tell the story of the world to the world” (161). He trusts the main theme in the story of the world is misery. A random patron in the bar turns to their company and describes him as a “squatting beast” that “comes out at night” (163). This “beast” prowls the night throughout the novel. His hunger satiated only when his victims are as comfortably miserable as he is. Like a drug dealer pushing morphine on a junkie, O’Connor peddles misery to the hearts of those weak with despair. He reels his victims in, specifically Felix and Nora, by distracting them with zealous yet ambiguous speeches. He calls himself a doctor. A giver of physical care and medicine, he is not. However, he does prescribe
Daly 2 misery to those who consult him. He fills their minds with profound images that cause both characters to become emotionally static, blinded and thus all of their hopes destroyed. He says, when talking to Nora about what happens to a man when he reveals his passions, when he “lay[s] himself down in the Great Bed,” that “his ‘identity’ is no longer his own, his ‘trust’ is not with
Toward the end of Djuna Barnes’s novel Nightwood, Matthew O’Connor’s last speech sounds like a belligerent rant. He is inebriated in a bar. However, his mind is as sharp as it has been throughout the novel. In general, at this point, he is talking of the fine line between reality and the stories people tell. It seems he has no qualms with telling untrue stories, for in his mind what people call “reality” is just as easily arguable. An ex-priest responds to him saying, “I like to know what is what” (160). Matthew says nastily back, “You do, do you? Well then, that’s why you are where you are now, right down in the mud without a feather to fly with” (160). Then he asks, “Who says I’m a betrayer” (161). Answering and justifying himself he shouts, “I say, tell the story of the world to the world” (161). He trusts the main theme in the story of the world is misery. A random patron in the bar turns to their company and describes him as a “squatting beast” that “comes out at night” (163). This “beast” prowls the night throughout the novel. His hunger satiated only when his victims are as comfortably miserable as he is. Like a drug dealer pushing morphine on a junkie, O’Connor peddles misery to the hearts of those weak with despair. He reels his victims in, specifically Felix and Nora, by distracting them with zealous yet ambiguous speeches. He calls himself a doctor. A giver of physical care and medicine, he is not. However, he does prescribe
Daly 2 misery to those who consult him. He fills their minds with profound images that cause both characters to become emotionally static, blinded and thus all of their hopes destroyed. He says, when talking to Nora about what happens to a man when he reveals his passions, when he “lay[s] himself down in the Great Bed,” that “his ‘identity’ is no longer his own, his ‘trust’ is not with