Young Lonigan by James T. Farrell :: Young Lonigan James Farrell Essays

Young Lonigan by James T. FarrellAfter they had left the parlor, Studs sit down by the window. He looked out, watching the night strangeness, listening. The duskiness was over everything wish a warm bed-cover, and all the little sounds of night seemed to him as if they belonged to any(prenominal) great mystery. He listened to the wind in the tree by the window. The passage was queer, and didnt seem at all like Wabash Avenue. He watched a man pass, his heels beating a monotonous echo. Studs imagined him to be some unlawful being pursued by a detective like Maurice Costello, who use to act detective parts for Vitagraph. He watched. He thought of Lucy on the street and himself bravely rescuing her from horrors more terrible than he could imagine.(Young Lonigan, 62) Studs Lonigan lives in a different world from those around him. scratch exists as different garnish of sensations for Studs, who communes with his environment in a language foreign to the masses. The heat and in clementness of day are replaced by the creeping and overwhelming softness of the Chicago night it pushes the toughness out of his body, eliminates the immediacy of things and dulls the viciousness of life as an Irish boy without a future. Farrell writes Studs as a contemplative mind who verges on artistic sensitivity. When he examines his environment he is lost its metric grain and physical existence. He simply does not belong to the city the route it owns the community, the people that lived, worked, suffered, procreated, aspired, filled out their little days, and died (Young Lonigan, 147). By nature Studs cannot usurp the authority or possessiveness of the city, exactly he is incapable of escape. It is as a good deal a part of him as he is of it there is a mutualism at work in Young Lonigan that depends very deeply upon the moments Studs shares with the melt day. Darkness provides us a view of Studs psyche that is intensely personalized and crucial to understanding him as not only a character, but a representation of a developing personality and moral code. When good-for-naughtness appears Studs is more vulnerable to both his hopes and his fears. At times he is tame by visions of pain and hellfire he is wracked by his Catholic unrighteousness and a perceived lack of purity. He puffed and looked about the dark and lonely place.