FIFTH BUSINESS SECTION 4 Gyges and Candaules Title
FIFTH BUSINESS SECTION 4 Gyges and Candaules
Title: refers to the myth • Three characters in the story • King: Boy as “Sugar King”
• Presentation 12: Food Production in the Great Depression
• The king at home (184 -185), David, Caroline and Leola all trying to maintain their respective roles (prince, princess and queen)
• The abdication, crumbling of a role model • Boy’s house crumbles too
• Presentation #13: The Monarchy, Edward and the Abdication
Boy: “I was not with him when he heard the sad broadcast of Abdication on December 11, but I looked in at his house that evening and found him, for the only time in his life, to my knowledge, very drunk and alternating between tears and dreadful tirades against the repressive forces that worked against true love and the expression of a man's real self” (188).
• Queen: Leola is trying but failing to measure up (185) • Complete loyalty to her king, even though he bullies her
Leola: “Boy's usual attitude toward her was one of chivalrous patience, with a discernible undertone of exasperation. She loved him abjectly, but she was the one person on whom he spent none of his sexual force— except in the negative form of bullying. I tried to stand up for Leola as much as I could, but as she was utterly unable to stand up for herself I had to be careful” (185)
Friend of King (Gyges): Two Versions (158) • 1. Gyges and the Queen fall in love and push king from the throne. • Dunny rejects this ending (189) despite Leola’s willingness to accept it (191)
• 2. Gyges kills the King Boy rejects this ending: “I don't suppose you'll do that, Dunny” (158)--irony--but in the end Dunny acknowledges his place in the cabal
Dunny’s alternate plan: • Overall Dunny rejects the role of Gyges (it isn't until later that he recognizes the second ending and his place in it) • He learns a lesson from the myth • Instead he gets caught up in other roles that are more important to him at this point in his life
1. Caretaker • (161) takes over from Bertha Shanklin who died • Accepts his role as part of a redeeming past atonement
2. Pilgrim • On a quest now for wisdom
• Finds it with the Bollandists
• Presentation 14: Saints, Miracles and Hagiography
• Blazon is his second “wise man” MODERN BOLLANDIST
Two Realities • Miracles are conditional (176); in the eyes of the beholder, meaningful to the observer who needs them, but not to the observer who doesn't
Padre Blazon: “I have not forgotten your questions about the woman you keep in the madhouse, Ramezay. . . Invariably I come back to the same answer: why do you worry? What good would it do you if I told you she is indeed a saint? I cannot make saints, nor can the Pope. We can only recognize saints when the plainest evidence shows them to be saintly. If you think her a saint, she is a saint to you. What more do you
Blazon on Dunny's “crazy saint”: “Turn your mind to the real problem: who is she? Oh, I don't mean her police identification or what her name was before she was married. I mean, who is she in your personal world? What figure is she in your personal mythology? . . . Who is she? That is what you must discover, Ramezay, and you must find your answer in psychological truth, not in objective truth” (179)
More advice from Blazon: “Forgive yourself for being a human creature, Ramezay. That is the beginning of wisdom; that is part of what is meant by the fear of God; and for you it is the only way to save your sanity” (180)
• Mary Dempster (179): finding out who she is to him is a personal quest for psychological truth, not a universal quest for verifiable facts. • It is Dunny’s quest and no one else’s
- Slides: 22
