6. (8) A little cloud {Maturity} Flashcards
Genre
“A Little Cloud” is a modernist short story. Modernist literature emerged in the 20th century as a mode of writing that challenged traditional literary conventions by centering narratives on everyday people, telling stories in meandering and fragmented ways, and leaving readers without a happy ending.
This movement emerged out of modernist writers’ disillusionment with industrialized, modern society—they did not want to write stories about joyful or heroic people because such narratives did not match the alienation they saw in society (especially among oppressed people).
This sort of alienation comes across in the ways that Little Chandler moves through the world. Further, Little Chandler works a job he doesn’t care about in order to sustain his life, a life that he experiences as being like a “prison.”
Little Chandler’s experience of life being like a prison also puts this story into the genre of “naturalism.” Naturalism is a form of realist writing that focuses specifically on the despair of oppressed people, with writers focusing on depicting the ways that people are trapped by their harsh circumstances.
When Joyce describes in the story how Little Chandler “felt how useless it was to struggle against fortune,” he is communicating a central tenet of naturalist literature—that people’s fates in life are determined by the conditions into which they are born.
Mood
The mood of “A Little Cloud” moves back and forth between exciting and depressing. This is true on a broad level: Little Chandler goes on a journey from resignation about his dull life, to a sense of possibility (after meeting up with Gallaher), to an even deeper sense of resignation and depression (calling his life a “prison” at the end). But it’s also true in smaller moments within the story.
These shifts in mood throughout the story communicate how dissatisfied Little Chandler is with his life, and how desperate he is for something new. That the story ends with Little Chandler feeling resigned is a somewhat bleak conclusion, but, also, readers know how quickly he can change his mind, and they are therefore left with a bit of hope.
Tone
The tone of “A Little Cloud” shifts between optimistic and resigned, depending on how Little Chandler is feeling about himself and his life. This is because the narrator, though third-person, stays extremely close to Little Chandler’s perspective over the course of the story.
Style
In “A Little Cloud,” Joyce employs a third-person narrator whose perspective stays close to that of the protagonist (Little Chandler) through the entire story, essentially merging with his view of the world. The writing style in “A Little Cloud” thus captures important qualities of Little Chandler’s internal experience, like his alienation and poetic sensibilities.
It is notable that, when Little Chandler is with Gallaher at the restaurant, the narrator almost disappears for several pages. Here, Joyce focuses more on capturing the dialogue between the two men, showing his ability to write a realistic conversation between old friends, complete with stutters, pauses (shown via ellipses), and subtle examples of Irish dialect.
Setting
“A Little Cloud” takes place in Dublin, Ireland, moving from Little Chandler’s place of work (King’s Inn, a legal institution), the streets of Dublin, a fancy restaurant, and his modest house. Joyce pays close attention to the geography of the city, naming actual streets in downtown Dublin like Capel and Henrietta.
The story is set in the early 1900s, when Ireland was still under the colonial rule of England and navigating the consequences of ongoing colonization, such as a loss of culture, widespread poverty, and economic exploitation.
Though the Irish independence movement had had some success in the late 1800s (and ultimately won independence from England in 1922), when Joyce was writing this story, the nationalist party had little political power, and most of its supporters (like Joyce) were deeply pessimistic about its ability to accomplish its goals.
Joyce’s pessimism about Irish people remaining stuck in an oppressed position comes across in the story via Little Chandler’s sense of being trapped by his circumstances. He has big dreams of becoming a successful Irish poet but no energy with which to achieve those dreams. Further, when he envisions what this sort of success would look like, his visions are centered on receiving positive reviews from “the English critics.”
This is Joyce’s way of signaling how Irish people are caught in a power dynamic with England, forced to toil in order to survive the unjust conditions of being controlled by a colonial power while still craving—and even needing—recognition by that very same power.
Theme: Resignation and Empowerment
Many stories in Dubliners feature characters whose dreams have been thwarted—whether because of happenstance, social obligations, or their own personal limitations, Joyce’s characters are often frustrated by their limited lives.
Little Chandler, the protagonist of “A Little Cloud,” is no exception. He is portrayed as a timid man with a small life, and at the beginning of the story, he seems resigned to his fate.
As Chandler prepares for their reunion, he grows dissatisfied with the stasis of his life and he begins to feel a new sense of empowerment that reignites his dreams of being a famous poet.
However, Little Chandler’s empowerment is short-lived—much like “a little cloud” passing through the sky—as he moves from resignation to empowerment, then back to an even deeper resignation. T
hrough his progression, Joyce shows that while imagining success and fulfillment is a first step toward change, real empowerment only happens when dreams translate into action.
The final images of the story reinforce just how resigned and powerless Little Chandler has become: as his wife comforts their crying baby, he stands to the side, “tears of remorse” filling his eyes. He is remorseful and ashamed for making the baby cry.
But it also seems that he feels remorse for his life and inability to create meaningful change in it and live his dreams. With this bleak ending, Joyce spins a cautionary tale, showing readers how, as the popular adage goes, nothing changes if nothing changes.
Theme: The Illusion of Success
In many of the stories in Dubliners, Joyce portrays Dublin, Ireland as excessively conventional, morally strict, and provincial. After growing dissatisfied with his birthplace, Joyce himself left Dublin early in his life and spent the majority of his years as an expatriate in continental Europe.
Like Joyce, Gallaher is an émigré and thus represents an image of success and sophistication for Little Chandler, who is stuck in Dublin.
However, their meeting deflates Chandler’s idealistic view of his old friend as Gallaher appears crass, vulgar, and even morally corrupted. Gallaher’s emigration did not improve him—his seedy lifestyle abroad has actually exacerbated his pre-existing character flaws.
Through Gallaher’s portrayal, the story shows that emigration holds out a false promise of career success, escape from provincial morality, and personal sophistication—dismantling the age-old adage that “the grass is greener on the other side.”
Garry Leonard: Joyce ‘works within the formula of the anti-emigration story and uses it to show that people stay where they are in Dublin not because they discover the wisdom of doing so but because they are trapped’
Gallaher makes his career (which Chandler has imagined as glamorous and important) seem instead tiresome, petty, and frustrating. By the end of their meeting, Little Chandler feels deeply resentful over Gallaher’s success.
While Joyce does portray Dublin as stagnant, conventional, and limited in its opportunities for success, he also shows that Chandler’s idealized view of living abroad—“if you wanted to succeed you had to go away”—is, in fact, a naïve oversimplification.
Theme: The Prison of the Mundane
Chandler feels deeply alienated from his wife, Annie, whom he sees as overworked, angry, changeable, and ordinary. The limitations of their mundane domestic life have caused Chandler to disconnect from her, and their strained marriage contributes to his larger sense of dissatisfaction and paralysis.
Due to limited funds, Chandler and Annie cannot keep a servant, so Annie bears sole responsibility for taking care of their home and small child, with occasional help from her sister. She is clearly overworked, leading her to “bad humour” and “short answers” to Chandler.
She orders him around impatiently, as if he were a child. Consequently, Chandler feels disconnected from her, even slightly intimidated by her. His efforts to please her and connect with her often backfire.
He has no real connection to her, reducing her to mere body parts instead of seeing her as his life partner. Annie seems as dissatisfied with Chandler as he is with her, as shown by her explosive anger toward him. Upon returning home from running an errand, she finds Chandler trying to soothe their crying baby.
The image of Chandler’s heart closing up shows the extent to which the ordinary stresses of his home life have caused him to lose connection to his wife and whatever affection he once felt for her.
Chandler’s effort to escape into poetry fails as he is called back to his fatherly duty of comforting his infant. Rather than accepting this completely normal situation, Chandler’s frustration erupts into anger that only traps him further in his mundane domestic world.
Margaret Church: The failure of Dubliners ‘lies in the inability of modern man to assume fatherhood, either in image or in person’
The parallelism between the baby and Chandler’s crying suggests that he is so imprisoned by his ordinary life that he is like a crying baby: consumed by discontent, helpless, powerless to change anything, with no language but a cry.
Symbols: Little Cloud
The central symbol of “A Little Cloud” is contained in the story’s title, as the cloud represents the story’s protagonist, Little Chandler. The parallelism of the initials—Little Cloud/Little Chandler—suggests that Chandler is like a cloud himself.
Specifically, the symbol of a little cloud represents Little Chandler’s feelings of insignificance, his overreliance on imagination, and the fleeting nature of his empowerment.
Clouds can certainly be quite large and ominous, often portending violent rain and storms. Indeed, dark, foreboding clouds are often present in Romantic writing (of which Little Chandler is a fan) as symbols for intense passion. However, Little Chandler is more like a little cloud, suggesting that his feelings are weak and his passions are petty.
Allusion: Irish Literary Revival
When Joyce describes how Little Chandler envisions being recognized “as one of the Celtic school,” he is alluding to the Irish Literary Revival (also called “the Celtic twilight”), a movement during which Irish writers crafted stories and poems that included references to traditional Celtic culture.
As Little Chandler notes in a somewhat flippant tone, many of these works featured a “melancholy” or wistful tone (“the Celtic note”), usually related to a longing for the rich culture of Ireland before English colonization.
Allusion: The Moulin Rouge
The Moulin Rouge is a famous cabaret (or theatrical performance involving a combination of music, dance, and drama) in Paris that opened in 1889. At the time that Joyce published “A Little Cloud” (in 1914), the Moulin Rouge was associated with sex work, as many “courtesans” operated from the location.
His reference to going to “Bohemian cafés” is also Gallaher’s way of telling Little Chandler that he has been participating in using alcohol and drugs in a particular artistic subculture in Paris.
Context
Joyce’s character Gallaher is a heavy drinker who, before achieving financial success in London, frequently took loans from friends. Like him, Joyce was a drinker—after emigrating, he and his partner, Nora, sometimes had to borrow money to get by. In fact, a substantial loan from a prominent arts patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, allowed Joyce to finish writing Ulysses.
Though mostly known for his fiction, Joyce did write some poetry. In one early poem, “The Holy Office,” he positioned his work as part of the Celtic Revival, an artistic movement that sought to represent Irish culture. In “A Little Cloud,” Chandler dreams of making his mark in this trend of poetry celebrating Irish nationalism.
