Nicely-polished looking glasses: Acomparative study of U2 and Joyce’sDublin in ‘Eveline’ and ‘Running to

Stand Still’

By

Helena Torres Montes García

A dissertation submitted to

The University of Liverpool

In partial fulfillment of therequirements for the degree

MA in Irish Studies

1

September 15, 2014

Word count: 19948 words.

Abstract

Irish popular music has always been linked to the field ofliterature. Pop and rock songs are ripe with references or evendirect quotes from Ireland’s most famous writers. However, thistradition finds an exception in Ireland’s most popular rock band,U2. Though considered a band in the Anglo-American tradition, evenmore linked to America, U2 is a band that was rooted in Dublin.Certain social and cultural conditions provided U2 inspiration fortheir songs, just as Joyce’s Dublin shaped his work for Dubliners. Howboth Joyce and U2 present images of the Dublin that shaped theirworks will be the main focus of this dissertation.

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction. U2 and James Joyce: chapters of the moral

history of Dublin?......................7

2. Joyce’s and U2’s Dublin: centres of

paralysis……………………………………………………………….....23

3. Methodology: how to read a pop

song……………………………………………………………………….……27

4. Joyce’s ‘Eveline’ and U2’s ‘Running to Stand Still’: Women in

Chains……………………………...34

5. Conclusion: Nicely polished looking-

glasses…………………………………………………………………….59

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Abbreviations

JJ – This abbreviation will be used when referring to Dubliners,Oxford University Press edition, 2000, with introduction and notesby Jeri Johnson.

TB – This abbreviation will be used when referring to Dubliners,Penguin Books edition, 1992, with introduction and notes byTerence Brown.

RTSS – This abbreviation will be used when referring to U2’s song,‘Running to Stand Still’.

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I want to dedicate this work to my family:

To my dad, who helped me get here,

My mom, who helped me stay here,

And my brother—

This is his favorite band!

(I introduced him to them, though.)

5

First of all, I would like to thank the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies forgiving me the chance to work alongside them. Every single one of my professors has givenme not only knowledge and insight in the field of Irish Studies, but also their support.However, I am very indebted to Dr. Frank Shovlin, whose interest and enthusiasm in thisproject (plus his knowledge on Joyce) were vital to its creation and writing.

I would also like to thank Dr. Gerry Smyth, who provided me with excellent criticalbibliography needed to undertake a serious study of U2; and Mr. José Hernández-Riwes,whose knowledge on comparative literature and popular music analysis were great assetsfor this dissertation.

My knowledge of Ireland, however, would not have been complete without a visit to thecountry—and that happened with the help of the Institute (and Dr. Niall Carson’spatience), but I can never be thankful enough for having had a chance to work alongsideDr. Brian Lambkin and Dr. Patrick Fitzgerald at the Ulster American Folk Park. The chanceto work at the Park’s library helped me complement my research and gave me excitingprojects to work on the future.

I would also like to thank Mr. Dave Griffith, who provided ample knowledge of U2—and atour experience that did not only encompass academic interests, but also the interests of afan.

I am also glad to say I studied and worked beside some of the most intelligent, talentedyoung people I have ever met. I learned a lot from them as well: Liss, Seán, Anna andMichaela—thanks for everything, but mostly for making a foreign student feel at home.

On a personal note, I would like to thank my family for their love and support—especiallyfor helping me along the way, both to get to Liverpool and here as well. This work isalready dedicated to you.

I would also like to thank my friends for their, in Seamus Heaney’s words, ‘beautifulprismatic counselling’—even if it was at a distance; especially Vero, Minah, Gero and Zeidy.The letters too—they made my mailbox smile.

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Yet, I was never far away from home—thanks to all my newfound Mexican friends on thisside of the ocean: Alejandra, Elsa, Luz (I feel you’re Mexican now) and Raquel, for bringinghome to wherever I was.

Thank you, J., for everything (in U2’s words, ‘baby, light my way’).

There are so many people I feel should occupy a space on this page, and I wish I couldname you all… but remember you have a place in my heart and I am really thankful forthe contribution, big or small, you gave to this project and to my experience abroad,whether it was a drink, an email, or just a small line written on social networks.

And finally, I would like to thank U2. I thought my fan days were over but they seem to be,indeed, all I can’t leave behind.

1. U2 and James Joyce: chapters of the moral history of Dublin?

In 1909, during a visit to Ireland, James Joyce wrote in a letter

to his wife, Nora Barnacle: ‘How sick, sick, sick I am of Dublin!

[…] I long to be out of it.’1 This was the same man who told the

sister of his schoolfriend Eugene Sheehy: ‘There was an English

queen who said that when she died the word “Calais” would be

written on her heart. “Dublin” will be found on mine.’2 This was a

‘double reaction’ towards Dublin as Donald Torchiana puts it

—‘extreme disdain and extreme affection.’ And from the latter,

1 Joyce, quoted in Charles Peake, James Joyce, the Citizen and the Artist. Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1977. 343.2 Quoted in Ian Pindar, Joyce. London: Haus Publishing Limited, 2004. 120.

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Torchiana adds, there stemmed a ‘genuine fascination with his city

and a fond understanding of its derelictions.’3

Joyce not only had a fascination with Dublin, but also a goal

of showing life in his city as it was, unadulterated, because of

his idea that an artist should aim for truth: an idea he had had

since he was 17 and presented the paper ‘Drama and Life’ to

University College Dublin. In it, he presented his thesis: ‘Art is

true to itself when it deals with truth.’ In his words, truth

would bring Ireland to ‘spiritual liberation.’ Jeri Johnson says

Joyce had to achieve this perfect truth, a portrait of the city

away from the ‘lying drivel about pure men and pure women and

spiritual love.’ His cause, then, ‘required real names of real

places, demanded that his characters speak the real language of

those they resembled among Dublin’s citizens, insisted that

honesty not censorship, realism not romanticism prevail.’4 The

obsession with both truth and detail would enrich Joyce’s work and

eventually lead him to declare that ‘Dublin could be rebuilt brick

by brick from Ulysses.’5 Writer Ferdia MacAnna agrees with this,

3 Donald T. Torchiana, Backgrounds for Joyce’s Dubliners. Massachusetts: Allen &Unwin, 1986.4 Jeri Johnson, introduction to James Joyce’s Dubliners. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2000. 5 Gregory Castle, ‘Post-colonialism’. In James Joyce in Context. Ed. JohnMcCourt. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

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though not in a very admiring light: ‘the metropolis appeared to

have been captured in its entirety—from its pub characters down to

the shopfronts in Joyce’s masterwork.’ Dublin was, then, property

of James Joyce, if not engraved on his heart, engraved all over

his pages and fame: ‘…anything that could or should have been

written about Dublin had already been penned by the man himself.

[…] the great man—the colossus of Irish writing.’ In short,

MacAnna concludes: ‘he intimidated the bejazus out of the Dublin

writers.’6

Dublin writers were afraid of forever living in Joyce’s

shadow. However, the city would give birth to another phenomenon

of epic proportions, this time in the field of music: U2, a band

that ‘hover[s] over Irish popular music as a spectre’ and that is

described by Noel McLaughlin and Martin McLoone in very similar

terms to the ones MacAnna uses to convey the idea of Joyce’s

dominion over Dublin: ‘U2, which dominates the story of Irish rock

like a colossus, Ireland’s very own electronic Goliath, both loved

and loathed in equal measure because of this dominance.’7

6 Ferdia MacAnna, ‘The Dublin Renaissance: An essay on modern Dublin andDublin writers.’ In The Irish Review. Spring 1991, No. 10. 18. The‘paralysis’ Joyce inflicted on younger writers will be discussed in amore detailed way in the following chapter.7 Noel McLaughlin and Martin McLoone, Rock and Popular Music in Ireland: Before andAfter U2. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2012. 8. The emphasis is mine inorder to enhance the similarities between MacAnna’s writing when

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Still, it would seem at first glance that the only element in

common between Joyce and the band is the dominance. Even if Joyce

was considered ‘contented exile’ or a ‘relieved cosmopolitan,

happy to wave goodbye to Ireland’8 it is already clear that his

work cannot be disconnected from Dublin. On the contrary, U2 have

found their place in a global market. Their lyrics, McLaughlin and

McLoone note, ‘do not refer to Irish institutions and/or cultural

practices.’ They add ‘even a broad analysis of the band’s lyrics

would reveal little in the way of specific references to Dublin or

Ireland.’910 In fact, U2 seem to have been quick to jump ‘into the

arms of America’ as their song ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ would say.11

In 1981, early in U2’s career, lead singer Bono declared to Rolling

Stone journalist James Henke: ‘It is my ambition to travel to

referring to Joyce. 8 Frank Shovlin, Journey Westward: Joyce, Dubliners and the Literary Revival. Liverpool:Liverpool University Press, 2012. This book proves that Joyce’saffections were not limited to Dublin, as Torchiana puts it, but also tothe west of Ireland, especially County Galway—thus demonstrating thewriter’s attachment to his native country, not only his native city. Thisdissertation, however, will focus on Joyce’s relationship to Dublin. 9 McLaughlin and McLoone, 155.10 The exceptions to this affirmation would be two songs. The first one is’Van Diemen’s Land’, from the album Rattle and Hum. This acoustic ballad wasinspired by John Boyle O’Reilly, a leader of the 1848 Rising (see BillGraham and Caroline van Oosten de Boer, U2: The Complete Guide to their Music.London: Omnibus Press, 2004, 38-39). The second exception would be, ofcourse, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, a direct reference to Northern IrishTroubles. McLaughlin and McLoone defend the specificity of the song, butalso acknowledge critics consider ‘Sunday…’ universalizes ‘a specificevent […] into a generalized anti-violence anthem.’ (179) 11 U2, ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’. In The Joshua Tree. Track 4.

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America and give it what it wants and needs.’ This ‘open embrace’12

towards the United States seems to be crystallised in the release

of The Joshua Tree, a critically lauded album that ‘plays with

American images and music.’13 Afterwards, the band would turn to

the sounds of ‘Madchester’ and ‘kraut-rock’ for their follow-up

album, Achtung Baby.14 Nowadays, their last album, No Line on the Horizon,

is regarded as ‘much more of a synthesis of [their] catalogue.’15

This very short summary of U2’s music seems to place them as

a band that belongs to a musical tradition located in both America

and England, but not specifically Ireland. Besides, Bono appears

to the media as a citizen of the world, concerned for its welfare,

a ‘political campaigner/agitator for organizations committed to

African and “third-world” issues.’16 This role has earned him a

number of followers but detractors as well away from the rockstar

or performer sphere. 17 As a result of both their musical influences

12 Quoted in McLaughlin and McLoone, 196. 13 Graham and van Oosten de Boer, 30.14 McLaughlin and McLoone, 195-197.15 Idem, 224.16 Idem, 151.17 See Harry Browne, The Frontman: Bono (In the Name of Power). New York: Verso,2013. Clearly a book that aims to be polemical (as read in the blurbinside the book) it names Bono ‘an advocate of neoliberalism’. See alsoEamonn McCann, ‘Bedazzling Bono’ in The Irish Times. Mar 13, 2014. In thisarticle, McCann criticizes the fact Bono seems to enchant global leaders,setting as an example the Irish Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, but that at thesame time U2’s vocalist seems enchanted with millionaires known for theirlove of money. (McCann had already, back in 1987, classified U2’sAmerican fans as ‘entirely white’ and ‘unthreatening’ in an appendix to

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and their presence in global affairs, U2 seem to be catalogued as

‘a big, even bland rock band in the Anglo-American mould’ and

their music is seen as ‘”conscience” or “caring” rock’. This

narrow perspective of U2 as a band that writes songs that appeal

to the masses because they are a vehicle of a global conscience

would then be most likely the one to blame for the ‘relative

absence of U2 in academic popular music studies’ McLaughlin and

McLoone call attention to.18

This statement is contradicted by the existence of the

conference The Hype and the Feedback, which took place in North Carolina

Central University on 2009.19 The essays that originated from the

conference, however, are frequently concerned with, precisely, the

status of U2 as a global phenomenon, compared with the small

Eamon Dunphy’s biography of the band, The Unforgettable Fire. The biography willbe mentioned later in this chapter; this observation from McCannemphasizes his idea that Bono is not an agent of change in the world).This dissertation will not deal with the book nor with the article, butit is an example of the antipathies and oppositions the figure of Bonocan inspire and that have nothing to do with music, but with Bono and U2in world affairs.18 McLaughlin and McLoone, 145-147.19 It seems strange that McLaughlin and McLoone would not have consideredthis conference when mentioning ‘the absence of U2 in academic studies’.Yet, the compilation of essays from The Hype and the Feedback, entitledExploring U2: Is this Rock n’ Roll? Essays on the Music, Work and Influence of U2 (edited byScott Calhoun) was published until 2012 (Plymouth: Scarecrow Press). Thiscould suggest that 2009-2010 were the years that marked the start ofacademic interest in U2 or, as Scott Calhoun himself would put it: ‘A fewthings coalesced early in the twenty-first century to create what is nowcalled the field of U2 studies.’ (xxiv)

12

number of essays exploring U2 in a literary light. In her essay

‘Potent Crossroads’ Rachel E. Seiler explores how the ‘U2

community’ is engaged with social issues. For her part, Michele

O’Brien, in her essay ‘U2: An Elevated Brand’ dissects the band

and presents them, almost, as role-models for marketing. Bruce L.

Edwards explores Bono’s language in his essay ‘Bono’s Rhetoric of

the Auspicious’, but it focuses on the choice of the vocalist’s

words when presenting Africa to the First World.

Of course, this is not the only essay to focus on the use of

language. However, it seems that the moment when U2’s language

(and performance) was more appealing to academia was during the

90s—more precisely, during the Achtung Baby period. Addresses to The

Joshua Tree are not that frequent. Kevin J. H. Dettmar, in his essay

‘Nothing Succeeds like Failure’ explores the lyrics of Achtung Baby

as an ironic counterpart and opposition to The Joshua Tree and the

American-roots music sound of Rattle and Hum. Still, the analysis

presents a more socio-cultural bent rather than literary.

The only essay in the collection to address both U2 and

literature is Daniel T. Kline’s ‘Playing the Tart: Contexts and

Intertexts for “Until the End of the World”’. In this essay, Kline

focuses on the video and the evolving performance of the song

13

mentioned in the title, besides relating the whole of Achtung Baby

(album and live performance) to the collection of poems The Book of

Judas by Irish writer Brendan Kennelly and, of course, the figure

of Judas in the Bible. According to Kline, just like Kennelly uses

the judasvoice for his poems, Bono takes the role of Judas when

‘betraying’ what he did on The Joshua Tree to expose ‘[the age’s]

conceits, its foibles, its phony moral certitudes.’20

Still, The Joshua Tree appears as what U2 had to leave behind in

order to become a more complex phenomenon with a place in global

culture. U2’s Irish identity and origins are only explored in Neil

McCormick’s piece, entitled ‘Boy to Man: A Dublin-Shaped Band’.

(McCormick himself would say: ‘We went to school together; I

watched the band form; I saw the members rehearse; I witnessed

their gradual yet astonishing transformation from ramshackle

teenage band to white-hot sci-fi rock group.’).21 This relationship

of McCormick towards U2 might place the essay as a bit of a fond

20 Bono, quoted in Daniel T. Kline, ‘Playing the Tart: Contexts andIntertexts for “Until the End of the World”’. In Exploring U2: Is this Rock n’ Roll?Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2. Ed. Scott Calhoun. Plymouth:Scarecrow Press, 2012. 134. This dissertation will not deal with AchtungBaby, but nonetheless this essay is important because it gives an exampleof what could be U2’s relationship to post-modern Irish literature. Theessays previously quoted in this literature review all belong to the samecollection.21 Neil McCormick, ‘Boy to Man: A Dublin-Shaped Band’. In Exploring U2: Is thisRock n’ Roll? Essays on the Music, Work, and Influence of U2. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press,2012. 3.

14

memoir; yet, the fact that U2 are placed specifically in a Dublin

context is, finally, what roots them away from their global

status.

The Dublin context is important due to the fact that plenty

of U2’s early literature insisted on the band’s ‘virgin birth’:

that is, U2 was a band that had come out apparently from nowhere,

with no music influence: nothing had come before it resembling it.

This happens particularly in Eamon Dunphy’s biography The

Unforgettable Fire and the early writings on U2 by Bill Graham in Hot

Press, ‘Ireland’s only music paper.’22 McLaughlin and McLoone

contradict that myth in their book Rock and Popular Music in Ireland: Before

and After U2. Barbara Bradby does the same in her essay review of

Dunphy’s biography, ‘God’s Gift to the Suburbs?’ Bradby points out

the main flaw in Dunphy’s work is the fact the author himself had

no ‘knowledge of 1970s rock’ so he ‘could swallow the band’s own

version of their virgin birth’. And not only that, but there is

also a focus on ‘U2’s values’ which Dunphy pins ‘down to Ireland

[…] specifically to Dublin suburbs.’ The fact that the band did

not fall prey to the ‘sex, drugs and rock n’ roll lifestyle’ makes

Dunphy see them ‘rooted in Dublin’s sanity.’23 Bradby’s italicization

22 Idem, 16.23 Barbara Bradby, ‘God’s Gift to the Suburbs?’ In Popular Music. January1989, Vol. 8, No. 1. 112. Original emphasis.

15

of the word ‘sanity’ shows the author did not know many things

about U2’s background and what would define their Irish/Dubliner

identity.

McLaughlin and McLoone dedicate three chapters of their study

of Irish rock and popular music to U2. One of those chapters

focuses, precisely, on the band’s Irish identity, because, they

assure, regarding U2 ‘Irishness is registered as a simple and

relatively uncontroversial fact of origin—a mere backdrop to the

group’s emergence.’24 This perspective on U2’s origins is proof of

the general acceptance of the band’s ‘virgin birth’ myth. Still,

McLaughlin and McLoone give proof that Hot Press was the one that

sold U2 that way. The words of Irish musical journalism would be

the ones that would find their way into Dunphy’s book: ‘This early

discourse tended to construct the group as emerging from a “blank

slate” […] insisting that in terms of musical influences they were

not significantly indebted to anyone.’25 Those words would appear

again and again in Dunphy’s biography together with his

perspective of Irish suburbs as a ‘sane’ place.

McLaughlin and McLoone’s study of Irish rock, however, seems

to partly support the statement of U2 not being indebted to anyone

24 McLaughlin and McLoone, 147. 25 Idem, 168.

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—at least in the context of Irish popular music. On the chapter

dedicated to the emergence of rock and pop, the authors assure

that ‘traditionalism and Irish folk music were extremely

influential on the formation of Irish rock.’26 The most

internationally successful representatives of popular or modern

Irish folk music would then be The Chieftains, who moved ‘from a

purist authenticity to an eclectic cosmopolitanism without losing

the distinctively Irish melodies and instrumentation that lay at

the heart of the early recordings.’27 Both Irish folk music and

traditionalism find a way into the music of progressive rock band

Horslips: ‘Their sound was multi-instrumental, with traditional

instruments […] meeting with rock instrumentation.’28 Irish

identity, however, would be clearly reflected in the lyrics:

‘[Horslips] focused lyrically on the “fantastic”—early Irish

history, myth and legend.’29

The introduction of Irish mythology in Horslips’s music30 was

an indication of literacy among Irish popular music performers,

which seems to be a distinctive quality of Irish rock and pop. The

26 Idem, 38. 27 Idem, 60. 28 Idem, 64. 29 Idem, 65.30 Horslips’s album The Táin is based on the Irish saga Táin Bo Cuailgne(McLaughlin and McLoone, 69).

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examples of literate rock stars abound in McLaughlin and McLoone’s

work, starting with Van Morrison. Though at first, his band Them

was seen as part of the ‘British invasion’ and not distinctly

Irish,31 Morrison’s latter work (in the 70s) references Oscar Wilde

and James Joyce. This, Morrison’s critics said, was him ‘grounding

[…] his place in an elite literary heritage.’32 Consciousness,

recognition and appropriation of Ireland’s literature for popular

music happen in Morrison’s work. His literacy is furthered when

McLaughlin and McLoone describe his view of Belfast. The Troubles

are not addressed in Morrison’s work; instead

His vision is that of a Romantic poet, a man of the eighteenth ornineteenth century living and reliving his romantic experiencesthrough an essentially twentieth-century art form […]. This is theBelfast that emerges again and again in his work […] Morrison’s cityremained the pre-Troubles city of his childhood—sometimes a place ofsimplicity and banality, and at other times the site of extremeemotional euphoria and mystical experience. […]. In this way,Cyprus Avenue and its environs is to Morrison what […] Sligo to W.B. Yeats. […]. He loves the banal but also craves intimations of themystical.33

Morrison’s work, then, is not only infused with literary

culture, but the influence of the literary forefathers can be31 Them would have formed part of the ‘British invasion’, since theyhailed from Belfast. However, the band ‘promoted themselves and gainedthe reputation for being defiantly, aggressively “other.”’ (McLaughlinand McLoone, 48)32 McLaughlin and McLoone, 107.33 Idem, 112-113.

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traced in his subject choice and treatment. For his part, Thin

Lizzy’s Phil Lynott also boasts literary influences, recognized by

McLaughlin and McLoone when talking about his early recordings: in

those albums ‘the poetry, the folk influences and the

autobiographical dimension of Lynott’s songwriting are much in

evidence.’34 MacAnna35 gives more attention to his work, mentioning

the publication of the rock star’s poetry book ‘Songs for While

I’m Away’ and noting the reworking the band did of old Irish

ballad ‘Whiskey in the Jar.’ MacAnna also quotes Thin Lizzy’s song

‘Dublin’, with lyrics such as ‘How can I leave the town / That

brings me down / That has no jobs / That’s blessed by God and

makes me cry—Dublin.’36 The writer’s conclusion on Phil Lynott is

that ‘[his] blend of Celtic mysticism with rock and roll as well

as his streetsmart attitude influenced many of the rock bands but

also some of the poets, writers and critics of the 80s. He was the

first—and possibly the only—Dublin literary rock superstar.’37

Such a declaration not only emphasizes Thin Lizzy’s

importance in Irish rock history, but conspicuously leaves U2 out

34 Idem, 96. 35 MacAnna’s essay would not belong to U2 literature, yet diverting fromthe review will emphasize Thin Lizzy’s literary roots. 36 Thin Lizzy’s ‘Dublin’, quoted in MacAnna, 16. 37 Idem, 16.

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of the musical-literary sphere.38 Their absence in this musical-

literary connection becomes even more noticeable when McLaughlin

and McLoone mention a commercially unsuccessful album by a punk

band called Radiators. The album, Ghostown, ‘was lauded for its

Irish-specific style and themes, its references to James Joyce and

other canonical literary figures.’39 Another example would be the

album Now & in Time to Be (A Musical Celebration of the Works of W. B. Yeats), an

album released in 1997 in which various Irish pop stars set

Yeats’s poems to music. The album features appearances by

important Irish stars such as the aforementioned Van Morrison, The

Waterboys40 and The Cranberries, but there is no U2 on the

tracklist. A final example would be the work of Kate Bush: though

born in London, Bush’s mother was Irish. Kate Bush, then, is a

second-generation Irish pop singer who connects music and

literature as well, using passages of Joyce’s Ulysses for her album

Director’s Cut.41

38 The Joshua Tree had already been released by the time MacAnna’s essay waspublished. 39 McLaughlin and McLoone, 165.40 The Waterboys released the album An Appointment with Mr Yeats in 2011. Allsongs on the album are based on Yeats’s works; this release is justanother example of the strong literary connection in Irish popular music.41 See Sean Michaels, ‘Kate Bush reveals guest lyricist on new album—JamesJoyce’. In The Guardian. April 5, 2011.

20

The former examples provide not only an overview of the Irish

popular music history but also evidence of how strong the

connection between literature and music is. Thus, U2 becomes a

sort of strange exception: a band that does not follow in the

steps of the Irish musical tradition and yet achieves global

superstardom. That, of course, makes the ‘virgin birth’ seem more

real. However, McLaughlin and McLoone discredit Dunphy’s ‘U2 came

from nowhere, they had no consciousness of what had gone before

them, no band they wanted to ape.’42 by enumerating U2’s musical

influences, which are a number of British bands, such as Siouxsie

and the Banshees and Joy Division. Again, even if U2 did not come

out of a musical black hole, the lack of Irish musical influences

seems to place U2’s musical birth outside of Ireland. In fact, it

would seem that U2’s birth is indebted to bassist Adam Clayton’s

British parentage and ‘albums and singles and an abundance of

ideas about the direction of the group’ he brought from London,

after working there in 1977 thanks to his family connections in

the United Kingdom.43

In short, McLaughlin and McLoone see U2 as ‘a conundrum […]

authentic and inauthentic […] Inauthentic, that is, when

42 Quoted in McLaughlin and McLoone, 163.43 McCormick, 15-16.

21

contrasted to folk and traditional music in Ireland which is

regarded that as which is most Irish […] and authentic, in that

they are a band […] keeping Irishness alive (somewhere)’44 The use

of the word ‘somewhere’, however, indicates the ‘Irishness’ that

U2 articulate in their music and performance is still problematic.

McLaughlin and McLoone then conclude that U2’s Irish identity is

mostly one they have created themselves: ‘a new, confident and

intelligent Irish identity, one at some distance from prevailing

stereotypes.’45 Still, this affirmation and the fact that the

band’s members have ‘their primary residences in Ireland and

continue to write and record the majority of their music there’46

does not reveal the origins of the new identity U2 have created.

In his book Race of Angels: Ireland and the Genesis of U2, John Waters

delves more into the history of U2 and their lives in Dublin, thus

giving more depth to the events that shaped the bands’s

imagination, ideas, music and consequently their Irish identity.

Waters, however, tends to claim U2 for Ireland, sometimes over-

zealously. In an unpublished 1995 interview with Noel McLaughlin,

Waters claims that ‘Being Irish is very important to U2. It is the

44 McLaughlin and McLoone, 150, my emphasis.45 Idem, 157. 46 Idem, 148.

22

most important thing to them and the most important thing about

them.’47

These sentences seem to be the main thesis for Waters’s book

as he takes a look into the lives of the young people in the Irish

suburbs of Ballymun and Finglas Village and provides the story of

U2 with a socio-cultural background. The author traces the origin

of those neighborhoods as ‘a Church of Ireland project to build a

Protestant estate.’ However, ‘when it transpired that there were

not enough Protestants willing to move to such a peripheral place,

the estate was thrown open to Catholics as well […]. The result

was a mishmash of worlds within worlds.’48 Then, Waters introduces

a quote from Bono. U2’s lead singer describes his life as ‘Bland

[…]. It looked pretty bleak to me […]. That’s why I think that

from that vacuum of suburbia came this junior surrealism. And as a

reaction, also, to violence […]. The place I came from was bland

in terms of culture, but violent in terms of skinhead culture.’49

This quote not only tells where Bono’s attraction to music and art

came from, but also roots the pacifist tendencies the frontman has

shown to the world as a reaction to a particular case of violence

47 Quoted in McLaughlin and McLoone, 143.48 John Waters, Race of Angels: Ireland and the Genesis of U2. Belfast: BlackstaffPress, 1994. 35. 49 Quoted in Waters, 42-43.

23

in a Dublin and Irish suburban setting. The presence of violence

in the history of U2 then debunks Dunphy’s notion that U2 were

‘rooted in sanity’ and places the origins for the new Irish

identity that U2 have created, led by Bono: it was something that

would place them away from the emptiness and violence of the place

where they lived, a place they could not identify with.

But U2 were not the only ones. Waters insists it was a whole

generation waking up to a new perspective about Irish identity.

Then, the Irish identity McLaughlin and McLoone claimed the band

created would be a result of a country undergoing deep socio-

cultural changes:

U2 came to hold a mirror up to their own generation because in many waystheir experience was a kind of topsy-turvy version of thegenerality of their generation’s experience. They represented a mixof backgrounds and sensibilities which belies the conventionalinsistence that we are all the same. These Children of Limbo, bornin the blank space between a thousand different versions of theircountry, grew up with a need to express dissent from everything wehad taken for granted.50

The new Irish identity, the distancing themselves from

clichés, then, was something that was already happening in the

minds of Irish people. U2 just brought it to the world’s

attention. The idea of them holding up a mirror to their

50 Waters, 121, my emphasis. 24

generation is equivalent to Joyce asking the Dublin of his time to

look at itself on his ‘nicely-polished looking glass.’ Both Joyce

and U2 present a reflection of their Dublin in their works.

However, even if U2’s work are representative, Waters places them

in perhaps too privileged a place:

There are, according to Franz Fanon’s analysis, three culturalstages in the trajectory of a colonised people towards freedom.Fanon only wrote about the role of literature, but let us […]spread the net a little wider. In the first phase there isunqualified assimilation: for which read showbands.51 In the secondphase there is an attempt to remember, a going back to the past:‘old legends will be reinterpreted in the light of a borrowedasceticism and of a conception of the world which was discoveredunder other skies’. Let us see this as a reference to Horslips. Andthe third phase? ‘During this phase a great many men and women […]feel the need to speak to their nation, to compose the sentencewhich expresses the heart of the people and to become themouthpiece of a new reality in action.’ What if, for ‘literarywork’ and ‘sentence’ you were to substitute the word ‘song’? Andwhat if the third phase of Irish cultural reawakening had dawned inthe form of…

The unsaid name is easy to guess. Waters ends this

enthusiastic diatribe by saying that U2 are ‘a spectacular one-off

51 Since Waters is talking about a colonial mindset, the idea thatshowbands would be an ‘unqualified assimilation’ of British culture isnot entirely correct in the sense that these bands would also play ElvisPresley’s hits, not only British music. In fact, they would have been thestart of the search of a new, more global identity for the Irish youth:‘…showbands brought to the youth of rural and provincial Ireland the samekind of liberating hedonism that was associated with other forms ofimported culture […] [they] introduced Ireland to sex and drugs and rockn’ roll.’ (McLaughlin and McLoone, 26)

25

now perhaps impossible either to better or repeat.’52 This last

affirmation reaffirms the place of U2 under the Joycean adjective

of ‘colossus’; but Waters’s passionate placing of U2 at the

forefront of the Irish cultural reawakening underplays the

importance of other bands such as Thin Lizzy and the influence of

Phil Lynott on culture Ferdia MacAnna mentioned. Furthermore,

Waters’s anti-colonial speech (which echoes his words in the

unpublished interview about U2’s concern with being Irish) does

not work with the modern, globalized U2 that have become a

conundrum for their presence in the United States, Ireland and

Britain. However, since the book was published in 1994, Waters

most likely did not foresee the kind of phenomenon U2 would become

in the subsequent years. Still, Waters gives the band the roots

that were missing and summarizes the problem of U2’s identity and

birth in this quote: ‘they have emerged from a place and a time—

Ireland in the 1970s—which was the product of a historical and

evolutionary process, and they are as faithful a representation of

that place as it is possible to conceive of.’53

McCormick’s essay deals with the similar anecdotes of a young

band growing up and trying to find their voice in Dublin suburbia.

52 Waters, 98-99.53 Idem, 121.

26

His essay is more recent and thus more aware of the ‘U2

conundrum’. He goes back to Bono’s rejection of suburban living,

but that was not the only event U2’s generation was rebelling

against: ‘what U2 and many of our generation were rejecting […]

was […] the very idea that Ireland should be dominated by its

history.’54 Just like Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus and his famous quote

‘History… is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake!’55

McCormick shows that U2 and the youth of their time tried to

escape history, but did not reject Ireland or their Irish roots.

In his book Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination, Gerry Smyth

writes a sentence that seems adequate to finalize this exploration

on the band and their relationship to Ireland: ‘U2 were the pre-

eminent Irish cultural producers of the late twentieth century,

precisely to the degree that their music reflected a matrix of

confusing and contradictory spatial affiliations.’56 These ‘spatial

affiliations’ are the spaces and places U2 conjure with their

music; they are contradictory because they are not specifically

Irish and that is what has created U2’s unique identity. Smyth

focuses on the ‘desert music’: the image of the American desert

54 McCormick, 17. 55 James Joyce, Ulysses. Hardronogworth: Penguin, 2000. 42. 56 Gerry Smyth, Space and the Irish Cultural Imagination. New York: Palgrave, 2001.172.

27

evoked by U2’s music in their album The Joshua Tree. The desert,

however, becomes the link of U2’s ‘American album’ with Ireland:

‘the image of the desert in American culture derives in large part

from emigrant European sources, and more especially from the

response of Irish emigrants to American geography.’57 Then, the

‘American’ landscapes and ‘American’ issues that are addressed in

The Joshua Tree are addressed from an Irish perspective. The band’s

‘American’ album is still in touch with the native land.

Mark J. Prendergast, in his work Irish Rock: Roots. Personalities.

Directions. published in 1987, follows the band’s evolution and can

trace the moments in which both global and local problems find

their way into the band’s commitments: the Self-Aid concert on May

17, 1986, a concert for Ireland’s unemployed: ‘U2 made a clear

statement about how they felt about Ireland’s emigration and

unemployment problem but also drove home the explicit evil of

heroin addiction, nuclear power.’58 U2 had by then become aware of

a number of social problems thanks to several charity projects,

such as Live Aid (Bono and his wife, Alison Hewson, traveled to

Ethiopia to work in the famine relief effort) and the Conspiracy

of Hope concert for the anniversary of Amnesty International.

57 Idem, 177-178.58 Mark J. Prendergast, Irish Rock. Roots. Personalities. Directions. Dublin: O’BrienPress, 1987. 196.

28

Bono’s involvement with these causes would inspire new themes for

lyrics and would influence The Joshua Tree. Bill Graham and Caroline

van Oosten de Boer note it when describing the album as ‘concise

and […] politically specific […] [Bono’s] lyrics would become far

less vague and he would start to write in narrative idioms59 […].

[The] lyrics leave the dreamtime for often harsh, daylight

realities.’60

And a harsh reality was the heroin problem in Dublin. Though

it had been addressed by U2 before in their song ‘Bad’ taken from

The Unforgettable Fire album, it is addressed in The Joshua Tree again, in

the song ‘Running to Stand Still’ (RTSS) which will be the focus

of this dissertation. McLaughlin and McLoone say that the song is

‘taken to be abut Dublin’ because if offers ‘no grounded references

to place.’61 On his essay The Representation of Dublin in Story and Song,

Smyth seems also a bit reluctant to place the song as ‘a song

about Dublin’ but recognizes the connection, calling it ‘residual

elements of some kind of engagement with contemporary Dublin.’62

According to Smyth, ‘Bad’ is the song that is more about the city;

59 ‘Running to Stand Still’ is an example of a narrative lyric. Seeappendix. 60 Graham and van Oosten de Boer, 27-29.61 McLaughlin and McLoone, 155, my emphasis.62 Gerry Smyth, ‘The Representation of Dublin in Story and Song’. InProspero. Rivista di Litterature e Culture Straniere. 2012, XVII. 209.

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but yet, he acknowledges these kind of songs form part of what he

calls ‘Damnable Dublin—the city of poverty, violence and

entrapment so familiar to readers of Joyce […] and Bolger.’63

MacAnna mentions the importance of writer Dermot Bolger in modern

Irish literature, saying that ‘[Bolger’s] novel (The Journey Home)

addresses itself to the hidden face of modern Dublin, the sleazy,

impoverished and troubled city that nobody talks about…’ and that

‘the Dublin of Joyce was well […] buried up in Glasnevin

cemetery.’64 But even if MacAnna wants to make Bolger (who grew up

‘about five hundred yards away from where Bono was born’65) free of

Joyce’s influence, it is just inevitable to remember the writer

who wanted to talk about the Dublin nobody talked about because

everyone was just too busy with the Celtic Revival.

So, U2 damn Dublin like Joyce and Bolger did. Prendergast, Niall

Stokes and Bill Graham all link ‘RTSS’ directly with Ireland’s

capital city66 and since this song is infused with U2’s

aforementioned specificity and subjects taken from reality, it

becomes a portrait of the Dublin nobody wanted to see. The song is

63 Idem, 208.64 MacAnna, 27-28.65 Waters, 35.66 Quotes on the song’s direct relationship to Dublin will be addressed onthis paper’s final chapter. However, it is worth mentioning that Grahamand van Oosten de Boer call the song ‘[U2’s] finest Dublin anthem’ (33)making the connection quite clear.

30

not romantic. It is not U2 predicting a hopeful future or ‘caring

rock’: it is a looking-glass to the lives of those trapped in drug

addiction. Just like the predicament of a lower-middle class girl

finds its way into the pages of Joyce’s work,67 a female junkie is

portrayed in U2’s song, both unable to escape their sad life

conditions.

67 There is, of course, ample bibliography on Joyce. For thisdissertation, two editions of Dubliners have been used, as to compare notesand introductions. The main bibliography on Joyce is focused on the shortstory collection, such as Donald T. Torchiana’s Backgrounds for Joyce’s Dublinersand David Pierce’s Reading Joyce, plus essays on The Cambridge Companion to JamesJoyce.

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2. Joyce’s and U2’s Dublin: centres of paralysis.

Of course, the thought that the subject of paralysis is only

related to Irish literature would be absurd. However, Joyce seems

to have claimed the topic for Dublin and for Dubliners explicitly on

his letter to publisher Grant Richards, where he labelled the

Irish capital ‘the centre of paralysis.’68 And his words rang true

for many years.

Torchiana calls Irish paralysis ‘timeless’69 and traces it

back to the ‘Scandinavian landings in Dublin’. Then, he notes that

the trials from the Norsemen ‘were held before a combined priest

and magistrate.’ Thus, the author says that the ‘priestly and

political repression’70 started with the first Scandinavian

settlers and continued with the English rule. Paralysis then,

comes partly because of the history of the Irish as colonised

people.

68 Letter from Joyce to Grant Richards, quoted on Jeri Johnson’sintroduction to Dubliners, xvii.69 Torchiana, 9.70 Idem, 7.

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The other repressor is, then, the Catholic Church. Douglas

Kanter quotes Joyce’s anti-Catholic sentiments in one of his

letters to Nora: ‘I left the Catholic Church, hating it most

fervently […]. Now I make open war upon it by what I write and I

say and I do.’71 The author then explores the influence a movement

of cultural revivalists that pronounced themselves against the

Church, ‘challenging [its] privileged political, social and

cultural position’ had on Joyce, starting with ‘their shared

ascription of “paralysis” to an Irish culture and society

permeated by Catholicism.’72 Still, it is Joyce himself who gives

the meaning to the word, for, Kanter says, ‘Joyce […] used the

term to denote a condition of spiritual torpor cause by what he

perceived to be the oppressive religiosity of Catholic culture in

Ireland.’73

Joyce, then, fought against that torpor, against that

‘hemiplegia of the will’74 with his writings that challenged

censorship—and with his writings he also challenged the sterility

of Irish cultural life. Torchiana says that in Ireland there was a

71 Quoted in Douglas Kanter, ‘Joyce, Irish Paralysis, and CulturalNationalist Anticlericalism.’ In James Joyce Quarterly. Spring 2004: Vol. 41,No. 3. 381. 72 Kanter, 381. 73 Idem, 382. 74 Quoted in Johnson’s notes to Dubliners, xi.

33

paralysis of imagination that seemed to have been not only the

fault of censorship, but also partly brought because of the

literary ideals of the Celtic Revival and the dependence on some

idealized past or bucolic life.75 Torchiana notes Joyce’s criticism

to it, presented in the story ‘A Little Cloud’, where the main

character has vain hopes of being a poet so he can be admired.

This, Torchiana says, is ‘to mock the literary ideals of the

Revival and to show […] the paralysis of imagination in Ireland.’76

Joyce denounces cultural paralysis and fights against it by

writing in a way that opposes the myth and legend influences of

the Celtic Twilight.

That was the cultural and parochial paralysis of Dublin in

Joyce’s time. However, after Joyce’s time, changes were not many.

MacAnna describes life in Dublin during the 60s as ‘living inside

a fossil.’77 McLaughlin and McLoone call attention to the religious

intrusion in Ireland: ‘dominated by essentialist definitions of

Irishness and patrolled by a vigilant and intrusive Catholic ethos,

had drifted from the mainstream, existing in a space circumscribed

75 Torchiana, 3. 76 Idem, 3.77 MacAnna, 15.

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by protectionism and censorship.’7879 Bob Geldof described coming

back to Ireland after working in England as ‘returning to a

parochialism and morality so stifling it literally manifested

itself in me as an inability to breathe.’80 Such references to

Ireland and Dublin show it almost as a replica of Joyce’s city.

Ireland had been paralysed in time as well.

And just as the Celtic Revival, which was supposed to give

new life to Irish culture, ended up paralysing Irish imagination

in the eyes of Joyce, Joyce himself paralysed Irish imagination,

as mentioned by MacAnna and the intimidation of Dublin writers

before the figure of Joyce in the previous chapter of this

dissertation: ‘Why compete with Joyce? It was more practical to

revere him.’81 An example of such intimidation which ended up

paralysing young writers are the words of film director Neil

Jordan, who admitted he found the ‘rich literary tradition of

Ireland overwhelming, almost paralysing.’ Pernot-Deschamps, the

author of the essay on Jordan’s writings, immediately follows

78 McLaughlin and McLoone, 16, my emphasis.79 ‘In 1929 the Censorship of Publications Act was passed in Ireland, andwork by most Irish writers […] was banned; this did not encourage Irishwriters to feel that there was an audience out there hungry for theirwork.’ See Colm Tóibin, introduction to The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction. London:Penguin, 2001. xxix. 80 Quoted in McLaughlin and McLoone, 119. 81 MacAnna, 19.

35

Jordan’s affirmation with this sentence: ‘What could any young

author write about after the great masters like Joyce in

particular?’82 The immediate address to Joyce is another proof of

just how heavy his shadow hangs over the Irish literary tradition.

MacAnna provides a conclusion to the exemplary story of Neil

Jordan with another quote by him: ‘Every Irish writer has to

devise his or her own stratagems to avoid the crippling influence

of Joyce. My ultimate stratagem was to start writing films

instead.’83

Culture, literature and music84, together with economy, were

paralysed. MacAnna enumerates the ‘harsh realities of modern urban

disillusionment’ that were ‘drugs, unemployment, high taxes.’85

Prendergast actually writes that what inspired U2 to keep on

playing and to make it in the music business was ‘the failing

Irish economy [was] throwing more people out of work every day.’86

Before U2 adopted the idea of building an audience elsewhere from

Dublin,87 the idea was to leave, as expressed by the Bob Geldof

82 Maguy Pernot-Deschamps, ‘The narrator in Neil Jordan’s short stories.’In Journal of the Short Story in English. Spring 2001, No. 36. Paragraph 2.jsse.revues.org/58183 Quoted in MacAnna, 19. 84 ‘In the 1960s Belfast was culturally a more confident and more excitingcity tan Dublin.’ (McLaughlin and McLoone, 43)85 MacAnna, 17 and 21. 86 Prendergast, 176.87 McLaughlin and McLoone, 66.

36

quote. Fachtna O’Ceallaigh, Sinead O’Connor’s manager, described a

band’s mentality as ‘tunnel vision—get out, get ahead’ in order to

escape ‘bleak and stifling’ Dublin.88 So, the capital city of

Ireland was seen just as a ‘staging post’ and that ‘bands had to

move on further afield if they were to achieve lasting success.’89

In fact, Dublin was seen as ‘a launch pad for waves of […] Irish

emigration’90 to escape the bad living conditions and to find a

better life or success.

Paralysis, then, pervaded Joyce’s works and life in the

Dublin of his time, but also in latter times.91 U2’s and

McCormick’s generation were looking ‘to the outside […] for the

future’92 just as Joyce’s Eveline looks for a moment to the outside

for a better life where she will be respected. And just like

Joyce’s Eveline, U2 create a character who wants to look to the

outside in order to escape the Dublin they knew.

88 Quoted in McLaughlin and McLoone, 81.89 McLaughlin and McLoone, 58.90 Idem, 19. 91 Colm Tóibin, in his introduction to The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction, gives asampler of Irish writers and there are several that have dealt with thesubject of paralysis in a different way to Joyce. Before him, novelistGeorge Moore, who dealt with the paralysis of the peasantry under thelanded class; Protestant supernatural fiction, such as Dracula, whichdepicts the Protestant class paralysed by the sins of their ancestors;and finally, William Trevor’s stories of a ‘hopeless Ireland’. This isjust a part of several examples provided by Tóibin. See ix-xxxiii.92 McCormick, 9.

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3. Methodology: How to read a pop song.

The next question would be if songs can be considered literature,

read as such and be compared to poetry. Geert Buelens, on his

conference paper ‘Lyricist’s Lyrical Lyrics’ argues that the only

recording artists which are given literary treatment are Bob

Dylan, Patti Smith and Leonard Cohen who have explicit literary

connections (such as the friendship of Dylan with Allen Ginsberg—

who also collaborated with U2) while the department of Literature

tends to forget the rest of the rock world. Nonetheless, there had

already been attempts to compare rock lyrics to poetry as early as

1969, when journalist Richard Goldstein released his book The

Poetry of Rock.93 This very same book was also defended years

93 Geert Buelens, ‘Lyricist’s Lyrical Lyrics: Widening the Scope of PoetryStudies by Claiming the Obvious’. Paper from the conference Current Issues inEuropean Cultural Studies. Nörrkoping: 15-17 June, 2011. 498-499.

38

later, in 2010, by Pete Astor, who regarded it as a foundation

that would allow latter comparisons between rock and poetry.94

Buelens, Goldstein and Astor, however, only recognize songs

as part of the poetic sphere. On their terms, a comparison between

a short story and a song would not be as immediate. Mexican

critics of postmodern literature Lauro Zavala and José Hernández-

Riwes have embraced the idea that rock music is not only

comparable to poetry but to literature’s wider spectrum. Zavala

places song lyrics as examples of ‘modern micro-fiction.’95 So, a

comparison between songs and literary forms is not only limited to

poetry, but to fiction as well, because some songs share more

elements with fiction rather than with poetry. Songs could even be

micro-stories if they have a sequence of events, a space, a

narrator and characters which can be archetypal. This is the case

of ‘RTSS’.

94 Pete Astor, ‘The Poetry of Rock: Song Lyrics Are Not Poems but the Words Still Matter; Another Look at Richard Goldstein’s Collection of Rock Lyrics’. In Popular Music. January 2010, Vol. 29, No. 1. 146. 95 The texts of Lauro Zavala and José Hernández-Riwes are originally inSpanish. What is presented here is my translation. References: LauroZavala, ‘Minificción Contemporánea: La ficción ultracorta y la literaturaposmoderna’. (Contemporary minifiction: Ultra-short fiction andpostmodern literature). Guanajuato: Universidad Autónoma de Guanajuato,2011. 7-9. And José Hernández-Riwes, ‘Cómo leer una canción pop.’ InFuentes Humanísticas. No. 42, 2011.

39

Zavala’s classification places songs as a literary genre of a

sub-genre, while Hernández-Riwes recognizes a song as an

interdisciplinary or hybrid genre and quotes William P. Dougherty,

who says that theory applied to song analysis should transcend

mono-disciplinary approaches. On the same paper, Hernández-Riwes

notes that not all songs can be micro-fiction, but that they take

resources from many other forms of literature: lyrics can be

closer to the realm of poetry, stories (where they would be

labeled as micro-fiction), descriptions or even dialogues. The

connection of literature in all its genres to this

interdisciplinary form that is a song is then clear.96

So, the question becomes: how is a song read? There are

several approaches to ‘reading’ a song97 precisely, because reading

a pop song is not a matter of only one analytical discipline. A

song ‘text’ is formed by several elements which require different

analytical approaches. The first one is the lyrics. Simon Frith,

in his essay ‘Why Do Songs Have Words?’ speaks about the

importance of the lyrics as words that are open to interpretation

by the listener, as words in poetry work: ‘song words matter most,

96 Hernández-Riwes, 1-4.97 Richard Middleton, ‘Introduction: Locating the Popular Music Text’. InReading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music. Ed. Richard Middleton.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 2.

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as words […] when they are still open to interpretation—not just

by their singers, but by their listeners too.’98 Furthermore,

Richard Middleton notes that songs do not only work as words, ‘not

only as verbal texts but as sung words.’99 Of course, music is the

second element of the song. The juxtaposition of music and lyrics

creates a subtle relationship between the two of them100 which

provides another layer of meaning to the song which must also be

analysed in order to understand the song’s ‘text’ fully.

Based on this, Umberto Fiori says that the main requirement

in order to read a song is to have listened to the recording,

which he calls ‘the original text’.101 Such original text includes

not only lyrics and music as discussed, but the way the song is

performed or ‘performance discourse’102 and the song’s persona.

98 Simon Frith, ‘Why Do Songs Have Words?’ In Music for Pleasure. Oxford:Polity Press, 1998. 123. The ‘interpretation of the listener’ is anelement of utmost importance that will be addressed later in thischapter. 99 Middleton, 7.100 Dougherty, quoted in Hernández-Riwes, 1. Dougherty calls lyrics‘poetry’, but it would not be objective to label every song lyric a formof poetry—for if that was so, then looking for songs with ‘poetic lyrics’brings us back to what Buelens argues and recommends avoiding—that songswith lyrics that are not considered ‘poetic’ or ‘literary’ are notsuitable for a literary analysis..101 Umberto Fiori, ‘Listening to Peter Gabriel’s “I Have the Touch”’. InReading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music. Ed. Richard Middleton.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 183.102 Hernández-Riwes, 2.

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The elements of a song would then be words, music, song

persona and performance discourse. All of these elements interact

with each other. First, let us look at the interaction of words

and music in an example provided by Peter Winkler on his essay

‘Randy Newman and Americana’. Winkler analyses the way words and

music interact to make Newman’s song ‘I Think It’s Going to Rain

Today’ a song with a certain mood, in this case, pain: ‘Newman’s

vocal sound and inflections express the sad, bitter, withdrawn

mood of the words, and the agitated, tonally disoriented music of

the bridge lends an air of despair and anguish to the cry “lonely,

lonely”.103 The one that feels the pain in a song, however, would be

the song’s persona.

Song personas work as the ‘poetic voice’ in the song, since

‘the notion of a strict identity between lived experience and a

song’s meaning eliminates the effect of a song as a musical

performance.’104 Of course, the song’s persona interacts with the

other elements of the song’s text, which adds to new possibilities

for readings of a song: ‘How “characters” and “voices” are shaped

through the passage of musical time […] is crucial to songs’

103 Peter Winkler, ‘Randy Newman’s Americana.’ In Reading Pop: Approaches toTextual Analysis in Popular Music. Ed. Richard Middleton. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2003. 31. 104 David Brackett, Interpreting Popular Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 15.

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effects. The personas constructed in the songs […] do not just

exist in particular settings: they act and interact.’105

The song’s persona, then, is linked to the performance

discourse, or the way the song is sung. The performance discourse

comprises the interpretation of a song in both recordings and

live: the difference between the way a song is performed at the

studio, the outtakes, the final version that reached the album and

then the way the group or singer performs the song at a show

create different discourses.106

To understand how performance affects a song’s discourse let

us look at covers or reinterpretations of songs. David Yaffe, for

example, writes about Bob Dylan’s way of reinterpreting folk songs

from the Anglo-American tradition. Yaffe notes that the sound and

intonation of Dylan’s voice could give a different meaning to a

line of a song he was covering (or making his, in Dylan’s case).

Dylan covered a song by a group called the Mississippi Sheiks, a

guitar and fiddle group of the 1930s. The name of the song is

‘Blood in My Eyes’. The description of Dylan’s delivery of the

105 Middleton, 233.106 This dissertation will only be concerned with the studio versions ofU2’s songs: that is, the songs as they appear on The Joshua Tree album. Nolive versions will be considered for this analysis.

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song is a demonstration of how the song persona and performance

can change the way a song is read:

…his [Dylan’s] intoning of the song’s refrain: ‘Hey, hey baby, I

got blood in my eyes for you’ is less about a young man’s all-night binge

than an older man’s waning powers. The Sheiks’s version is almost a young

man’s hyperbole; Dylan’s anguished, strained delivery sounds almost

literal.107

The song by the Mississippi Sheiks, then, is completely

different to the song by Dylan. This is an example of how a cover

performance changes a song; but, as mentioned before, the song can

change even when sung by the same band or singer. This is not only

because of the way a performer can choose to interpret the song:

this is related to the final element in the song’s text. It had

been mentioned, when discussing Frith’s essay on song lyrics, that

it is important that lyrics are open to interpretation by the

listeners. The listener or the recipient is, in fact, the last

element of the song’s text, for the listener is the one that will

generate other discourses basing themselves on what they listen

and interpret. The listener will be the one to select the approach

107 David Yaffe, ‘Bob Dylan and the Anglo-American Tradition.’ In TheCambridge Companion to Bob Dylan. Ed. Kevin J. H. Dettmar. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press: 2009. 22.

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to a song: they become a mediating agent that will make sense out

of the signs (the ‘text’) the song presents.108

David Brackett enumerates the reason for the listener’s

plethora of readings and approaches: ‘…listener subject positions

informed by a variety of class-, gender- and culturally based

attitudes […]. What is more, those “listening positions” are not

locked into place by financial status or genetic code, but can be

acquired through contact with a musical style.’ These are the

first factors that might influence an approach to a song, but

there is even another layer of depth in the fact that ‘[These]

broad range of factors influence[s] listening attitudes implies

that multiple listening positions may be available to a single

listener…’ Still, even if many readings of a song are possible,

Brackett insists on the importance of not leaving out any element

that comprises a song’s text, labeling the listener that does so

‘the ideal listener.’109 In conclusion, the interdisciplinary and

hybrid nature of a song is the most important thing to consider

when reading it. The reading that will take place in this

dissertation is a comparative literary reading of U2’s song

‘Running to Stand Still’.

108 Hernández-Riwes, 2.109 Brackett, 17-23.

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A limitation for this project would be the way the music

analysis is performed. The majority of rock analysts themselves

present an ability to read sheet music and identify musical notes.

Dai Griffiths, when analysing the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s

‘The River’ focuses primarily on the song’s words, but then he

analyses Springsteen’s voice strains and names the exact notes

that are hit.110

Such an analysis will not take place in this dissertation.

The analysis will be closer to the works of David Yaffe, which has

been previously quoted, Mark Prendergast, Umberto Fiori, José

Hernández-Riwes and Greg Clarke. An example of the sort of

analysis that will take place happens in the previously quoted

essay of Yaffe on Bob Dylan, ‘Bob Dylan and the Anglo-American

Tradition’. Besides noting the changes that Dylan’s delivery does

to a song, Yaffe identifies ‘stolen’ or ‘quoted’ lyrics in Dylan’s

songs and traces them back to their source. ‘”My heart’s in the

Highlands, gentle and fair” he [Dylan] sang on the closing track

“Highlands”, doffing his cowboy hat to a 1789 Robert Burns

lyric.’111 This sort of identification of similarities between

110 Dai Griffiths, ‘Three Tributaries of “The River”’. In Reading Pop:Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music. Ed. Richard Middleton. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2003. 197-198.111 Yaffe, 24.

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lyrics and passages in Joyce’s literary work will be present in

this paper.

Umberto Fiori, for his part, analyses in his work the lyrics

of Peter Gabriel’s ‘I Have the Touch’ and his analysis of words

and voice is devoid of musical technicalities. Fiori describes

Gabriel’s voice as ‘it has to climb up the highest note in the

melody’ without naming such note and Gabriel’s whispers are

described as such: ‘whispered by a single voice, very close to the

microphone.’112 Mark Prendergast also analyses music without

technicalities and focuses on the way the music adds to the

interpretation of the song. When dissecting ‘Running to Stand

Still’113 Prendergast notes that the music enhances the mood of the

song: ‘The pessimism of the song is enhanced by Lanois and Eno’s

production—melancholic keyboards.’114 The sort of comparative

analysis that will complement these several approaches is

exemplified in the essay ‘Bono v. Nick Cave Re: Jesus’ by Greg

Clarke. Clarke compares Cave’s lyrics to Bono’s lyrics and then

explains the way both rockers see Jesus—their similarities and

112 Fiori, 186-187.113 This song, the one that will be analysed in this dissertation, has gotliterary micro-fiction elements: it tells a story with a sequence ofevents and it has a character and a narrator.114 Mark J. Prendergast, Irish Rock. Roots. Personalities. Directions. Dublin: O’BrienPress, 1987. 205.

47

differences.115 When speaking about the subject of paralysis, both

the similarities and differences of Joyce’s work to U2’s work will

be compared.

Lastly, Hernández-Riwes analyses the Rolling Stones’ ‘She’s a

Rainbow’, comparing how its elements make it work like E. T. A.

Hoffman’s short story ‘The Sandman’.116 This analysis will work in a

similar way: however, Hernández-Riwes’s work is very free, basing

itself in similarities between the story and the song with almost

no bibliography to support his interpretation and this paper will

not allow much of that freedom, using the body of secondary

critical bibliography to support the interpretation of Joyce’s

text.

115 Greg Clarke, ‘Bono v. Nick Cave Re: Jesus’. In Exploring U2: Is This Rock n’Roll? Essays on the Music, Work and Influence of U2. Ed. Scott Calhoun. Plymouth:Scarecrow Press, 2012.116 Hernández-Riwes, 10-21.

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4. Joyce’s ‘Eveline’ and U2’s ‘Running to Stand Still’: Women in

Chains.

The literary work to be analysed in this dissertation as

representative of the paralysis of Joyce’s Dublin will, then, be

‘Eveline’, the shortest story in Dubliners. The story is about the

decision Eveline Hill, a young girl ‘over nineteen’ (Joyce, JJ,

26)117 has to make regarding the rest of her life. She is planning

to elope with Frank, a sailor who the narrator names her ‘lover’

(JJ, 27): ‘She had consented to go away, to leave her home.’ (JJ,

25)

However, Eveline is not entirely sure about the decision she

has taken: ‘Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the

question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had

those whom she had known all her life about her.’ (JJ, 26) Yet,117 In this chapter, the primary bibliography sources (that is, U2’s songand Joyce’s short story) will be referenced frequently, betweenparentheses. The abbreviations that accompany the references can be foundon the chart at the beginning of this work.

49

this image of domestic happiness and safety is interrupted by her

father, whose violent behavior has even affected Eveline’s health:

‘…she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence.

She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations […] And

now she had nobody to protect her.’ (JJ, 26) Eveline, then, feels

at danger in her own home: her father is seen as a threat and

Frank as something that will lead her away from it and into

safety: ‘He would save her.’ (JJ, 28)

Still, that ‘safety’ Frank seems to offer is not guaranteed:

after all, it is life ‘in a distant, unknown country.’ (JJ, 26, my

emphasis) ‘The unknown’ is something that is most likely to offer

uncertainty. In the end of the story, Eveline will change her mind

about leaving Dublin with Frank and will stay behind, looking at

Frank without feeling anything, ‘…passive, like a helpless animal.’

(JJ, 29, my emphasis) The emphasis on the word ‘passive’ is

focused on the lack of action the word implies and its connection

to the idea of being paralysed. Eveline cannot even move as Frank

is going away.

This story will be contrasted with U2’s ‘Running to Stand

Still’, a reflection of paralysis in Dublin. This song is the

fifth one in the Joshua Tree, a slow ballad led by a whispering

50

guitar and Bono’s voice, with almost no participation of the

drums. Sound effects add to the sad mood of the song. It works in

a similar way to a short story, for it comprises the narrative

elements Zavala mentioned in his analysis of micro-fiction.

The first lines of the song are ‘And so she woke up / Woke up

from where she was, lyin’ still’. (l. 1-2) From the start, the

listener is introduced to a character, a woman, like Eveline,

though this one remains nameless. Then, the character speaks:

‘Said I gotta do something about where we’re goin’.’ (l. 3-4)

After that line, events take place: the nameless woman is a

drug addict who will do ‘a smuggler’s run for hard cash so as to

escape the poverty that stimulated the addiction in the first

place.’118 Not able to escape poverty nor addiction, the nameless

woman ends up even ‘more deeply involved in the opiate world,

basically standing still.’ Like Eveline, who remains passive in

the North Wall and who will, like David Pierce says, ‘presumably

return[ing] home to sit by the window and watch again the evening

118 Prendergast, 205. Niall Stokes, in his book U2: Into the Heart, has Bonotell the story behind the song: ‘”I heard about a couple […] and bothwere addicted, and such was their addiction that they had no money […] sothe guy risked everything on a run.”’ (70) However, the song has somedifferences between it and the real-life case. This dissertation willfocus on the story the song tells, while the real-life case will onlywork as the social background.

51

invade her avenue’—so the story will end ‘where it began’119—the

nameless woman in U2’s song ends up, once again, a victim of her

addiction: ‘She will suffer the needle chill / She’s running to

stand still’ (l. 27-28) The last words, stand still, make the

paralysis of this female character more evident: it does not

matter if she ran, if she was active, because in the end it all

leads to her being trapped in her addiction and most likely the

story will end where it began as well: the woman thinking she has

to do something to change the way she lives, but never finding a

way out. The use of the words ‘lying still’ in the second line of

the song, sung when the song has just started, give it a circular

structure which adds to the idea of the woman being trapped in a

vicious cycle.

After this overview, it is clear the first similarity between

Joyce’s short story and U2’s song is, then, the story that is

being told: both are about women who try to escape negative

situations but are victims of the oppressiveness of the society

around them (these obstacles will be discussed further on the

chapter) and will very probably end up where they began. Bulson

would maybe even say U2’s female character is also caught in the

‘endless web of despair’ that prevents every one of Joyce’s119 David Pierce, Reading Joyce. Edinburgh: Pearson, 2008. 89.

52

Dubliners from escaping their plights.120 In accordance with this

quote, U2’s female would also be a Joycean character. There are

even more similarities between not only the characters, but

between the story and the song’s elements.

It has been mentioned that U2’s song works like a short

story. The structure of both the song and Joyce’s short story is

similar, as discussed. Torchiana, in his analysis of Dubliners,

dissects the stories and grants them a simple tripartite structure

that fits the structure of U2’s song. Torchiana names the parts of

Joyce’s stories ‘introduction, body and what often appears to be

an unfinished conclusion.’ The body of the story can include a

climax. Torchiana then notices the strong contrasts between scenes

in the story: ‘Eveline at home and at the North Wall, Eveline

without Frank, then with him, and at last without him.’121 These

sharp contrasts allow the story to be divided in the

aforementioned three parts: an introduction which comprises

Eveline at home, then at the North Wall with Frank, and finally

there, but without him. The song, for its part, is divided in

three parts as well: the first verses have no distinguishable

120 Quoted in Pierce, 89.121 Torchiana, 12-13.

53

chorus.122 Then comes a verse in which Bono’s voice rises both in

volume and slightly in pitch, which would be the second part of

the song. The third part would be Bono’s voice going back to the

original voice register, before the harmonica leads the song to

its end.

Both the song and the story start out calmly. ‘Eveline’’s

beginning comprises a description of the heroine, sitting down,

looking out the window. ‘Running to Stand Still’ starts with the

nameless character, as mentioned before, waking up from where she

is, ‘lyin’ still.’ (l. 2) Both characters are depicted in passive

positions, which, as mentioned before, will be the way they will

end. Then, the narrator in Joyce’s story leads the reader inside

Eveline’s thoughts and memories. The story works following the

device of a third-person focalized narrative. As Attridge would

say, the ‘close relationship between the sentences of [this]

passage and the thoughts of the main character’123 is very easy to

identify, almost immediate. Eveline is looking out the window,

reminiscing about her childhood. What the reader knows is that she

is tired; later on, that her father might not be good to her and

122 The repetition of the tune which is transcribed in the lyrics as ‘A lala la de day’ (l. 8-9 and l. 16-17) only happens twice and does not happen after the third verse.123 Derek Attridge, ‘Reading Joyce’. In The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce.Ed. Derek Attridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 5.

54

that her mother is dead. After that, her plan is revealed: ‘Now

she was going to go away like the others, to leave her home.’

(Joyce, JJ, 25) A possible change in this scene is revealed:

passive Eveline will take action. This disclosure occurs as early

as the second paragraph of the story; in the song, the woman says

she will take action as early as the third line. There are, in

both works, two women ‘on the point of flight.’124

This leads us to the body of the story, which has been

summarized in the overview: Eveline’s doubts as to whether what

she is doing is right or not, Frank, and her less than comforting

relationship with her father. There is also a job at the Stores

with a boss Eveline dislikes, Miss Gavan, plus another duty as

what seems to be a babysitter, with ‘two young children who had

been left to her charge’ and she has to make sure they go ‘to

school regularly and got their meals regularly.’ (Joyce, JJ, 26)

Joyce’s narrator does not give any more details about them,

though.125 Those two jobs give her seven shillings that she hands

over to her father and uses to buy food.

124 Torchiana, 71.125 Jeri Johnson, in her notes, only asks who those children might be, butprovides neither explanation nor options.

55

Besides this life of, as the narrator puts it, ‘hard work—a

hard life’ (JJ, 26) there is another possibility that would make

Eveline’s life even worse. Several critics have considered the

possibility of Eveline’s father harboring sexual desire for her.

This theory will be discussed in more detail later on. However, if

it was true, Eveline, after introducing the reader to Frank in her

internal monologue through scenes of their romance and the

offering he has made to her of a new life, still doubts and even

justifies her father’s actions: ‘[he] was becoming old lately […]

Sometimes he could be very nice.’ (JJ, 27) This changes abruptly

when Eveline remembers her dead mother who died in ‘final

craziness.’ (JJ, 28)126

126 In this moment of the story, the famous phrase ‘Derevaun Seraun!’appears. Since this phrase has always been the focus of much discussion,it would be unwise not to make any commentary on it. Johnson, in hernotes, gives two options of possible translations, them being ‘death isvery near’ or ‘worms are the only end.’ (213) Terence Brown agrees withthe last one and adds ‘the end of pleasure is pain’ and ‘the end of thesong is raving madness.’ (255) David Pierce explores a variety ofpossible translations and editions, which include the aforementioned onestogether with Jacques Aubert’s possibility, ‘a saying (corrupted ordeformed) of the dialect of the Galway area, meaning something like “theend is only towards (something else)” [….] unfinished’ or the possibilitythat the phrase might actually mean nothing: ‘The editors of the standardedition of Dubliners dating from 1969 are more tentative: “[A]lthough itappears to be Gaelic, this mysterious explanation has never beensatisfactorily explained. Joyce might have intended it as deliriousgibberish.”’ (104) The notoriety of this phrase makes it impossible toleave it out of a close reading of Eveline, but the only way it couldrelate to the song would be using the meaning ‘the end of pleasure ispain’ as a sort of moral lesson regarding drug usage—yet, Bono himselfhas expressed that there is no sort of lesson: ‘”I don’t come from theviewpoint of someone who is completely unsympathetic to drug users […] I

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In the song there is no event which causes an abrupt change.

As soon as the nameless woman announces her intentions of leaving,

the next two sentences discuss escape scenarios and what seems to

be leaving an undesirable situation behind: ‘Step on a fast

train / Step out of the driving rain, maybe / Run from the

darkness in the night.’ (l. 5-7) Such situation, however, is not

explicitly revealed, as Eveline’s plights with her life are.

Instead of naming the drug addiction, cryptic lines suggest that

something is not going well with the nameless character: ‘Sweet

the sin, bitter the taste in my mouth / […] You know I took the

poison from the poison stream…’ (l. 10 and 14) Other lines suggest

the situation is, indeed, paralysing: ‘I see seven towers, but I

only see one way out / You gotta cry without weeping, talk without

speaking / Scream without raising your voice…’ (l. 11-13) The

change happens after the repetition of the ‘Ah la la la de day’

tune.

really understand the attraction.”’ (quoted in Stokes, 69) The very ownStokes describes the song’s characteristics as ‘lack of moral certaintyand its refusal to judge its subjects harshly.’ (70) Graham and vanOosten de Boer place a spotlight on the song’s ‘uncannily sympatheticcompassion that refuses to cast stones at the woman who is the victim ofjunk.’ (33) Since there is no moral accusation, the possible meaning ofthe phrase does not relate to the song and in consequence, it does notrelate to this dissertation.

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As if contrasting the former passivity of the heroines with

the movement that will start happening, both the story and the

song have a sort of division between those two parts. There is a

space between paragraphs in the story127 which takes the reader from

Eveline’s room to the North Wall. In the song, there’s a small

wordless bridge before the song changes as well.

At the North Wall, Eveline’s no longer sitting down, but

standing: ‘She stood among the swaying crowd…’ (Joyce, JJ, 28)

Verbs used in that passage suggest action and even a degree of

violence: Eveline moves her lips, a bell clangs upon her heart,

Frank seizes her hand and she grips and clutches the iron railing. The

seas tumble about her heart. (JJ, 28-29) The sounds also become

louder: they contrast with the silence at her house when she talks

to nobody, the memory of Frank’s singing and the possibly faint

sound of the street organ, since it is ‘Down far in the avenue…’

(JJ, 27) At the dock, Frank’s voice speaks and then yells, the

boat blows a ‘long, mournful whistle’, (JJ, 28) the bell clangs in

her heart, people at the dock shout at Frank to go on; even

Eveline’s lips go from ‘silent, fervent prayer’ (JJ, 28) to a ‘cry

127 The Penguin edition (TB 1992) has a space between paragraphs. TheOxford edition (JJ 2000) has a small row of dots. In any case, thedivision which works as an ellipsis between Eveline at her home and thenat the North Wall with Frank, is clear.

58

of anguish.’ (JJ, 29) The ‘maze of distress’ that ‘awoke a nausea

in [Eveline’s] body’ (JJ, 28) completes the passage. Events happen

one after another, the pace dramatically fast: the crowd is

swaying, Frank speaks to Eveline about the passage, she prays.

Immediately afterwards the boat blows its whistle. Eveline feels

nauseous and then Frank seizes her hand so she can go with him.

When that happens, she clutches the iron railing and lets out her

scream. Frank then rushes behind the barrier and yells at her to

come. Movement is constant. The last two sentences in the story

are the ones that stop this stream of action: ‘She set her white

face to him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no

sign of love or farewell or recognition.’ (JJ, 29) There is no

movement here. Eveline’s face is perfectly still: not even her

eyes give a sign away. The story, which had reached a climax in

the very violent and menacing image of all the seas of the world

tumbling around Eveline’s heart and her sudden certainty that

Frank was ‘drawing her into them: he would drown her’ (JJ, 28)

drops into the image of Eveline, standing like a statue or doll,

devoid of feeling and movement, at the North Wall: paralysed.

The fourth and fifth verses of U2’s song, before the final

two lines, work like this passage of Joyce’s story. The song,

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which had featured more prominently Bono’s vocals and ‘Edge’s

whispering slide guitar’ then allows Larry Mullen’s drums, which

had been absent, to start sounding with ‘a thunder effect […]

[that] add[s] up to a gloomy picture.’128 Bono’s voice also rises up

in pitch and he starts singing faster. The nameless woman walks

through the streets. A ‘black belly of cloud in the rain’ (l. 20)

hangs overhead, giving her no possibility to ‘Step out of the

driving rain’ (l. 6) as she had considered before. She then gives

the other nameless character ‘white golden pearls / stolen from

the sea’ (l. 22-23) before she is also overtaken by a powerful

emotion, just as Eveline’s nausea and distress: ‘She’s ragin’ /

She’s ragin’’ (l. 24-25)129 until finally, just as Eveline lets her

feelings explode in a ‘cry of anguish’ U2’s character bursts into

tears: ‘And the storm blows up in her eyes.’ (l. 26) However, just

immediately after that outburst, the drums stop sounding and

Bono’s voice drops back to its original register: the song drops

from its crescendo. Just like the two last sentences in ‘Eveline’,

the last two lines in the song show the nameless woman in her

original paralysis: ‘She will suffer the needle chill / She’s

running to stand still.’ (l. 27-28) After that, a harmonica leads128 Prendergast, 205.129 This repetition seems to work to emphasize the rage and emotion thatthe nameless woman is feeling. Also, the thunder effect of Larry Mullen’sdrums is heard after the word ‘ragin’’ adding even more force to it.

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the listener to the end of the song, but there is nothing else to

be said. The way the song and the story unfold from the beginning

to the ending follows a very similar pattern, then, and even the

way both works end.

The similarities between not only the works, but both

characters, are very clear now, but there are even more aspects

worthy of being discussed. Both women are introduced to the reader

and the listener, respectively, in a similar way because of the

focalization. Johnson notes the complexities of the character of

Eveline because the story is seen through her: ‘what the narrator

tells derives from Eveline’s angle of vision: we see what she

sees, and do not see what she fails to see.’130

So the very same Eveline is the one that tells the reader her

story through her thoughts: she herself thinks she might be

labeled a fool for running away with a man, lets the reader look

into the fear her father’s threats instill into her and, of

course, is the one that judges Frank as ‘kind, manly open-

hearted.’131 The intensity of her emotions, as Pierce would say, is

also shared with the reader,132 especially in moments when she sees130 Jeri Johnson, ‘Joyce and Feminism’. In The Cambridge Companion to JamesJoyce. Ed. Derek Attridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.204.131 Attridge, 5. 132 Pierce, 103.

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herself as romantic heroine of sorts, saved by Frank: ‘Escape! She

must escape! Frank would save her. […] Frank would take her in his

arms, fold her in his arms.’ (Joyce, JJ, 28) The same intensity

occurs when Eveline decides she cannot elope with her lover, that

it simply cannot be done: ‘No! No! No! It was impossible.’ (JJ, 29,

my emphasis) The emphasized word shows that Eveline is adamant

about her final decision: she will not run away. The elopement

stands in front of her as something that she is incapable of doing

and the use of that word connects the reader with the character’s

perspective, creating what Pierce calls a ‘ventriloquial effect.’133

The use of the phrase ‘ventriloquial effect’, however, gives

the character of Eveline the doll-like quality which has been

briefly mentioned before and which is a reminder of her final

paralysis. The very same Pierce calls it a special passivity and

mentions that it is reflected in the fact that the reader ‘never

hear[s] one of her own sentences or indeed catch[es] a flavour of

her spoken voice.’134 He also notes the pieces of dialogue that are

directed at her (such as Miss Gavan addressing Eveline at the

stores or Frank shouting at her at the North Wall) and the fact

‘her response is never given.’ This silence, Pierce adds, gives us

133 Idem, 106.134 Idem, 90.

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‘a sharp insight into Eveline’s psychology.’ 135Eveline is, then, a

character with strong emotions and thoughts, for the whole story

is shaped by her internal monologue—and yet, she cannot talk back.

She most likely cannot talk back to Miss Gavan because she is her

superior, and of course she cannot talk back to her father out of

fear. It is better to communicate with him only by letter and that

letter is meant for him when she has already gone and is far away.

The only other letter, to her brother Harry, suggests someone who

might have been a companion. Yet, Harry is never there: he ‘was

nearly always down somewhere in the country.’ (Joyce, JJ, 26)

Brown’s footnote on this sentence suggests that the ambiguity of

Harry’s location is related to a Dubliner expression, ‘a common

Dublin mode of reference to the rest of Ireland’ and a product of

‘essential indifference to life outside the capital.’ (TB, 254)

Yet, this could also mean that Eveline does not know where her

brother is, so she has no way to keep constant communication with

him. She is then, a silent girl, someone who keeps everything to

herself.

Even when she is with Frank, a person who could encourage

some conversation from Eveline, there are no words from the girl:

he is the one that sings and she only feels ‘pleasantly confused’.135 Idem, 107.

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(Joyce, JJ, 27) The sailor is the one that does all the talking,

calling her amiable names, singing, and telling her stories which

only fuel Eveline’s imaginations and paint her picture of him for

the reader to see.136

The only sound of the girl’s voice is wordless: it comes from

the ‘cry of anguish’ (JJ, 29) she lets out almost at the end of

the story. Still, the cry is immediately silenced, followed by her

looking at Frank as if she was a ‘helpless animal’ (JJ, 29), as if

her passivity and silence had meant ‘surrendering the very

qualities that had made her human.’137 The doll-like perspective of

Eveline comes to mind again. She is silent, passive, like a small

animal or an object.

136 This idea of Eveline seeing herself as a romantic heroine and Frankbeing her hero could be further developed in the passage where the sailortells her ‘stories of the terrible Patagonians.’ (Joyce, JJ, 27, TB, 32)Terence Brown’s notes only describe the Patagonians as a ‘notoriouslyuncivilized, nomadic tribes-people, inhabitants of the Southern part ofArgentina.’ (255) Such a description, which seems to be taken from an oldtravel-book, is completed by the addition of the sentence ‘Almost unknownin Europe, they were a Victorian byword for wildness and barbarity.’(255) Jeri Johnson, for her part, gives a more accurate footnote: ‘namegiven to the “giants” that seventeenth- and eighteenth-centurytravellers’ accounts suggested inhabited Tierra del Fuego, a mythdismissed as such well before Frank’s time; if he’d been there he wouldknow this.’ (213) Johnson’s footnote adds more weight to the theory ofFrank fooling Eveline and perhaps wanting to pimp her out (which willalso be discussed), but Brown’s footnote fits with Eveline’s psychology:the idea of Frank having met such a race of people does not only add tothe exoticism, but also to the romantic fantasy.137 Richard Ellmann, James Joyce. New York: Oxford University Press, 1959. 170.

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If Eveline’s lack of voice is, together with her sitting

position at the start of the story, indeed a foreshadowing or a

representation of her paralysis, an indication that she will go

back to the way she started (and the very words ‘lack of voice’

suggest it—she has no voice, she is unheard, ignored) U2’s addict

could differ from that at first glance. As mentioned before, the

song’s character speaks almost immediately after the start of the

song. However, it is the voice of the lead vocalist, Bono, the one

that sings throughout the song, thus listeners do not hear the

voice of this woman either. This also contributes to create a

ventriloquial effect, in which the nameless woman speaks but all

the listener hears are her words through Bono’s voice. That same

voice will later become a first person, another unnamed character

who participates in the smuggler’s run: ‘In through a doorway /

She brings me white golden pearls / Stolen from the sea.’ (l. 21-

23) Then, the voice will also become a third person focalized

narrator at the end of the song: ‘She will suffer the needle

chill / She’s running to stand still.’ (l. 27-28, my emphasis) With

Bono’s singing voice dominating as a narrator, the ventriloquial

effect takes place: there is no intervention of the nameless

woman, at least not an intervention the listener can actually

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hear.138 This is how both women are introduced to the reader and the

listener, respectively, with a ventriloquial effect.

The nameless woman, as mentioned before, talks, but the

addressee remains a mystery. At first, it seems there must be

another person, for the first lines the woman speaks through the

singing voice are: ‘Said I gotta do something / About where we’re

goin.’ (l. 3-4, my emphasis) There is then, someone else who

accompanies the woman in her plight. Still, whether that person is

the same that receives the ‘white golden pearls’ through the

doorway or is someone else who does not participate in the

smuggler’s run remains unclear. Also, in the second verse, in

these lines, the woman starts talking about herself: ‘Sweet the

sin, bitter the taste in my mouth / I see seven towers but I only

see one way out…’ (l. 10-11) This immediately changes in these

next lines, however: ‘You gotta cry without weeping, talk without

speaking / Scream without raising your voice…’ (l. 12-13, my

emphasis) Yet, whether that ‘you’ that has been emphasized in

order to note that it might suggest the presence of another person

138 Compare this to Damien Rice’s song ‘The Blower’s Daughter’. In thesong, a singer who is uncredited in the title (backup singer LisaHannigan) sings two lines of the song, which contributes to create aneffect as if the song was indeed a dialogue between two lovers. Thesinging voice (Rice’s) and Hannigan’s voice then become two separatecharacters. See Damien Rice, O, third track: Ireland, 14th Floor, 2002.

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refers to the actual other character in the ‘we’ or is just the

woman talking about her own plight in a second-person point of

view is unclear again. That other person does not appear at the

end of the song and the only one that is seen under the influence

of the drug is the woman: ‘She will suffer the needle chill’ (l.

27, my emphasis) It could be concluded that the nameless woman is

as lonely as Eveline and is also talking to herself, wondering out

loud what can she do to change her situation.

Another peculiarity of U2’s woman is her singing, the

wordless refrain ‘Ah la la la de day.’ Whenever she talks about

escaping, the nameless addict ends her monologue by singing,

through Bono’s voice, those syllables. When that happens, the

register in Bono’s voice remains practically uniform, sometimes

even dropping (after singing ‘Scream without raising your voice’

in a slightly higher tone, Bono’s register drops again when

singing the ‘ah la la la de day’). The singing, then, though it

might be related to fantasies of getting out, is deprived of any

positive emotion.

Pierce points out such a lack of emotion in a line spoken by

Eveline’s father when referring to the priest in the yellowing

photograph: ‘-He is in Melbourne now.’ (Joyce, JJ, 25) Pierce

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notes that apparently, whenever the picture is addressed,

Eveline’s father refers to it with that phrase, a ‘casual word’.

(JJ, 25) The ‘casual’ way in which Eveline’s father addresses that

picture then and the fact he has not even told his daughter who

that priest in Melbourne is—for the narrator says about Eveline,

when she is looking around the house, ‘during all those years she

had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing

photograph hung on the wall…’ (JJ, 25)—suggests a lack of interest

from the father, not only for the priest, but for any curiosity

his daughter might have. The father must know the priest, for he

knows where he is, but does not talk to his daughter about him

neither gives more details about his life to the visitors.139

Pierce argues that this lifeless phrase has become so through

repetition: it has become ‘dead language—[in] language that lacks

life or urgency, language that is overused…’140 The lifeless, casual

quality can be traced in the syllables U2’s woman sings through

Bono’s voice, without imprinting any sort of emotion into them. If139 Garry Leonard writes about the disregard of the father for hisdaughter: Eveline is ‘excluded […] from the events her father’s life, […]she has been taught to keep her place and show no curiosity, as thoughshe were his servant and not his daughter […]. This, in turn, establishesas credible his remarkable indifference to her feelings as he takes fromher a hard-earned salary…’ The indifference of the Eveline’s fathertowards her will be explored further in this chapter. See also GarryLeonard, ‘Dubliners’. In The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce. Ed. DerekAttridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 100.140 Pierce, 107.

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any emotion can be traced, it would be a sort of melancholy or

hopelessness. That small tune does not break with the ‘pessimism

of the song’ Prendergast had described.141 Such a negative emotion

is also a foreshadowing: it is highly unlikely the ballad will

become, all of a sudden, an upbeat and optimistic song. There will

be no happy ending, no getting ‘outta here’. Just as Eveline’s

final inability to move is foreshadowed in the fact she does not

talk, the outcome of the nameless drug addict and the inability to

escape her plight is foreshadowed in her lifeless singing.

The use of certain words in both the song and the story also

suggests paralysis. The first one is the dust. Torchiana mentions

the ‘oppressive dust’142 that never leaves Eveline’s house no matter

if she ‘spends her time dusting.’143 The house where she lives is

one of a group of ‘little brown houses.’ (Joyce, JJ, 25) These

houses are described in Stephen Hero very negatively as ‘those brown

brick houses which seem the very incarnation of Irish paralysis’

(JJ, 206) Shovlin quotes Peter K. Garrett, who says that ‘there is

“strong external evidence of Joyce’s association of the color

brown with the condition of paralysis”’144 and immediately quotes

141 Prendergast, 205. See previous chapter.142 Torchiana, 68. 143 Pierce, 89.144 Quoted in Shovlin, 58.

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another example where the colour brown has negative connotations

(the ‘truculent sodden brown’ in Stephen Hero.) So, Eveline lives in

a place which has an oppressive colour and oppressive dust. All

she can do is look out the window.

Eveline acting as a sort of romantic heroine has already been

discussed, and the image of her looking out the window is similar

to an image of a captive maiden looking out a tower: ‘It can

symbolize a woman besieged […] or a woman sequestered, as in the

tale of Rapunzel.’145 Eveline is trapped, perhaps not in a tower, but

in her house.

The image of a tower while discussing Joyce makes writing

about the Martello Tower imperative. The Martello Tower, at

Sandycove, is the place where Joyce stayed for some time before he

left Ireland with Nora Barnacle.146 The Tower, Ellmann describes, ‘…

had the look of a medieval bastion. The entrance was about ten

feet from the ground and since at that time there was no staircase

145 Michael Ferber, A Dictionary of Literary Symbols. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2007.146 Coincidentally, Bono and his wife used Martello Tower as a privateresidence for some time during the 1980s. (Stokes, 56-57) Their stay atthe Tower is said to have inspired the song ‘Promenade’, especially thelyrics ‘I’d like to be around in a spiral staircase / To the higherground.’ (l. 7-8) However, the image of the tower presented in this songfits more with the other definition of the symbol provided by Ferber: ‘aRomantic refuge from this sordid world.’ (219)

70

to the door, a ropeladder was used.’147 Of course, it is illogical

to think Joyce must have had difficulties in getting out of the

tower, but the description of Martello Tower and the lack of easy

access support the idea of a tower being a place which is

difficult to get out from. Joyce left the tower and then left

Ireland. Eveline has to leave her house which would be her tower

and then her country and that will allow her to escape her

plights.

The tower appears in U2’s song, multiplied by seven. ‘I see

seven towers, but I only see one way out’ (l. 11) These seven

towers are the towers of the now demolished Ballymun flats, ‘the

seven imposing blocks of flats that scar the urban landscape of

North Dublin…’148 The usage of such a verb regarding the flats gives

away the kind of place they were: ‘the area became a centre of

high unemployment, drug trafficking, crime and frequent

suicides.’149 A place in such conditions is less than inviting and,

of course, it is better to get out of there. However, the ‘high

unemployment’ means that the social conditions of the people who

live there (which will be addressed in more detail later in this

chapter) prevent them from leaving. So, the towers of Ballymun do

147 Ellmann, 178.148 Stokes, 69.149 Waters, 37.

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not only become a symbol of Dublin, but also a symbol of

captivity, with only ‘one way out’—which the inhabitants ignore. A

smuggler’s run is not the way out, for it will only leave the

character paralysed.

Both the story and the song also refer to darkness and night.

Torchiana notes the ‘story’s insistence […] on growing

nightfall.’150 As the evening ‘deepened in the avenue’ Eveline

feels ‘Her time was running out’ (Joyce, JJ, 27) Then, she goes to

the North Wall and is confronted by ‘the black mass of the boat.’

(JJ, 28) Torchiana points out the words ‘black mass’ as hints to

the ending of the story, with Eveline not boarding the boat, for

instead of the ‘possible sacrament or union of hearts’ the main

character sees a ‘black mass’151 and so prevents the union from

happening. Pierce also comments on the forthcoming night and how

Eveline’s ship ‘will be sailing into the dark.’ So, what the girl

sees is ‘not therefore a passenger ship but a ship of death, more

foreboding than inviting.’152 The idea of being in the dark and into

an unknown future relates to the image of Eveline being drowned,

surely into a dark sea. There is no way to get out of her hard

life, for stepping out means stepping out into the darkness, which

150 Torchiana, 68.151 Idem, 75.152 Pierce, 103.

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promises nothing good, or maybe nothing at all, because nothing

can be seen in the dark. Eveline is trapped between her home and

darkness.

Night and darkness are addressed in ‘RTSS’ in the seventh

line of the song, during the second verse: ‘Run from the darkness

in the night’. The nameless woman in the song wants to escape the

dark, but when she finally moves, ‘She walks through the streets

[…] / under black belly of cloud in the rain.’ (l. 18 and 20) No

matter where she walks, the cloud hangs overhead in an almost

cartoonish image, but that ‘black belly’ of the cloud means the

darkness never leaves her. Also, the woman had expressed her

desire to ‘Step out of the driving rain’ (l. 6) That does not

happen, either. The nameless character walks in the rain and

completes her run under a rainy sky. The rain does not even stop:

‘the storm blows up in her eyes.’ (l. 26) This image might be a

cliché, but it reinforces the idea of the rain being never-ending.

The word ‘storm’ reminds us of all the seas of the world

tumbling around Eveline’s heart. A storm is also menacing and the

aggressive waters that threaten to drown Joyce’s character could

be described as ‘stormy seas’. The sea, an enemy to Eveline, is no

better in U2’s song. The nameless woman gives the other nameless

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character ‘white golden pearls / stolen from the sea.’ (l. 22-23)153

The sea is the one that holds the nameless woman’s pearls or drug,

and the image of drowning appears again: the woman will be drowned

in her addiction, in the driving rain she wanted to avoid and even

in her tears.154

Finally, regarding language, Pierce focuses on Eveline’s ‘cry

of anguish’. Wordless but very revealing, the critic emphasizes

the emotive quality of that scream: ‘[Joyce] knew enough about the

cry of the heart and how this gets expressed or otherwise […] it

is expressed in terms of non-expression, in terms, that is, of an

emotion that can’t get into language or formulate itself as a

sentence.’155 Eveline’s emotions are so intense that they just

cannot be expressed in language and the description of her action

153 This strange way to refer to the drug makes it necessary to look atthe symbolism of ‘pearl’. Ferber relates the use of ‘pearl’ to the use of‘gem’ and says they ‘stand […] for beauty, rarity, or great price’ (152).Then he goes on to quote the parables of Jesus Christ, in which pearlsare related to faith (the medieval poem Pearl is related to these too).The last meaning is related to Shakespeare’s ‘treasure of an oyster’ andFerber says that suggests something is ‘found among base or uglyconditions’. (152) The idea of heroin being costly and a source of riches(Stokes, 70) and found among the ugly conditions of Ballymun could be asort of explanation on why the drug is depicted as a ‘white goldenpearl’. (The colours chosen for the ‘pearl’ are most likely the coloursof heroin, white and brownish).154 This image, also a cliché, is based on the symbology of rain as‘suffering […] a symbol of life’s unhappy moments.’ (Ferber, 165)155 Pierce, 104.

74

is the one that, together with her internal monologue, gives the

reader insight into the turmoil of her heart.

‘RTSS’ has wordless moments, but the one that will be

discussed right now is the aforementioned bridge before the verse

which develops into the song’s crescendo. In that moment Bono lets

out a melancholic sound which adds to the song’s mood. Graham and

van Oosten de Boer label Bono’s sound as ‘keening’156 leaving the

sound’s mournful connotations clear. An expression also in terms

of non-expression, Bono’s voice seems to evoke the hopelessness of

the song’s character.157

As a final element, both the song and the story address

social problems. Joyce’s work is concerned with paralysis, but

‘Eveline’ is also ‘an emigration story with a difference.’158159 This

critic notes that in this modern world, now that taking a plane is

so easy, it has become hard to imagine what sort of experience

emigration was at the beginning of the century: ‘Emigration from

156 Graham and van Oosten de Boer, 33. 157 Compare that sound with the gleeful scream Bono lets out during ‘TripThrough Your Wires’ as if to complement the lyrics ‘I was cold and youclothed me honey/ I was down and you lifted me honey / […]I was thirsty /and you wet my lips’. Track 8 in The Joshua Tree, l. 5-6 and 8-9.158 Pierce, 89.159 Leonard, when discussing ‘Eveline’, agrees that Joyce takes ‘theformula of the anti-emigration story’ and that makes it ‘wondrouslycomplex’ because the main character does not return to a reassuringIreland—her house is not a welcoming home. (94)

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Ireland until the 1960s was a profoundly dislocating experience

for both the individual and the family […]. It was a death in its

own way, a RIP for a way of life.’160

As mentioned in the introduction chapter, the social problem

‘RTSS’ addresses is Dublin’s drug addiction. Prendergast describes

the song as a reaction to that problem, a denunciation of it:

‘Bono had been incensed by the amount of heroin dependence in his

native Ballymun.’161 So, U2 are indeed holding up a mirror to the

harsh reality of addiction in his native neighorhood.

When discussing paralysis as the problem the character of

Eveline has to face, Leonard notes that Eveline’s home has become

a ‘psychological prison’ demonstrated by ‘Eveline’s

incomprehension of the pattern revealed by these objects [the

objects she dusts everyday.]’162 Torchiana sees the mentioned

objects as hints of ‘broken promises, family discord.’163 He makes

it clear with the example of the broken harmonium and the perhaps

obvious hint the usage of the instrument suggests:

Eveline is virtually graceless […]. She has known little ofbenedictions, mercy or assurance. Despite this colored print of thepromises [to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque] her house is not

160 Pierce, 91-96.161 Prendergast, 204.162 Leonard, 100.163 Torchiana, 71.

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blessed. Her father’s heart remains hardened against her […]. Theaccent of the print, its promises, and the order itself is on theintegrity of the family. […] Eveline’s three memorials—print,harmonium and photograph [of the priest in Melbourne]—comment onthe bleakness of her home. The harmony of a well-accorded household isbroken.164

The broken, dusty and neglected objects, the promise she made

to her mother on her deathbed, ‘her promise to keep the home

together as long as she could’ (Joyce, JJ, 28) and the fact

Eveline’s father does not treat her as he would treat a daughter

(see footnote 139 in this chapter) have made the girl a prisoner

in her house, have put her ‘in a situation where potential insight

is systematically reconfigured into panic and paralysis.’165 Treated

like a servant and taught to obey, disobeying becomes a matter of

fear. The authority of her violent father and the promise made to

her mother, also a figure of authority, have imbued into Eveline

an ‘emotional and physical paralysis.’166 Jennifer Wicke adds that

her fear is also a ‘failure of imagination, a direct result of an

entombing culture.’167

164 Idem, 73.165 Leonard, 100.166 Tracey Teets Schwarze, ‘Female Complaints: “Mad” Women, Malady andResistance in Joyce’s Dublin.’ In Cultural Studies of James Joyce. Ed. R. BrandonKeshner. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 2003. 108. 167 Jennifer Wicke, ‘Joyce and Consumer Culture’. In The Cambridge Companionto James Joyce. Ed. Derek Attridge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2004. 238.

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The addicts in U2’s song could also be a result of that

entombing culture that remained for many years. The urban

disillusionment MacAnna mentions and that has been discussed is

reinforced by the words of Niall Stokes on Ireland’s problems that

go even beyond drugs, problems MacAnna mentioned as well:

…it [the song] isn’t directed solely at those who are victims ofheroin addiction […] Bono goes further, empathizing with thecentral character who is willing to put everything at risk in orderto transcend the crushing drabness and narrow horizons whichblighted the lives of so many in a city of high unemployment andsqualid living conditions.168

This paragraph is very explicit about the kind of life in the

lower-class areas of Dublin.169 Life is described as mostly

hopeless, with no opportunity to get a job or to improve life so

people started turning to the only thing that would give them

escape, which was drugs. The fact people turned to drugs shows the

desperation of the inhabitants, who would turn to something

harmful for relief. Bono said about it: ‘for a lot of people there

are no physical doors open any more. And so if you can’t change

the world you’re living in, seeing it through different eyes is

168 Stokes, 70.169 Like Joyce’s characters, the character in the song belongs to amiddle-lower class.

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the only alternative. And heroin gives you heroin eyes to see the

world with.’170

The last sentence of the quote, though it might sound

repetitive and obvious, reinforces the idea drugs seem to be the

only way out. Seeing the world through drugged eyes is even better

than facing reality.

But surely Eveline has a chance of escaping: the new life

Frank offers to her through emigration. Torchiana is really

supportive of the figure of the sailor as a possible escape or

salvation: in his opinion, Eveline’s rejection of her lover is

something foolish171 and Frank is even compared to a Christ-like

figure in the sense Eveline would be a sort of reflection of

Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. Torchiana focuses on the parallels

between the life of the saint and the life of Joyce’s character:

Margaret Mary Alacoque was affected ‘by misunderstandings and even

hostility from the rest of the religious community.’172 So, Margaret

Mary Alacoque was also surrounded by a hostile environment, just

like Eveline, until she received a revelation on 1673. Torchiana

says that the revelation of Christ presented to Margaret Mary

170 Quoted in Stokes, 70.171 Torchiana, 9. 172 Idem, 70.

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Alacoque would be paralleled in the figure of Frank, who would

appear to Eveline as a sort of representation of the divine love

of Christ and would offer her marriage, a ‘sacrament or union of

hearts…’173 However, Torchiana bases himself on the description that

the narrator gives of Frank as ‘”kind, manly and openhearted”’174,

forgetting the story is focalized on Eveline’s point of view and

that the description of the sailor is not objective. The other

clue of a better life, according to Torchiana, is the literal

translation of the Argentinian capital city, where the main

character would be taken should she choose to go away with Frank:

Buenos Ayres175 means ‘good airs’ and so Torchiana says in the name

there is a hint of ‘literally a better atmosphere.’176

Still, this asseveration would mean ignoring the footnote

both Terence Brown and Jeri Johnson present regarding Buenos

Ayres: Johnson quotes Green in her footnote and writes ‘in

nineteenth-century slang, “to go to Buenos Aires” meant to start

working as a prostitute.’177 Terence Brown’s note on ‘Buenos Ayres’

is practically the same definition. Leonard’s opinion about Frank

173 Idem, 75.174 Idem, 73.175 This is the spelling used by Joyce: actually spelling in Spanish is‘Buenos Aires’.176 Torchiana, 73.177 Johnson’s notes to ‘Eveline’, 212.

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is that the sailor ‘more or less fit[s] the profile of the stock

seducer in the anti-emigration tales.’178 Katherine Mullin bases the

bad reputation of Buenos Ayres on facts. Based on the moment in

time Joyce’s short story is supposed to take place ‘preceding

Frank’s return to Dublin, the rate of migration to Argentina from

Ireland had steadily diminished […] then dwindling away to zero.

Behind these statistics lies Argentina’s reputation as the locus

of tall tales, betrayals and disappointments.’179

Furthermore, the bad reputation of Buenos Ayres was not only

known in Ireland, but on Britain as well, even before the Irish

independence: ‘since the National Vigilance Association had in

1889 published the first of many revelations of “the business

details of an arrangement for taking girls to Buenos Ayres for

immoral purposes.”’180

All these notes make it almost sure that Frank will most

likely seduce Eveline in order to turn her into a prostitute. The

way out her house seems rather bleak and it sounds better to go

back to ‘an increasingly violent alcoholic father who has no one

but her to beat […] and a thankless exhausting job where even her

178 Leonard, 94.179 Katherine Mullin, James Joyce, Sexuality and Social Purity. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2003. 63.180 Idem, 71.

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salary is not her own.’181 Still, the situation Leonard describes

takes a turn for the worse when we consider, as mentioned before,

Eveline’s father might harbor some sexual desire for her.

When speaking about Eveline’s father and the relationship to

his daughter, Martha Fodalski Black says that her father had

‘lately begun to court her with a ghost story and toast.’182 The use

of the verb ‘court’ is rather suggestive. Fairhall mentions the

‘Sexual oppression symbolized by her father’s blackthorn stick’

which might not be only sexual oppression in the sense he forbids

her to see Frank, but also because he wants ‘to keep her at home

to replicate his dead wife’s subservient role’183 which could mean

Eveline will also replicate the sexual duties. And, of course, her

father would start ‘courting her lately’, using Fodalski Black’s

words, because he is in risk of losing her to her lover.184 Wirth-

Nesher describes Eveline as a ‘timid and dutiful child, fearful of

the demands of the male world as embodied in her father and

Frank.’185 Such demands might very well be sexual. Joyce’s main181 Leonard, 94.182 Martha Fodalski Black, ‘Joyce on Location.’ In Joyce and the City: TheSignificance of Place. Ed. Michael Begnal. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press,2002. 20, my emphasis.183 James Fairhall, James Joyce and the Question of History. New York: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1993. 81.184 He would have seen no need to court her before, which could explainhis violence that has given Eveline palpitations.185 Hana Wirth-Nesher, ‘Reading Joyce’s City: Public Space, Self andGender in Dubliners.’ In James Joyce: The Augmented Ninth: Proceedings of the Ninth

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character is trapped between sexual slavery with her father and

sexual slavery to strangers when led away by Frank. Even Pierce,

who sees Frank in a more favorable light under the reasoning that

‘When Joyce himself was writing this story in the writing this

story in […] 1904, emigration with Nora was in his mind […] he as

Frank might appear to Nora as Eveline’186 understands that the

choices presented to the character are not very favorable. If this

was true and Frank was an identity of Joyce’s and he was being

true to the girl, there is, nonetheless, the dislocating nature of

emigration that has been formerly mentioned shows the fate that

awaits Eveline might not be the best: ‘Perhaps […] the exotic

would soon be invaded by the familiar. Perhaps […] she too would

become like the yellowing photograph of the priest in Melbourne

and referred to by the family in similarly automatic, unemotional,

distant terms.’187 All in all, the only two choices Eveline has are

‘patriarchal violence’ and her ‘only hope of earthly salvation

come[s] […] in the form of a possible husband’ something which is

‘cruelly gendered.’188 If she leaves with Frank, even if he is being

true to her, she would still be under the demands of the male

International James Joyce Symposium. Ed. Bernard Benstock. Syracuse: SyracuseUniversity Press, 1988.186 Pierce, 98.187 Idem, 101.188 Wicke, 237.

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world Wirth-Nesher mentioned. There is no possibility of a happy

ending.

Sexuality and sexual exploitation is not as latent in U2’s

song as it is in Joyce’s short story, but the social situation of

Ballymun in the 1980s makes it a possible predicament. Sean Kay

describes the seven towers as ‘dens of crime, prostitution and

poverty.’189 Catherine McGowan, who wrote a paper on The Ballymun

Network for Assisting Children and Young People in 2009, quoted

that that there were still young people in 2004 that were involved

in ‘negative behaviors’190 such as prostitution. If such things were

happening in Ballymun as late as 2004, surely in the 1980s those

conditions were much worse. Surrounded by joblessness,

prostitution and no clear way out, ‘the young girl [in U2’s song]

takes to the needle and heroin.’191 The nameless woman knows that,

just like Eveline, her options are mostly negative: her

consciousness of it is evident in her naming the drug ‘the poison,

from the poison stream.’ (l. 14) She knows it is something that

will harm her, but it will also allow her to ‘float[ed] out of

189 Sean Kay, Celtic Revival? The Rise, Fall and Renewal of Global Ireland. Plymouth:Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. 28.190 Catherine McGowan, ‘The Ballymun Network for Assisting Children andYoung People: A Local Model for Inter-Agency Working.’ In Irish ProbationJournal. September 2009, Vol. 6. 127.191 Kay, 28.

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here. (l. 15) Still, in the end, there will be no way ‘out of

here’. As mentioned before, the nameless woman does not run away

from the darkness or from the black belly of cloud in the rain.

Her only way to get out is to see the world through heroin eyes

though that will not actually change her predicament but only give

her an illusion of things being different: ‘”The thing about

heroin is that you think that’s the way it really is, that the old

you that worries about paying the rent is not the real you.”’192

As a final element, Joyce’s short story still suggests a

moment of change or a glimpse of a better life—that might also be

blighted. Eveline is looking out the window at the place where the

field where she played with other children used to be. However,

the field has been bought by a man from Belfast and new houses are

being built: ‘not like their little brown houses but bright brick

houses with shining roofs.’ (Joyce, JJ, 25) Torchiana notes the

moment in which Eveline is looking out the window and reminiscing

‘over her girlhood and adolescence, largely upon old faces now

dead or gone.’193 Both the watching of the houses and the memories

are part of the panorama of change which Eveline only sees but

that she will not participate in. Plus, the urban houses so close

192 Quoted in Stokes, 70.193 Torchiana, 71.

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to where she is seem to offer a place away from the brown houses

which are ‘the incarnation of Irish paralysis’.

Let us look closer at the houses and what they represent: the

houses are built by a man from Belfast. Brown, on his introduction

to Dubliners, says that Dublin had been overtaken by Belfast as

Ireland’s largest city. (TB, xvii) It would seem both cities are

being contrasted: Belfast is more modern and offers better life;

Dublin is brown and stagnant. The houses from Belfast will not

change that paralysis but only contrast against it.

This paralysis that does not disappear with urban renewal

finds an echo in the story of the flats of Ballymun. John Waters

mentions that these flats were ‘Ireland’s first tower block

apartments’ and so they were meant to become a symbol of

modernity, ‘a showcase for the new Ireland.’194 Gavin Friday, member

of the avant-garde Irish rock band the Virgin Prunes and friend of

Bono, remembers this enthusiasm and the idea of modernity and

change that came with them: ‘”I remember running around […] in the

fields where the Ballymun flats were being built […] and thinking

they were brilliant, real modern, y’know, we’re going to be like

America!”’195 In the end, the urban project became just an illusion

194 Waters, 37. 195 Quoted in Waters, 32.

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of a better life, just like Eveline’s dream of having a different

life in Buenos Aires which most likely would not happen. The flats

of Ballymun, a promise of change, became the setting for this

song, a retelling of a story of people trapped—a story that could

be the story of many others that lived there. In Sean Kay’s words,

they became ‘monstrous symbols of Ireland’s lasting inability to

make real progress while trying to hide deep underlying

problems.’196

Joyce’s story was written from the point of view of a young

woman trapped in her lower-middle class house, in a paralysed

city; and finally, trapped under the authority of her father and

between two options which offer her no real escape. U2’s song is

written from the point of view of a woman who just cannot see a

way out of her reality, trapped inside her harsh living conditions

and the harmful fantasy of her drug addiction. Though both works

were written in very different moments in time and U2’s song

certainly does not have the symbolic profundity and writing

dexterity that makes Joyce’s story great, both have something in

common: they are, in Joyce’s words, ‘a nicely polished looking-

glass’ that denounces the faults of Ireland. In ‘Eveline’, the

culture that does not only oppress the lower-middle classes, but196 Kay, 28.

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especially women, leaving them with no way out; in ‘Running to

Stand Still’, the vicious circle that enveloped the population of

a city that offered no exit nor opportunities for lower class

people to change their reality.

5. Conclusion: Nicely polished looking-glasses.

In a letter Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth wrote to her

brother in 1834, she said ‘It is impossible to draw Ireland as she

now is in the book of fiction—realities are too strong, party

passions too violent, to bear to see, or to look at their faces in

a looking-glass. The people would only break the glass and curse

the fool who held the mirror up to nature.’197

James Joyce was the fool who Maria Edgeworth described. From

the moment he called his collection of stories, Dubliners, ‘a nicely

polished looking-glass’ the relationship to Edgeworth’s letter

becomes unavoidable—and the truth of that letter became clear.

Indeed, Joyce found an Ireland, more specifically Dublin, which

could not bear to look at itself in literature or art. His

197 Quoted in Tóibin, ix.88

stories, regarded by an anonymous reviewer as ‘nothing if not

naturalistic’ and inspired by the hell of despair198 show that Joyce

had depicted Dublin’s hell clearly and given it to the world to

see.

Joyce’s realism then, shifted Ireland’s literary tradition.

Still, after him, it seemed the city could still not bear to look

at itself, or that it preferred to look at itself the way Joyce

had depicted it. The censorship and parochialism in Ireland that

had a hold on the capital city as well showed that Dublin was a

city that was afraid to recognize its problems of drugs,

unemployment and lack of cultural and musical life, just as

Joyce’s Dublin did not recognize that life was, in the writer’s

words, ‘exceptionally violent; painful and violent’199 and preferred

the Romanticism of the Celtic Revival movement.

Ferdia MacAnna places the change of Dubliner writers’

mentality in the 80s. That was when artists started writing about

the Dublin they knew, about the reality of life in Ireland’s

capital city. MacAnna enumerates writing, poetry, but also rock

music as part of this cultural movement.200

198 Quoted in Johnson’s introduction to Dubliners, ix.199 Idem, xiii.200 MacAnna, 29.

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It was precisely during the 80s when U2 found a recording

contract and superstardom in 1987, with their album The Joshua Tree.

As said in the introduction, this band, with their lack of

references to their homeland, the absence of what is considered

‘Irish traditional music’ and their concerns for global affairs

could be considered only similar to Joyce because of their

domination of their fields: Irish music and literature,

respectively.

However, placing the band in an Anglo-American mould without

caring for its Irish roots is ignoring what made the existence of

such a band possible in the first place. The four members of U2

grew up in a Dublin in which, in the words of MacAnna, Joyce might

not have been able to recognize a single shopfront201; but Joyce

would have been able to lay his finger on the problems of

parochialism and lack of a cultural life. The lives of U2 were

shaped by the society they grew up in. It could be said that

later, awareness of global issues led them to be aware of their

local issues. This, coupled with a new expertise in songwriting

achieved through practice, had the band write a song about

Dublin’s problems.

201 Idem. 90

Even if there’s no direct reference to the city or to

specific locations, no place names as McLaughlin and McLoone or

even Barbara Bradby argue,202 the issues related in ‘Running to

Stand Still’ would be recognizable to a Dubliner growing up in an

atmosphere of urban disillusionment, just as a Dublin woman in

Joyce’s time (or any person faced with the prospect of emigration

or staying) could recognize their plight on Eveline Hill. And U2

might not give the listener a symbolic-laden experience as Joyce

does with his short story, but still, the band showed they were

not afraid to present the reality of their city to the masses that

had become their audience. They had done so with ‘Bad’ before—but

this song presented the problems of Dublin to the world. Both the

lyrics and the emotion the song convey show a band that was

interested and affected by the plights of the city that had formed

them, even if the world was open before them. It even gave them

the label of ‘naturalists’203 at the time, just as Joyce’s stories

were labelled.

When the band’s career had barely started, in 1980, Bono

said, in an interview: ‘U2 is an Irish expression, so we don’t

202 Bradby described U2 as the only band with an Irish identity that ‘bypassed localism’ (110) even after The Joshua Tree was released.203 McLaughlin and McLoone, 214.

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want to leave.’204 Now, among all the presentations around the

world, U2 have become perhaps the best-known Irish expression and

at the same time a global band that does not represent Ireland.

However, this song is proof of the band’s commitment to their

homeland: a ballad which was inspired by the hell of drug

addiction despair and that did not hold back on its melancholic

mood. U2 used music, words and interpretation to provide the

listener with a song that would present, unfiltered, the sadness

and lives of people trapped—a cold reflection of the place they

grew up in. U2 have denounced the problems in the world—but that

song was a denunciation of their own country, a nicely-polished

looking glass of the hell that formed the band, as once, Joyce’s

hell formed him.

Appendix: Lyrics to ‘Running to Stand Still’.

The song lyrics used for this dissertation are taken from U2’sofficial site, U2.com, to guarantee accuracy in the text.

204 Prendergast, 177. 92

Running To Stand Still

ARTISTU2

COMPOSERU2

LYRICSAnd so she woke upWoke up from where she was lyin' still.Said I gotta do somethingAbout where we're goin'.

Step on a fast trainStep out of the driving rain, maybeRun from the darkness in the night.Singing ah, ah la la la de dayAh la la la de day.

Sweet the sin, bitter the taste in my mouth.I see seven towers, but I only see one way out.You gotta cry without weeping, talk without speakingScream without raising your voice.You know I took the poison, from the poison streamThen I floated out of here, singingAh la la la de dayAh la la la de day.

She walks through the streetsWith her eyes painted redUnder black belly of cloud in the rain.In through a doorwayShe brings me white golden pearlsStolen from the sea.

She is ragin'She is ragin'And the storm blows up in her eyes.She will suffer the needle chillShe's running to stand still.

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