Entropy In The Dead By James Joyce

Chapter ten of How to Read Literature Like a Professor explains the important role weather plays on literature. For instance, snow is not just snow in a novel. It symbolizes so much more in both positive and negative ways; it is stark, filthy, playful, and clean, and you can do just about anything with it. In “The Dead,” Joyce breaks his main character down until he can look out at the snow, which is “general all over Ireland,” and then the reader realizes snow is like death. It paints the image that “upon all the living are the dead.”

The mood is depressing and saddening and feels hopeless, even at the resolution of the book. While there are no quotes referencing the atmosphere, there are heavy allusions made to rain and snow and cold, which I take to represent sadness, bitterness and hopelessness. However the one quote that stood out to me was that on page 60 where upon Holden asking where the fish go when the lake freeze over, the cab driver says he doesn't know and doesn't care. While seemingly unimportant I think the author used this quote to represent society's indifference towards the struggles of others, Holden being the fish and the ice being his

In The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton emphasizes on the weather description to lead the readers to foreshadow approaching events. "Ain't you about to freeze to death, Pony?" (Hinton, 47) It was a frigid fall night, the boys were desolate in the local park. Once an author establishes coldness and loneliness, the mood drops to death. According to literary symbolism, in winter, death roams the land, the literary use for the season is generally based on death and deterioration.

This shows that meteorological conditions are able to affect a character’s thoughts and alter their feelings. As has been noted, Shelley accentuates the description of spring to express the hope and renewal bestowed upon the creature by the exemplifications of the weather.

Rain and sun, snow and sleet, wind and fog can all possess varying meanings of symbolism in differing pieces of writing. In both A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway and A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley it is clear that weather can have numerous interpretations.

Weather and lighting are both commonly used details which author’s uses to convey the general mood and implications of various events. “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” is a good example of this as Robert Stevenson takes great pains to set every scene in his story with particular emphasis on the weather and how light or dark the setting is. At many points in the story, it is noted that there is a thick fog hanging over in the streets. Fog, by nature, conceals and obscures vision, lending itself nicely to symbolize confusing. The scenes with fog are always travelling scenes where the protagonist and narrator Mr. Utterson is heading towards Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde’s house.

In a piece of literary work weather is never just weather. Rain, snow, storms, and even rainbows all have their distinct meanings and in most cases usually symbolize something much deeper. Weather can change the entire mood of a novel and this is important because at times authors use weather to symbolize what is going on emotionally with a character. Two works of literature that use weather accordingly and symbolically are Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and The Odyssey by Homer.

The author begins the chapter "It's More Than Just Rain or Snow" by explaining what mood the quote "It was a dark and stormy night" creates. He explains how weather is never placed in a story for no reason. Weather is a factor used to create a mood in the passage. "A sunny day with no clouds in sight..." will create a happy mood while the reader could be imagining themselves in the story being outside on a beautiful clear day with the sunshine hitting them just right. That could put anyone in a cheerful mood, right? If the author started a story with "The rain was beating down on the roof as I realized it had been my first night without him...". Now obviously if the character had just lost someone they would be sad but adding rain to the scene adds the effect of sadness and allows the reader jump in the book to feel what the character is feeling.

The short story the dead is written by James Joyce an Irish writer who lived between 1882-1941,he is best known for his modern writing techniques, with stories such as “The Dead”, this story is well known for its deep analogy of Irish culture, history, and how the story relates to life struggles, the difficulties of time and age and dealing to forget the dead ones we have lost.

The sun is bright, the sky is clear, and Mark is out with his friends. They are having a great time at the beach where there are dogs playing fetch and people enjoying the sun and the warm sand between their toes. You can probably predict that the mood of the text above is blissful, joyful, or peaceful. Authors sometimes use a description of the weather to help the reader better understand the mood of the text and make a connection to the characters or following events. For instance, Edith Wharton uses the snow and cold to illustrate a number of things in her novel “Ethan Frome.”

According to the excerpt "Entropy" which was taken from K.C Coles essay, the main point is that everything in the universe eventually moves from order to disorder. In lines 5-6, it is stated that: "Unlike almost every other physical property (motion, gravity, energy), entropy does not work both ways. It can only increase. Once it's created it can never be destroyed. The road to disorder is a one way street." This is basically referring to the idea that entropy isn't necessarily a positive thing, yet its inevitable. This means that certain things most people wouldn't want in life, such as aging for example, is prone to have a negative affect on you, but it's something you have no control over.

The setting is in the country of Ireland, where it is usually bleak and dismal most of the time. Since the weather in Ireland is not great, the winter blues comes over the people of Ireland. In this story, I feel like the reader that each character is majorly affected by the setting. I think the author might have chosen this setting to give the reader more of a way to understand the characters by giving them a background to live in. As the reader, I think if the author gave the

The weather does more than fit the scene’s energy; often, the weather mirrors the protagonist’s attitudes and feelings, helping readers sympathize and connect with the characters. The first several chapters, set at Gateshead, are rainy, cold, and dreary, paralleling Eyre’s hopeless outlook. According to Thomas Foster, one of rain’s several potential purposes in a novel is to add an air of mystery, isolation, and misery. For example, when Jane is locked in the red-room, “the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight...the rain

Broadly speaking, entropy refers both to the level of disorder and uncertainty in a system.The concept originates from thermodynamics, where it is used to describe the thermal energy in heat engine that is unavailable to be converted into work (i.e. transferred through a change in form or location).The second law of thermodynamics stipulates that within a self-contained system like a heat engine, the aggregate measure of entropy must remain the same or increase over time because with no external energy inputs, the system’s net energy flow gradually subsides as the gaps between its higher and lower energy particles decrease through the transfer of heat as they interact. This diminishing gap between particle energy levels, denoted in part by a stabilization in temperature and phase state (e.g. solid, liquid, or gas), reflects the system’s progression towards a state of thermodynamic equilibrium, or maximum entropy, where particles regress into towards a uniform set of characteristics and inertness as the net energy flow grows infinitesimal. In moving towards equilibrium the system also becomes increasingly disordered because in losing their distinctiveness particles become fungible, rendering attempts to impose order and coherence on the system by drawing relations and distinctions between

When children think of darkness they think of lack of light which causes them to become scared. As we grow older, we begin to not only realize the lack of light, but the objects inside the dark which can be more frightening. We start understanding how darkness makes us feel. Darkness makes one think of unusual scenarios that are not real, but seems so real at that moment. Once we start believing in those scenarios, they start to overcome us and we no longer stay ourselves. There are multiple definitions of darkness and they all go with these two authentic stories, Heart of Darkness and The Dead. In the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, darkness is defined as: partial or total absence of light, wickedness or evil, unhappiness, secrecy and lack of spiritual or intellectual enlighten. Comparing, Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad and The Dead written by James Joyce, each author brings out darkness and the living dead into the main character and shows how much it changes them for the worse and/or for the better.