Fiction Lecture 2 (HTBAB)

Intro To English 27^th of Feb:

Transcript:

This is the first class of the novel that we'll be covering at the beginning of the Reading fiction section of 185.

So I have the hardcover here, but the soft cover, which is a bit cheaper, is the one that's in the bookstore.

But you can also grab this at each or Kennedy's or any bookstore in town, so do make sure you select a copy.

So this is the first lecture. So we're going to start off by saying something briefly about the author, but the author will actually be coming to our class on Friday.

And Elaine Feeney is a delight. She's quite prominent right now in the very world in Ireland, but she also teaches at the University Galway.

So she gammers the asep and she's a and field some questions.

We're going to have a conversation, we'll do a short reading.

So it's going to be very exciting to be coming Friday.

So she's a poet, a novelist and a playwright from the west of Ireland, and a good poet first because she wrote poetry before she ever turned to fiction.

So she had written short stories, play texts, now three novels.

She's got three novel coming out when you really get the sense of the author as not just a novelist.

But so there is a sense that there's a lot of lyricism in this novel.

Something that we'll discuss when we get into the style of the novel.

So she's from the west of Ireland, she's based in County Galway.

As I said, she works here. And so you'll see that place is really important to her novels.

So her novels are very much set on the west coast of Ireland and Fictional Town is actually based on.

So it's Emery and we'll talk about that in a moment.

So as I said, she's written three books of poetry, but poetry is very much infused in terms of fiction and three novels, including Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way, which is a very intriguing title.

I've actually pre ordered this novel from Kennedy, so I'm very curious to read it.

So that's coming out May 2025. And is it? She works as a lecturer in creative writing and she was formerly a post primary teacher in Tomb.

And I think that biographical detail is important because this novel is very much about education.

And so the fact that she has experience as a teacher teaching young people suggests that she knows something about what she's talking about.

So obviously there's an element of nonfiction here and that's something we can talk about when Elaine comes to our class.

But always there's this glaring of fact in fiction, in literature.

And so not all of this is imaginative fiction, though there is a real sense of realism here.

So she's participated in numerous literary festivals and nominated for several writing awards.

So one of the reasons why I've chosen this novel, this novel has gotten quite a bit of buzz and recognition as it was.

So how to Build a Boat. It's an intriguing title. Again, that could be something I ask Elaine on Friday.

We'll see. But I think the title is rather interesting. It almost suggests that it's going to be a work of instruction or educational.

In some ways, it suggests the activity that's at the center of the book.

So I would say that we're really going to cover only the first few chapters of the novel before they start building an oak explosion.

If you haven't gotten too far into the novel, they start building a vote.

So how to build a vote? In some ways, there is an answer, and it's together.

It's not something you do alone. So again, I would say that it connects really nicely with the short story I talked about on Tuesday, because this is a story about community, about people coming together.

In some ways it's not as extreme a situation, but in some ways it is right while we're all just trying to survive day by day.

So there's more of a sense of the everyday in this model as opposed to the extreme situation happened on Tuesday, because Tuesday was very different.

People trying to survive in the open ocean. Here it's a bit how do you survive ordinary life. So it's again, a real sense of coming together to do that.

And of course, the boat is going to be an image that we talked about.

So if you haven't gotten to it, it'll connect really nicely with our last short story.

So, as I said, nationally and internationally recognized.

I'm not going to read out the list, but perhaps the most important one is it's long listed for the 2023 Booker Prize.

And the Booker Prize is really important in the literary world.

So if you win a Booker, you're a big deal. To be nominated for a Booker is a big deal. So. So this book has been recognized. Lots of people have read it. Okay, so it was published in 2023. And I would say that the action of the novel is pretty close to when it was written and published.

So this isn't a historical novel. This isn't a work of speculative fiction. This is a work that's very much of the here and now.

So I would say it's a contemporary setting. So, for example, the characters, you set phones, they use laptops, they reference popular cultures.

There's a lot of cues that suggest that this is a book very much in the map.

Okay. Geographic setting, as I suggested, it is the west coast of Ireland.

So Emory island is the town. But Emory really stands in for Galway. And so, for example, there are a few things that are actually not changed.

So she changes the name of the town. Why does she do that? That's very common in fiction to kind of have a fictional version of your own town.

But she also has a prominent river. We'll talk about the river as a symbol next class.

But instead of the river cord, it's the river through.

So it's set in Emory, Ireland, as a traditional town.

And much of the book's action unfolds in the Olive Word School.

So a Christ College. So she gives the. Again, this is a fictional school in a fictional town.

Some people talk about these kinds of books in school books or campus novels, you know, that are really interested in people in a school environment.

So there's a kind of long literary tradition of the campus novel and school books.

Okay. So I would say something about the program before I talk about things like genre and character, just to do something with the book before we get into some of the bigger conversations.

So, as I said, you know, the setting is right, but the setting is a prologue.

So prologue is often used in some ways to set the scene of the book.

And here is a way of flashing back to the childhood of the protagonist.

So the protagonist for most of the book is roughly 13.

So he's a teenager. But in this prologue, we see him as a child. And you see signs that JD Is a little different. You see cues about the relationship between father and son, between Om and Amy.

And I think it's also beautifully written, very poetic.

As I said, the style is very lyrical, very personal.

So the opening lines, as I said last class, opening lines are always very, very significant in the short story, which has that comedy of prose.

But also in the novel. Right. There's many, many famous openings of novels. And I think the opening lines are quite lovely. Jamie said, when I grow up, I will be as tall as these trees and sprawled bass and salamander along the trunk he climbed to the first branch when Owen said, whoa, J careful.

And lifted the boy back to the ground. So in terms of the action, we have a child climbing a tree.

So it seems rather simple, but I think it's revealing and suggests something about that relationship, but also about the Characters.

So consider what these lines reveal about the protagonist.

In some ways, they're a bit foreshadowing of that relationship.

So the fact is, Owen doesn't want his son to be climbing so fast.

So we see Owen, the father, is very protective. And so in some way she sees why it's so important that our protagonist, Jamie, needs to find connections and mentorship with other people.

Right. And that's true of all of us. Right. We don't just rely on our parents, our fathers and our mothers for guidance, other influences in our lives.

And you can see that sometimes Owen is too protected of a son because he's lost his.

His son's mother. I don't think the characters were married. They were very, very young when they had Jamie. But because Owen's mother. Sorry. Because Jamie's mother died. I think that's one factor why Owen is so spectacular.

I mean, I think, in a sense, that Jamie is very ambitious.

You know, he's in some ways fearful of social interaction, but in other ways, he's really intellectually ambitious.

He's a great reader. He's fascinated with mathematics. You see the ways in which he really is a student who strives.

And I think that's perhaps suggested there. Also the connection to nature. We'll talk about this later in this lecture and perhaps next class as well.

Well, not next class because the land's coming, but class after that.

But there is a series of nature imagery in the book.

And I would say that genius. Very connected to the natural world. You know, he finds people difficult. What he finds easier? Trees. He actually really loves trees. He's connected to the natural world. He collects pine cones at one point. It's very sweet. He wants to give his grandmother some pine cones.

Right. He's very, I would say, attuned to the natural world.

And then what do I note about the dialogue? And maybe some of you will find him slightly frustrated.

So do you notice anything about the dialogue and speech that's in here?

Anything a little different? Yeah, yeah. No quotation marks. Okay, so no quotation marks. This is very common in contemporary literature.

Common in modernist literature as well. And so. Oh, it's already up there. But the idea is, I don't know, to have that as a big reveal, but thank you.

So it's meant to create some fluidity, right. That there isn't this big separation to what people say, what people think.

This is also creating connection to a larger school of writing.

So, for example, the Irish writer James Joyce, he also didn't use a lot of quotation marks.

This is common within modernist literature. Sally Rooney, I don't know if anyone's read Normal People.

She's a rather prominent contemporary Irish writer.

She often doesn't use quotation marks. So in some ways it's a stylistic decision, but in other ways it's an aesthetic version.

Some authors don't like the look of dividing everything up with quotation marks.

So again, this is something we could ask Elaine because it's one full time a living author.

But I would say that there's many authors who choose not to use a quotation of.

Artsy also can connects the novel more to poetry because certainly poetry, you don't use a lot of quotation marks in poetry.

Okay, let's get into the characters. This will help you. I will map out the major and minor characters as you.

So it'll help you so you know who's who, what are the major relationships, the Gemini relationships.

And so this will be one tool in the toolbox. I'll give you for our. So we have our protagonist Jamie. I would say there's actually two protagonists. So I'll talk about this. Two protagonists who kind of have parallel yet intersecting narratives.

So they come together very quickly, very much together throughout the novel.

So Jamie's our protagonist. I'll do a careful character study in a moment, then I'm going to move on.

So as I said, Jamie's father. So Jamie's father had Jamie when he was quite young and the baby was an accident and the mother died in childbirth.

So I think this is significant. I would say that Owen is very traumatized by this.

Right. Traumatized by the loss of his girlfriend, his pregnant girlfriend.

I would say that he's really wrapped by guilt. He's a man and you grieve. You know, he's still grieving 13 years later. He's still grievingly lost his wife. And so in some ways Owen is very damaged by his own past.

And I would say he's a caring father, he's a thoughtful father, he's very attentive, but he's also kind of overprotective.

And he doesn't always make the right decision. You know, no parent does. Right. So it's it that Owen is generally a good person, but not but imperfect as a parent.

At one point he ends up in a fit of sorrow, deletes all of the pictures of Noel, which is kind of devastating.

Right. He's so sad that he breaks his phone, which is actually a poor decision in a sense that it would have been helpful I think for Jamie to have more images of his mother.

It would have helped them create more of a memory.

So Tess, again, we do a character study of Tess, but Tess is the teacher, and I would argue that she is the other protagonist in the novel.

So, as I said, parallel yet intersectional narratives.

Two protagonists, two generations. Right. They're not of the same generation, but in some ways they are similar and they help each other out.

So, yes, Tess is the teacher, so she's in this sort of authority role.

But on the other hand, they sort of become friends and there's ways in which they are quite similar and they help each other out.

Okay. So I think they each get something from that relationship.

And then Tyke. I'm not going to say much about Tyke this class because we'll get into him next week because he doesn't really figure too much in the first few chapters of the book.

He does it here because of four straight teacher, yes, show up the first day of class, but we don't really develop his character until later.

So we'll talk about him later. But he's also a teacher, and he's specifically a woodworking teacher.

So Tess is an English teacher, T teaches woodwork.

They both end up helping with the building of the boat.

And then Fox. Fox is another character we'll get into because he's an influence on JD and not always a positive one.

So we'll talk about Fox again in another class because we have a few classes to really unpack this book.

And then Noelle. So Noel Doyle is Jamie's late mother. I put her in square back brackets because, of course, she doesn't actually appear in the novel.

In some ways, she's a kind of ghostly present. A ghostly present. And she's very much present in the novel, even though she was passive.

So I think there's many ways in which Jamie still thinks about her every day.

If you watch that video, her swimming, because there was one over that wasn't lost because it was posted on the website of the school.

She was a swimmer. So we'll talk about Noel and the ways in which she really haunts this novel.

And then we have some minor characters. Again, we probably won't get too deeply into Marie, Jamie's grandmother, but I think she is an important influence on him.

That is an important relationship. They're very close in some ways. You know, we've got a character who's very frustrated with his father.

Often fathers and sons do have a fair bit of conflict.

That's very common. And so in some ways, skipping the Generation also just gets a lot of that tension and conflict.

So many of you might actually get along better with your grandparents than your, your parents.

Right. Because there's almost a kind of people are too close in some way.

So Jamie's grandmother really is important. So Terry is a character that we'll talk about at some point.

So I call Terry Jamie's best friend. I don't think he ever calls him his best friend, but I say that he's best friend because Terry accepts Jamie, you know, and that's really what we learned from it, to accept who we are.

Why do they, why do they end up being friends? Partially because they're both missing a parent.

So Terry's father is not in the picture. So I think that connects them and that similarity.

I think Terry can be more empathetic towards Jamie because Terry didn't have a father and Jamie doesn't have a mother.

Right. That's the connection. I wouldn't say they have a ton in common. You know, I think Terry in some ways is quite different.

He's not neuro atypical. He seems fairly, I don't want to use the word normal, but he seems sort of neurotypical.

Right. He conforms to the school culture a little bit easier.

He finds social interaction much more comfortable than Jamie does.

Right. So they're very different, but they are friends.

And I think it's important that Jamie does have a friend who's his own age because he does become friends with his teachers, particularly with Tess.

But I think it's important that Terry and Jamie are friends.

And then we have O'Toole and Jonesy again, they don't figure prominently in these first few chapters, but they are important because the head boys are a kind of layer of authority between the headmaster and between the teachers, the headmaster and the students.

Right. So in some ways they try to protect the students, but we see them as also the head boys and informers, Right.

They snitch on the teachers. They. They're a little bit hand in blood with the hand the headmaster.

We see that the school is not always a healthy place, but there's ways in which it's a toxic environment.

Why is school sometimes a toxic environment? Because of rapes. Right. Because of the fact that there's authority, you know, there's high hierarchy.

Anytime there's hierarchy and authority there's going to be abuse of authority.

There's going to be ways in which the hierarchy causes oppression.

So I would say that yes, you know, this is a place, an institution where education happens, which is Christ Church College.

But it's also a place where people get bullied, where people get rejected.

Right. There's a lot of state building their patients. And Juni has a tough time at school. But that being said, that's not fully what this book is about.

It's about a young man who does come to age and he does end up creating some really valuable personal connections.

And then we have Paul. Paul again, we'll probably not get into Paul too much this class.

So Tess has a husband. Tess is married and Paul is her husband. And she's going to leave her husband. So kind of spoiler. But it's pretty clear from the get go that this is not a happy marriage.

So Paul is kind of a dick. Like, let's be honest, he's not really that nice man.

They don't actually have a lot in common. They're not very intimate. They've come apart for various reasons that I'll discuss later.

And then we have another character in brackets. So another character who doesn't physically appear to read the novels in still really in her ornament.

And so I've included a picture because this is a real person who lived.

Who lived and died. And so this is Miriam Mirzaki. And Miriam is important because Jamie watches YouTube videos about her or that she's narrating.

So she's a professor, a mathematician. She worked at Stanford University in California.

Very prominent as a mathematician, was seen as a real genius.

And unfortunately she died early at the age of 40 of breast cancer.

So I think it's significant that this woman. Again, he's got these influences in his life that are kind of indirect.

Right. His mother, he thinks about his mother. He never knew his mother. Unfortunately, his father doesn't help him know his mother because they don't really share memories with her.

But I would say that Mir Takani's videos are kind of consoling to him.

She is kind of almost kind of maternal figure to him.

But he. It also helps his education. So he is a very. I'll discuss him later. Kind of self directed learner. Right. So he gets more education from just seeking out knowledge on his own than he necessarily does at school.

Yes, he learns things at school, but he's someone who also will learn things by simply reading and watching things.

Right. He's really into like actually curious. So again, this idea of mortality comes in there too.

Right. Because this mathematician has already passed by the time this novel was written.

Okay, so let's get into our character study. So in some ways it's Kind of, it's kind of nice to see other editions of the book because I think that this is actually a really big cover for the book too.

And we can again, something we can ask Elaine, which cover did you like best?

You might not perhaps pick a favorite. But I think this is what's interesting. We don't yet have a film adaptation of this novel.

So we have a sense of who Jamie is. At least the editor or the publisher decided to give Jamie a face.

Right. So you see he's very serious. I would say that he's a very serious young man. I would describe him as very sort of smiling, bubbly guy.

And so I think this captures, this captures his expression.

His mother had red hair, so it's. And so he has freckles as well. Other things. Here we have a suggestion of the mathematics that so fascinating, right, with these, the triangles that we see there.

As I said, he's a teenager, age 13. So why this is a kind of coming of age novel. Obviously puberty being an important time in people's lives and a time of great change.

So change of bodies but also change of schools. And so obviously this is why so many novels are written about young people at this particular stage.

So we have him, he describes, he's described as a teenager with a body dangerously volcanic.

So that's used a few different times. Volcanic because he's got hormones, hairs or sporadic sprouting.

Right. I don't have to get into what puberty is, but he's aware of the changes happening in his body.

Right. And certain emotional changes. And so he is on the cusp of manhood. And the fact is he's quite tall for his age as well.

So he looks like an adult, but he's emotionally and physically not quite an adult.

So we'll speak, for example, he doesn't express any interest in the same sex, opposite sex.

He might be asexual or he might not have developed sexual attachment, we don't know.

So as I said, he's highly intelligent. He's a self motivated learner. At one point we'll talk about the literature that he's interested in.

He's obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe and has read a lot of Edgar Allan Poe's stories or all of his stories.

He's self motivated in the sense that he's really interested in maths.

He's watching those videos, he reads voraciously.

He has a whole system for classifying books, the star system.

Of course, Poe is at the top of that. And so we see him feels a little Limited by school.

Right. Other people are not as intellectually curious as him, so that kind of sets him apart as well.

Neurodivergence. So we'll talk about this probably a little bit more next class.

But he's described by many people as autistic. So I'm not sure if that word actually comes up anywhere in the book, if anyone takes note of it.

I've read it a couple times now, but we would call him as autistic.

And so he does seem to think differently than other people.

He struggles with social interaction. He struggles with empathy at times, he struggles saying the right thing.

So again, this is something that is a product of his neurodivergence, but it's also a product of just growing up.

We have to learn social behavior. And there is always this tension between conformity and individuality.

Right? We all want to be individuals, we all want to be special.

But on the other hand, there's certain things that we do have to conform to social expectations.

So again, the book then just comes to question us.

To what extent do you conform to other people's expectations?

Right. If you always conform to others expectations, to the expectations of your mothers, your fathers, your teachers, your peers, then you won't be happy, right?

You have to be a little weird. Be happy. Sorry. I'm just going to tell you that right now. This is my life, professor. But the fact is you have to find out what interests you and what makes you today.

And I think that's something that the book ends up really embracing, right?

That it's okay to be different. But that being said, it's good to challenge yourself as well, right?

To take steps to go outside of your comfort zone. And that's something that Jamie does, because I think if Jamie had his.

I don't know if people use that word anymore, but if Danny could do what he wanted, he'd probably just stay at home watching YouTube videos and reading books.

He wouldn't go to school, he wouldn't have a job. But there's obviously some demands upon our time that we can't control, right?

We can't always do it what we want. And we have to live in a society. And when you live in a society, we have to interact with other people, right?

Whether that's at school or at work, etcetera, etcetera.

Okay, so some of the key relationships in the book, as I said, there's kind of the paternal relationship, and I would say it's largely positive with his father.

I think his father, you know, means well. And then we have the friendship mentorship between Tess and Jake.

And I think that's a really important relationship.

It's a really nourishing relationship emotionally, perhaps not as mental intellectually, but to a certain extent they have a lot of conversations together.

And I think that's important because it's important for him to practice his social skills.

And in some ways this is kind of a low stress way of him doing that.

Right. One on one conversations. And that will help him interact with other people, labor and life, and also the figure novels.

And so they spend a lot of time together. So in the period where she's not teaching, so she had a time period, he goes to her classroom.

So part of that she used to end up. She used to teach students with special needs, but that special needs program is no longer at that school.

So there is clearly acknowledgement that he needs extra help in some ways, but there really isn't the structure within the institution to do that.

So she's doing this on her own time. Right. This is her free period. She's doing this kind of out of the goodness of her heart.

She doesn't have to do it. So you get them spending a lot of time together. Right. So kind of a blurring of boundaries between teacher and student.

They become friends. And then later, and we'll talk about that mentorship relationship that's more of a mentorship than a friendship.

And then we have sort of negative relationships.

And boss is the headmaster and we'll talk about him later.

But he is someone who really would like everyone to conform.

Right. He's an authoritarian. He's kind of tyrannical. He has quite binary thinking about a lot of things.

You know, for example, about religion, about gender.

You know, he's very. He's very traditional in his thinking. And I'm not saying traditional thinking is a bad thing.

Right. I think many of us are. Many of us are Christians. And so, you know, it's not a bad thing to be religious, but it's bad to enforce conformity and to revoice your ideas in some way and to not accept difference.

So he's someone who's very intolerant. And I would say that the school environment he fosters is not necessarily a healthy one.

So we'll talk about that as we go along. And then, as I said, he has this sort of positive relationship with Hear Terry because they have some similarities.

I would say it wouldn't necessarily be as emotionally nourishing as his relationship with Taz, but it is important nonetheless.

And then it's important to Note that he's been bullied in this novel.

And we have a few incidents where he's actually being bullied.

And one occurs very early in the novel on his first day of school.

It's really horrific. And so he doesn't even give them a name. So I think this is part of this clue. There's this, a clue that suggests he's kind of, he's not necessarily typical in his thinking.

Right. Because we would, I would never refer to student one, student two, student three.

Like no, I try in my seminars to learn students names.

I think it's respectful, it's normal, you know, to use names.

He doesn't do that partially because he doesn't care to get to know these people, but also because he kind of does what he wants, but they're very cruel to him.

So this whole section happens very early on and like on page 63, you know, they call him a thag.

They end up accusing him of killing his mother because of his birth.

And so he. It's a really distressing scene where he's bullied by these, these other boys and this happened.

He's actually beaten up at one point. So we see that he's in a sort of sense of, he's in danger, right?

Danger of, you know, violence. Violence in words, you know, that the insults are distressing to him but particularly when they, they go for the jugular and, and basically call him a murderer, saying that he's killed his mother.

So really, really cool. So there is obviously these negative peer relationships too.

He's rejected because he's different. Right. That is the nature of society that often we escape about those who are different.

So then that gets to Tess. So Tess. I don't have a picture of tests. I was just trying to figure out what Tess might look like.

I just picked an actress. She's dark haired, you know, she seems to be in about her 30s, somewhere around there.

So she's a secondary school English teacher with experience with special needs students.

And she works at Jamie's new school. And so the first thing that happens is that they go back to school in September and she's really nervous about going back.

It's not a new school for her, it's a new school for Jamie, but it's not a new school for her.

But she feels like a different person coming back because the last week she was a teacher at the school, she was pregnant, but she had a miscarriage.

She would gain. You see kind of the effects of trauma. Right? So with Owen, you know, losing his girlfriend Mother, his child.

That was a traumatic experience. We see that Tess is someone who's experienced trauma and loss as well.

Right. The loss of her baby. So she was eight weeks pregnant. You lost the baby with miscarriage. She's been going through IVF treatments because of her infertility.

So they end up finding out it's her that's infertile, not her husband.

So she's married, but her marriage to Paul is failing.

So there's lots of signs that the marriage is feeling.

They're no longer emotionally close, they're very distant.

And he doesn't understand her. He doesn't understand her distress. He just doesn't. He seems a bit cold as well. Like, I think Paul is not an awful person. I think he's not the greatest person. He seems rather insensitive. So, for example, she gets nervous before her first day of class.

So I've been teaching for 15 years, and the first time I had a class, it was a class of 60 at university.

I felt like vomiting every single time because it was just like first class.

I get very, very nervous. I would say I don't get that nervous anymore, but I think nerves are a sign of excitement and commitment to your job.

But, you know, he doesn't. He doesn't take her nervousness seriously. She's worried about going back. She always finds the first day of school stressful and, you know, it produces anxiety and she doesn't really understand that.

He's like, wear a navy blue. Wear navy blue. You look good in navy flu. And I. Is that a really helpful thing to say to someone? Not really. Right. There's a few signs that that relationship is fraying.

Right. Also, she doesn't really confide in him. She's really upset by her infertility, by her miscarriage.

And she doesn't talk to him. Right. They don't talk. And then, as I said, she recently experienced this miscarriage, struggling with infertility.

And then she had a big decision to make. Will she end up having another try at a baby? Right. So she's going to go to a clinic, potentially get that embryo implanted and have a baby with Paul.

But she's unsure whether to try again, whether she wants a permanent relationship with Paul.

Because once you have a baby with someone, that's a permanent relationship, whether or not you stay married.

Right. The child will always connect you to that person.

So she. But where does this come from? And I think one of the reasons this novel is so brilliant is such a thoughtful novel, is making sense of people as grounded Human beings.

There's a lot of psychological realism here. So why are people the way they are? And I think there's a fair bit in this novel about her childhood.

So childhood experiences are formative. Some people say that personalities are shaped by one's childhood.

And so her background, her father was an alcoholic, right?

That has certain ramifications for her. And as a result, she has trouble being close to other people.

She has trouble connecting. And I think there's reasons why her childhood was traumatic and has effects on her adulthood.

So we see her as kind of emotionally isolated. So she's alienated. She seems isolated. She seems alienated at the beginning. And so she needs Jamie, I think, as much as Jamie Burke begins to work.

And so you see in these first few chapters, she's the one who shows sympathy to Jamie on his first day.

You know, they're in chapel, she puts a little toy cat in his hand to sort of soothe him.

He likes cats. It connects them that little. And understands him. Right. Understands his loneliness, but understands his challenges as a neuro atypical student.

Okay, so now we've talked a little bit about character.

Now let's get into narrative plot. So this is not true of every single book, but I would say that many stories are structured into five stages.

So this is a famous seditious, famous diagram. So Free Tag was a thinker who sort of theorized things about narrative.

And so this applies to drama, but applies to fiction as well.

So you might have seen this already, but many stories have these five stages.

Exposition, inciting, incident, rising, action, climax, falling, action, resolution.

And so if you might want to consider how this narrative structure maps onto advanced books.

So I would argue that the prologue, which I mentioned, which gives us those clues to personality and relationships, is the prologue.

We get some backstory, we find out that Jamie's another is in the past.

We find out some important things in that prologue.

And that's exposition, where we find out information not by telling and not by showing, but by telling.

And then we have exposure, second sighting incident.

And that is Jamie begins his first day of secondary school.

And that's where things change. Things will never be the same. And that's really what an anxiety incident does.

We have a challenge being presented to the protagonist.

Another way of structuring narrative is different.

And I didn't draw a diagram. Instead, I have a picture of Robert Fry from my alma mater, University of Toronto in Canada.

But this was an important writer and thinker, Martha Pryor, scholar.

And he did a lot of theorizing about him in so he's an interesting figure in that sense.

And so basically he says there's two ways that stories can be structured.

And he uses the Bible and he uses drama, but he basically says that any story can work with his.

And one is U shaped. You start with equilibrium, the same status quo, then there's some sort of disaster, and then there's a movement to a new equilibrium or status quo.

And that's sort of the structure of comedy. And so I won't say anything more about that because we'll talk about the book as a whole next week so we can think about the narrative progression of how to build those.

And the other one is an inverted U shape. And I would say that that's not what this book is. I would say it's a little closer to a U shape rather than inverted U.

And an inverted U of protagonist rises to prominence and then falls with fallen by disaster.

So that's not really relevant. So contemporary literature breaks for some of these patterns, some of these narrative patterns.

It's a little bit more experimental. And I would say that holds true for Elaine's book.

But I would say literature is cumulative. What do I mean by that? Literature is informed by what went before. You cannot consider a literature work in isolation.

Right. It's something that is being produced by the production of other literary texts.

And it's also cross referential in that you can't look at a text as standing alone because often there's allusions, intertextuality.

We'll talk about that as we go along. But I would say there's still elements of this pattern, this U shaped also with three types of paramount in Elaine's novel.

Why? Because that's, you know, that's what Elaine has read and absorbed when absorbed in this culture.

So another. So another generic label that I'd like to give you, if you haven't encountered it before, is the gildings romance.

Anyone heard this term before? Gildern's romance kind of fear view. Excellent. So this won't be new for a few of you. So that's a German word which means donation. Right. And so it's basically a term for coming of age. A protagonist develops from childhood, adolescence into adulthood.

So the famous examples of this are Jane Eyre and Charles Dickens, David Copperfield.

So there's a long tradition for buildings run by very important in the 19th century century, but also significant in the 20th and 21st century.

So it is a novel, a kind of novel that follows the development of the hero or care worker from childhood or adolescence into Adult for a cruel, troubled quest for identity.

And I think I want to underline the word identity because in some ways this is what the book is about, trying to figure out who you are and how you fit in.

So you might want to consider how to build a boat as a kind of non traditional building scramble.

I would say it's non traditional. We don't spend a lot of time on his childhood. We also don't see him as an adult. Right. It only takes place about a year long. And that's not the case for most buildings. Most buildings on that take place over the course of many years.

And you really see a progression and development of his psychology with his parents.

So one of the symbols that comes up fairly early on.

So we talk about a couple symbols in just in case you don't know what this is.

So the perpetual motion machine. And this is what informs the building of the boat.

So a boat can be a kind of perpetual motion machine, but it's also not one.

So has anyone heard this term before? Perpetual motion machines. Okay, good. A few of you have. That's excellent. So it's also an impossibility you can't actually build one.

Why? Because nothing will be perpetually in motion unless you give it energy.

So some. Some machines are very efficient. So it almost looks like it's not using much energy.

But all things will need energy. So if motion will not be continuous, all machines stopped.

What he's really fascinated and his fascinating people for centuries.

And so I'm actually this image up here, this is from the 17th century.

So this is from the 17th century. So people have been thinking about perpetual motion machines for a long time.

And this is something that obsesses with Jamie. So Jamie is not someone who's religious. Why is that significant? Because he looks for something else other than religion.

Right. He's actually an atheist. And I think for himself science is replacement. And so the way that he considers the perpetual motion machine, that's his way of kind of resurrecting his mother, if that makes any sense.

And so it's an impossibility. It's also a project. He wants to build a perpetual motion machine. And so we ask what kind of machine and why. I think he wants to bring back his mother in some way so the machine will somehow retain the energy of his mother swimming.

It doesn't actually make a lot of sense when you start thinking about it.

And Owen is really skeptical of this and thinks it's actually a kind of trauma response.

Right. It was caused by his grief as a Childless boy. So I would say it's symbols. So symbols can be very capacious. What do I mean by that symbol? Symbols can mean several different things. In some ways, the perpetual motion machine is a symbol of math and science, but it's also a symbol of grief.

Right. Because he wants to create some sort of machine that will bring back his mother.

It's a symbol of hope. Right. And maybe we can do it. You know, there's lots of things that humanity has achieved that we never thought we would achieve.

Right. Even flight, going to noon, all of these things. Maybe at some point this could happen. It does seem to defy the laws of physics, but it's a symbol of hope.

It's also a symbol of utopian thinking. Right. Utopian is basically very optimistic thinking.

And in the face of human immortality, how can we be immortal?

Or how can our loved ones be immortal? So I think just note the bottom of that quotation, which is from page 14, is Noel Swimming, kinetic energy created by a swimmer.

So he starts to theorize this idea of creating this machine.

And it's important to note some of the image, some of the symbols, some of the images.

Not going to do them all today. But we'll get into red, for example. It's a color that comes up again in the game. It's very important. So the first reference to this color is the red sleeve of his parents in the novel's prologue.

And then we see him wearing red socks on the first day of school.

We see him eventually being gifted red shoes by his father.

Why red? Right. He's maybe part of being a bit neuro atypical. He's fixated on this color, which perhaps is maybe not as standard at the age of 13 as you would think, but it's a connection to his mother.

His mother had red hair, but his mother also was wearing a red swimming costume in that clip that's posted online that he watches every day.

Right. So there's something about red that feels comforting to him, that connects him to his mother, and it becomes kind of part of his identity.

We acted in as a specific shade of Jamie Red. And so this is really significant. And it'll come up again when we get to the boat. So that brings me to a key narrative technique. And so again, this will help you understand the book.

Right. A key narrative technique is stream of consciousness.

So this is part of the modernist tradition. So Dorothy Richardson was the first person who I'm going to use stream of consciousness.

And then the other famous users of stream of consciousness, James Joyce, the Irish writer, also the British writer Virginia.

So we see it being used by William Faulkner, an American writer.

Why? It gives us a window into psychology of the characters, right.

It gives us the ability to ground the character psychologically more than foot.

And also it gives us a sense of how Janie is different.

Right. So it helps us develop a character who's grow atypical.

So it's a narrative technique, conveys the inner workings of the character's mind and get the character's thoughts, feelings, memories and passions related in an unbroken flow without concern for chronology of coherence.

So sometimes it's hard to read. But that being said, I think it gives us a window into the heart and mind of our protagonist and one that's very valuable.

Why is that valuable? It also creates empathy. Right. We see why the world seems a bit confusing for him, why he thinks the way he does.

So this is, this is just. Okay, this cat didn't make any sense until the quotation comes up.

But I'd like to. I was like, I can put one cat in my lecture for first year English.

And so I did. So think first, if you're ever going to whip up, laugh at yourself.

You say whip up. Note the sound of the word ship. Cool whip. Family die. Repeat it. Cool whip rhymes the ship up Good. Favorite colored bed. He has also. So he has a bunch of impressions, his favorite things come up.

He's doing this to self soothe, okay. To make him sort of comfort himself as he's preparing for his first date of school.

So this is what's going through his mind. So it's an artistic technique. It's not just like stream of consciousness. The author's stream of consciousness. The author is pretending to be the character's thoughts.

So it's a really key technique that's used in the novel.

So do bear with us, right. Because it makes the novel somewhat challenging at times.

Right. In terms of his style. And then that will bring us to some illusions. So as I said, I'm not going to get into the Poe illusion today, but we have time to mention one of the illusions that I would like to note to do some homework.

So an illusion is a reference to basically a person, plays or thing.

It can be. It can be a song, it can be a literary work, and it can be direct or interactive.

So for example, a song is named and we have Jamie Cumming Painted Black.

So whenever you've done a little bit of homework, listen to Painted Black with a Rolling Stones.

The Rolling Stones are ancient, but they're still great.

Dance. And so painted Black. I haven't. I have a red. I'm not gonna sing Red Door and I want it painted black.

So there's reference to red. I was really tempted to sing and I wasn't that. But there's reference to red in the song and also black.

And it's also because he's nervous. I think he's self soothing. It's also a really depressing song. The other depressing song that comes up is Radiohead's Creek.

And when this came out in 1892, I was maybe 12 at the time.

It was not even given much radio play because it was seen as too oppressing.

So at one point, Tess, before her first day of school, is trying to play it.

She's yelling at Alexa. It won't play for her because she's, you know, she's kind of frustrated with technology.

It also suggests the fact that she's pretty alienated.

So your other homework and having her just gone creep by raving head isn't Capri.

And you'll see that that illusion actually gives us some information about text.

Right. The fact that she wants to listen to that song on a loop suggests that she's not not in a good place, she's in a bad place psychologically.

And that song seems to mirror her situation. So we have one minute. So what do these illusions suggest about the character's emotional?

So when I have some jokes start coming up, I'll never let you go.

Too late. But. So we also have have another E range. Those were direct allusions. We have an indirect allusion to a woman, a song about a woman who's been left at the altar.

And that's November Rain. So November Rain is never mentioned directly, but there's an indirect reference to that song.

So your third piece of homework is to listen to November Rain by Guns and Roses, which is very popular school answers.

So next class, continue reading. How to Build a Boat.

Detailed Lecture Highlights on "How to Build a Boat"

• Introduction to the Novel: The lecture begins with an introduction to "How to Build a Boat" by Elaine Feeney, who is positioned as a significant contemporary Irish author. The discussion underlines the importance of this work as part of the Reading Fiction section of the curriculum.

• Author's Background: Elaine Feeney’s multifaceted literary career is highlighted. She has distinguished herself as a poet, novelist, and playwright, indicating her versatility and her influence in contemporary literature. The lecturer emphasizes Feeney's connection to her work, suggesting a deep understanding of the themes present in her writing.

• Literary Recognition: The novel has garnered significant attention in the literary community, having been longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2023. This recognition is underscored to illustrate the novel's critical acclaim and its place within the current literary discourse.

• Setting of the Narrative: The action of the novel takes place in the fictional setting of Emory, which parallels real-life Galway on the west coast of Ireland. The lecturer notes the importance of place in Feeney's narrative, suggesting it shapes the characters and their experiences.

• Protagonist Overview: Jamie, the novel's central character, is introduced as a 13-year-old boy grappling with the loss of his mother during childbirth. His complex emotional landscape is framed within his intelligence and social struggles, exacerbated by the overprotective nature of his father, Owen.

• Father-Son Dynamics: The relationship between Jamie and Owen is characterized by Owen's trauma and overprotectiveness, revealing how past experiences influence parenting styles. The emotional nuances of their relationship are acknowledged, signaling themes of grief and the impact of loss on familial bonds.

• Themes of Community and Collaboration: The concept of building a boat serves as a metaphor for facing life’s challenges collectively. It is emphasized that the novel explores the idea that individuals work better together, particularly in times of hardship, promoting a sense of community.

• Neurodivergence and Intellectual Curiosity: The lecturer addresses Jamie’s character as potentially neurodivergent, highlighting his unique intellectual pursuits and struggles with social interactions. His curiosity about the world around him is noted as a significant aspect of his identity.

• Writing Style and Technique: Feeney’s narrative style is identified as lyrical and poetic. The absence of quotation marks in her dialogue is discussed as a stylistic choice that contributes to the fluidity of the narrative, a technique drawing from modernist literature.

• Stream of Consciousness Technique: The use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device allows readers to delve deeply into Jamie's psyche. This technique helps to illuminate his emotional and thought patterns, providing insight into his character's complexities.

• Character Relationships: The lecturer foreshadows the significance of relationships in the novel, particularly between Jamie and Tess, his teacher. Their connection is framed as an emotional and supportive bond that helps Jamie navigate his fears and challenges.

• Future Class Focus: The lecturer outlines plans for future discussions to explore character development, recurring symbols, and narrative structure in relation to the larger themes of identity, trauma, and personal growth, signaling a comprehensive approach to understanding the novel's depth.