Find the prompt here:
Physical energy. Physical energy. I'm going to use this time of freewrite to brainstorm, actually, that's what I'm going to use my physical energy of typing to do. I have to write an essay about James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I have to use two critical essays and form my own argument about the book, or a section of the book. It isn't super long, this essay, it's 2000 words. The essays that I found both deal with the idea that Stephen's journey toward artistic freedom is limited. One essay demonstrates that the journal entries the book ends with are all reflective of other moments within the book, but told in a more basic or comical way, thus undermining those earlier moments' drama or deep beauty. The other essay argues that Stephen, in his supposed artistic freedom, in finding his own voice (through the journal entries) is just mirroring ways of using language that he has inherited from his Catholic upbringing, so not so much freedom after all. Ugh, there is this deep kind of humming happening right now, and I can't tell if it's coming from outside or if it's coming from inside the house. I have noticed that the hum of this refrigerator is kind of a deeper bass type hum that bothers my ear, but I don't think that's what I'm hearing right now.
There's the timer. I never got to what my own argument will be, and I don't know what my own argument will be. I think I agree with both essays. I guess I'm just not so sure that I view it in as negative a light as those authors do? Except I'm not sure they really view it in a negative light, either. I haven't finished one of the essays, though, so we'll see. The own that demonstrates how the journal echoes other parts of the novel really just seems to land on, look what a deft writer Joyce is, and how ironic the ending of the book is.