Agung S. Ongko
Warning from Ms Chia: Don't plagiarise. Not that you can anyway as this won't be coming out again.
VJC H2 LITERATURE
Practical Criticism of Angel Pavement
Write a critical appreciation of the passage, showing in what ways it is characteristic of the modern period.
There are many layers of the passage that indicate its close association to the modern period – a time that marked the world’s transition from the Victorian era to the troubled 20th century. This essay shall demonstrate how the passage is characteristic of this period, by paying particular attention to the themes explored, the characterisation, as well as the style employed by the writer.
The modern period is often linked to the rejection of social norms, conventions, and values that used to be held by the older generation of the 19th century. By dissecting the majestic façade of the tea‐house, this passage expresses the same disapproval of the vulgar hedonism that used to be the hallmark of the late Victorian and Edwardian society. The artificiality of the glamour is first implied by the ‘crazy‐coloured fountains of illumination’, which painted over the ‘blue dusk’ with ‘green and crimson fire’. The natural blue hues of the night sky are distorted by the wild combination of colourful lights, suggesting that the apparent wonders of the tea‐house are actually far removed from nature and the reality. In this case, lights, which are supposed to be a source of lucidity that dispels doubts and uncertainties, become exactly the thing that deceives human senses and perceptions. This light touch of irony at the beginning of the passage already creates an ominous sense of vagueness about the tea‐house; it seems to forewarn the readers of the negative undertones that lie beneath all the hyperbolical descriptions that follow.
The magnificent tea‐house functions as a microcosmic manifestation of the society. As its multiple layers gradually unfold in the paragraph, more of the thoughtless excesses of the society are also revealed. At first, the tea‐house is seen as ‘a white palace with ten thousand lights’, but afterwards, it is also described as the ‘outpost’ of a ‘new barbarism’, and a ‘careless profusion of luxury’. Then, as we go deeper into the tea‐house, behind all the lights and the dizzying luxury, its pomp and fanfare (‘ten thousand lights and acres of white napery…the cauldrons of stewed steak’), we find as the essence of the place a group of men who deal with ‘fractions of a farthing’. This seems to illustrate the absence of a spirit or a soul at the heart of this rich society, a lack of any substantial paradigm that underlies its people and their relationships with each other. As we approach the core of the society, we realise that its fantastic and colourful surface is reduced to mere trivia, an absolute emptiness. Indeed, this crowded tea‐house ‘steamed with humanity’, where it possibly boils over and then evaporates altogether from the place.
The modern period also sees the development of a certain aversion towards industrialism among the artistic community, including writers. This is especially so, as the dawn of industrial advancement and mechanisation was considered to be anti‐humanist, being primarily, if not solely, concerned with workers’ efficiency and, to quite a large extent, depriving humans of other pursuits related to the arts or spiritual development. While this theme is not explored in great detail in the passage, Turgis’s disdain of lifts and his preference for the staircase appear to point quite sharply at the issue; these seem to be potent metaphors for the rejection of industrialism and mechanisation.
Apart from suggesting the above opposition against industrialism, the passage also implies another major phenomenon that occurred during the modern period – the departure from positivistic empiricism and in turn, the acceptance of relativist thinking. The portrayal of a banal routine in the kitchen of the tea‐house as a scientific process, complete with mundane descriptions of a waitress’s physical condition like those in health surveys (‘five‐feet four in height and in average health’), results in a mockery of the precision of the positivistic approach to scientific inquiry. Using phrases like ‘given weight’, and repeating expressions like ‘how many units’ and ‘how many minutes and seconds’, the writer highlights the approach’s obsession with certainty and fixed quantities, which runs in counter with relativism and the increasingly popular concept then of entropy – that the world moves naturally towards a state of chaos and disorder.
The acceptance of relativism is also specifically expressed in the juxtaposition of activities in the upper storeys and the basement of the tea‐house. While ‘a warm sensuous vulgar life’ goes on in the former, ‘cold science’ works in the latter. This emphasises the fact that how the tea‐house appears is largely dependent on one’s viewpoint; from the perspective of a waitress working in the basement, the tea‐house is simply another industrial factory, but from Turgis’s perspective, the tea‐house is a dreamland (‘high midsummer of confectionery’) that offers him ‘all the enchantment of unfamiliar luxury’. In other words, the contradiction in the tea‐house is actually an acknowledgment of relativism’s place in the modern period, an affirmation that perspective plays a significant role in determining what and how we know.
The character in the passage, Turgis, also distinctively belongs to the modern period. As a delusional dreamer, he seeks to indulge in the ephemeral pleasures of the tea‐house (a transitory ‘railway station’), and continues to be overwhelmed by his own imagination that he is well‐to‐do. The writer suggests that Turgis perhaps thinks of his arrival at the tea‐house as an occasion more momentous than even the looting of ‘whole kingdoms’ and the conquest of ‘half the known world’, and this delusion is further accentuated by the pause between the third and fourth paragraphs. Before directly mentioning that the tea‐house ‘was built for a great many other people too’, the writer actually dedicates a paragraph to express that ‘the place was built for him [Turgis]’, underlining the ironic lie that Turgis probably tells himself.
Yet, even with the high hopes and dreams that he harbours, Turgis is still very much a lone character who is subject to whatever fate deals him in the wildly indulgent society. ‘There was no picking and choosing your [his] company at the table’, and he ‘had to take the seat they offered you [him]’. Ultimately, in Turgis’s journey to seek enjoyment and find meaning in his interaction with the society, he has to directly confront its excesses and paradoxical hollowness, as personified exactly by the people with whom he shares the table – the two ‘stout’, ‘voluble’ middle‐aged lady, and the middle‐aged man who ‘would shrink to nothing but spectacles, a nose, a collar, and a pair of boots’. Indeed, the challenges of the modern period are reflected by the characters in this passage and their experience.
In terms of writing style, this passage is characteristic of the modern period, as it is unadorned by 19th century sentimentalism, which normally entails emotionally‐charged diction and characterisation. Such rejection of sentimentalism is actually done by modernist writers to establish some distance from their writings, and maintain the objectivity of their voices. The descriptions of the tea‐house in this passage are very vivid, but in general, they merely evoke a sense of awe and amazement – sentiments that are not particularly personal, even rather distant, in nature. In the same way, there is also little evidence of much attempt at all on the writer’s part to specifically win our sympathy, or any other strong emotions for that matter, for Turgis. Other than drawing our attention to Turgis’s unluckiness in the last paragraph, the writer maintains a certain emotional distance from the passage. In other words, the writer’s subjectivity does not significantly intrude on our experience of the passage.
The modernists’ desire to remain objective in their writings also translates to the use of external means, including any objects and situations outside of their characters, to explore these characters’ individual subjectivity. This method is evident in the passage, as shown by the analysis of Turgis’s predicament as a member of the society through the dissection of the tea‐house’s grand façade, as well as through his encounter with the three unusual characters in the tea‐house. Instead of illustrating clearly to the readers what Turgis thinks and feels, the writer uses the world around Turgis to explain his situation.
The themes, characters, and the style of the passage show that it is indeed a creative legacy of the modern period, born out of a shift in the societal paradigm brought about by the transition from the 19th to 20th century. A sense of rejection against the past norms and values, even the status quo, permeates the passage, while a yearning to embrace the new century’s new ideas is woven subtly into the paragraphs. At the same time, the challenges facing Turgis are laid out as a warning against the temptations of hedonistic lifestyle in the modern period. Even more than that, Turgis’s encounter with the contradiction between excesses and hollowness could be an impetus to further self‐discovery on the part of the readers then, especially in the midst of all the changes at the turn of the century.
Comments: excellent work, with great attention to detail and subtlety of expression. :)
