Preview

Under The Eye Of The Clock Analysis

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1322 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Under The Eye Of The Clock Analysis
The book Under the Eye of the Clock written by Christopher Nolan, is an autobiography written in the style of a biography about a boy named Joseph Meehan. In the novel which is written in prose form, Nolan describes his life as though he were watching it unfold rather than as a participant. The places and people identified within the novel seem to be the actual places and people from Nolan’s own life. The setting for most of the novel takes place in Dublin and Corcloon in Ireland. The title of the book, no doubt is a reference to the clock tower on the campus of Mount Temple, in which Joseph Meehan attends school through most of the book. Through his writing Nolan delivers the experiences of an individual who is afflicted with cerebral palsy. The main character, Joseph Meehan who is a self-described mute and crippled lives at home with his family. Joseph, like Nolan, is born in Westmeath Co and lives with …show more content…
While enrolled as a student in the CRC, there was a performance being given in which the entire school was to attend, but as his friend and spokesman was absent that day, nobody thought to bring Joseph, so he had to sit alone in the classroom throughout the performance. Throughout the performance, Joseph is left with only his thoughts to keep him company, a skill in which he is masterful. Joseph’s isolation is grounded not in the notion that nobody interacts with him, as that is clearly not the case, but rather in the lack of control of his own body. Joseph has an unable body, but a mind that works as beautifully as any other human being with which he comes into contact. His very dependency on others’ and their willingness to provide him with normal childhood experiences and overlook his unable body is also what fuels his feeling of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    P, a man who teaches music at a school and is unable to see or recognize faces. It is difficult for him to see a whole person or picture, instead he focuses on specific elements at a time that allow him to know (for the most part) what he is seeing. Sacks recognizes that Dr. P sees by his ears, he is able to recognize where a person is standing and who is talking to him by the individual’s voice. Dr. P is unable to recognize emotions anon faces, and is only able to tell people apart by noticeable factors such as mustaches or prominent features. Sacks seemed to think Dr. P was lost in a world of lifeless abstractions, but he was still able to maintain and express his intelligence. Chapter 4, is brief, yet is illustrates the experience of a man who fell out of bed because he believed his leg was a corpse’s leg. He awoke and was terrified to find a cadaver leg in bed with him, and when he pushed it off his bed he too fell off, because the offensive leg was actually his. This man was experiencing a complete loss of awareness of his hemiplegic…

    • 567 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poet asks if someone else is “not there too,” revealing that he feels isolated and detached from others and his exaggerated…

    • 410 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    These preconceived notions regarding the asylum force himself to ask, “Why can’t I ever say no?” as he realises the ‘madness’ he has gotten himself into. As the play progresses, the characterization of Lewis develops through continuous interaction with the patients which allows him to recognise them as ‘normal people who have done extraordinary things’, which is how Justin explained them at the beginning. The turning point for Lewis is when he chooses to continue work on the play instead of assisting his friend Nick with the Moratorium, showing that he has realised how much more important working in the asylum is than the trivial real world problems which Nick focuses on. The stronger the bond becomes between Lewis and the patients the easier it is for the audience and Lewis himself to realise how unjust the real world is by placing stereotypical prejudices on the…

    • 724 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the play, ‘Cosi’, by playwright Louis Nowra, the character of Lewis changes through the interactions with the patients in a mental asylum, resulting in a different outlook on the world and towards those around him. The play, set in the milieu of the Vietnam War, Lewis’ political radicalism in supporting Nick reflects his initial social views, his narrow mindness changes throughout the course of the play as Lewis sees the world through the eyes of the patients and becomes more of an empathetic and understanding character who begins to value relationships and people. Firstly, Lewis appears narrow minded and fixed on particular views on the world and people, appears rigid and unable to understand the perspectives of those around him. Secondly, Julie is a catalyst in the play that ignites Lewis to open himself up to love and affection as well as shift from the general consensus that mental patients are almost ‘weird’ and unfit to interact in society. Thirdly, Lewis’ relationship with Henry becomes a turning point in his change in which Henry’s fresh perspective and passionate views on the war, encourage Lewis to similarly think outside the box and come to a stark realization of his own views and beliefs. Finally, the patients injected into Lewis’ life as a whole, impact his social understanding, the people around him and who he truly is as a person and his deeper purpose in life. Nowra maps the transformation and moral awakening of his protagonist Lewis through several key moments that both shape and define his perception on the world.…

    • 569 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Theme: John’s traumatic experience start when he is only a child, resulting in his backwards social practices and increased secrecy later in life.…

    • 445 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    This paragraph is the introduction to the whole novel. Usually an author would use some background information about the main character, or maybe even the time period, but not this one. This author chose to introduce her book with a long metaphor about dreams, men’s in specific. This metaphor talks of how the dreams of man are like ships on the horizon, always in sight but never in reach. She implies that no man has control over his dreams, and that no matter what they do; it is only by chance that they will achieve these dreams. Another important part of this paragraph is that “Time” is capitalized, as if it were a person mocking the Watcher by showing them what they can never achieve, and aging them so that they will never even have a chance.[…

    • 1616 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Whenever you have to give 110% you are definitely doing something right. When you give 110% you are giving your dedication and passion into it. After a close examination of the way Wade Watts in, Ready Player One, reacts to hardships is similar to the way Aria in, Through The Ever Night, reacts to situations that require passion and dedication to solve. Both of the authors use description and revealing actions to show how the characters dedication and passion pays off.…

    • 800 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Clockwork Three,” a fictional novel written by Matthew J. Kirby highlights the struggles of the three main characters: Hannah, Giuseppe and Frederick. Each character has a set of bitter elements in their lives. Hannah’s father had become ill and therefore, could no longer provide for the family; this forced Hannah to quit her schooling and find work. Giuseppe was taken from his family and was purchased to play music on the streets in order to have the means to pay his cruel master. Frederick was orphaned by his mother, and bought by a clockmaker. Although he has a somewhat happy present life, he has a painful past he tries not to remember. In my cover, I tried to highlight the darkness of the story by making the scene at night which signifies the small amount of light in each of the…

    • 468 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Andrew’s younger years, Bauer describes her son with some normal and eccentric qualities. He had no problem with being educated in the classroom, but lacked other skills. “The things he couldn’t…

    • 717 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Beat The Clock Analysis

    • 609 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In More Working Parents Play “Beat the Clock,” the author, Gardner, challenges that because work is so time consuming, one becomes deprived of quality time with the family. She aims her point that the deprivation causes one to face the underlaying problems pertaining to one’s family and to one’s own health.…

    • 609 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Asher Lev

    • 1068 Words
    • 5 Pages

    In human culture throughout the centuries there have been a select few gifted souls that have graced this earth. Each one special in there own way and talented beyond what the world has ever seen before. In the book My Name is Asher Lev we encounter one of these incredible prodigies. Asher’s story is similar to many other talented individuals in that he is raised in circumstances that seem less than suitable for a budding talent. This is a typical problem for the gifted because they do not view the world the same as others who may be close to them view it. It is a monumentally different place to the gifted.…

    • 1068 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Be My Brother

    • 960 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The short film “Be My Brother” explores the concept of isolation through disabilities. Richard the protagonist is born with a disability and is isolated from society. Richard feels as though he doesn’t exist around his brother Damien. As the film progresses, Richard the protagonist meets a girl names Amanda and she neglects him at first, though she discovers another side to him, and so form a relationship with him. Social acceptance is the process of affiliation with society, but within the film “Be My Brother” it begins with the exclusion of the main character that has a disability. This is evident when Richard meets Amanda for the first time. As she see’s Richard approaching, she immediately moves towards the edge of the seat. The wide shot used in this scene indicates Amanda’s discomfort, where it demonstrates her fear towards people who are physically different. Furthermore, as Richard offers his hand to Amanda for a handshake, she quickly touches his hand, and faces the other way. The close up shot…

    • 960 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Inside of this section, the first of section three, we the gathering of people are understanding the change in bypassing and society that has happened inside of our "humble narrator's" environment. We understand that Alex yet changed still keeps up the same phrenic origination process which in a substance advances the set that Alex has yet to transmute as a character while though around him have moved alongside the times. A perfect sample of suc is displayed when Alex returns home and optically observes that his room had been leased to an…

    • 93 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Striving of the Negro People

    • 2720 Words
    • 11 Pages

    And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first burst upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards—ten cents a package—and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card,—refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the world I longed for, and all its dazzling…

    • 2720 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Stout shows that the only way to fix this form of selflessness is through a conscious decision made by an individual. Dissociation is when an individual’s mind separates from the physical body, in a way that the individual can be psychologically absent (Stout 426). This idea of dissociation relates to Thurman’s idea of selflessness in that there is no fixed sense of self because the psychological self can become absent, at times for days on end. In a sense individuals who experience dissociation have a fluid self because their self can switch from being either present or absent. However, unlike the happiness and freedom Thurman would expect from the individual’s Stout mentions, there is an overwhelming sense of isolation and depression. This is because of how the individuals formed the selflessness they experience. In the case of Julia, she began dissociating at an early age because her mind developed the reaction to dissociate, or become selfless, because of constant abuse from her parents (Stout 426). Without Julia’s knowledge, she began to develop a fluid self that was carried with her in her adult life. Similarly to Julia, a patient named Seth describes how dissociation feels: “I’m completely alone, more alone than you can imagine” (Stout 434). Why does Seth feel isolation from his selflessness instead of freedom and happiness? It is due to the fact that both Seth and…

    • 1660 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays