ENG 2150 Gimme Shelter: the spaces we live in

Author George Simmel describes the majority of those living within a metropolis as being, “blase.” The constant external and internal stimuli that one experiences during everyday leads one to eventually become jaded, or totally un-phased by their surroundings. This advertisement I found definitely reminds me of what we talked about in class. Its an ad for Lego with just one block and on the bottom it reads, “imagine.” This made me think of Simmel’s use of blase because the company, one of which has been famous for such a long time, doesn’t put much effort into advertising their product here. It seems almost apathetic in the sense that everyone with a little kid or knows a little kid knows what Legos are. The Lego company wants its audience to create their own image for what legos should look like by just putting the word imagine in the bottom left corner.

If this is what Lego was aiming for I could see how people in a big city like New York could relate to this ad. People who see this on a billboard don’t need to see anything more than a Lego symbol, or a simple block. They don’t require any fresh or attention grabbing ad. Everyone, according to Simmel, is sort of numb to their environment, so an ad as simple as this may be as sufficient as any other.

“A quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office or the alarmlock next door at cockshout clattering the brain out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so that I can get up early.” (1922, rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986, p. 642).

James Joyce’s famous novel, Ulysses, is known for its vast use of the stream of consciousness as proposed by William James. When first investigating the assignment I was unclear as to what would remind me of the stream of consciousness. After better understanding the meaning of the phrase,  I chose  this quote from Ulysses. The narrator appears to be restless in his attempt to find slumber, as his mind is racing from one thought to the next. He begins to ponder the fact that people far away from him in China are waking up from their night of sleep while he still hasn’t found any. He then drifts off into thought regarding priests and their sleep patterns, and then counts to five in his head seeing if he can fall asleep. This pattern of random thought continues on, as his thoughts ramble.

As we stated in class, James infers that the stream of consciousness suggests that a person’s mind is never static, so that our thoughts are continuously running with no lapse in between. The narrator in Ulysses runs from thought to thought never giving a moment to breathe. It’s a perfect example of how a restless person tries to fall asleep at night. You get the feeling of a continuous thought process from this quote due to the fact there are no periods or commas present in the writing. With no grammatical pause in the writing, the narrator’s thoughts seem to form a perfect “stream” of consciousness. This element in Joyce’s writing corresponds accurately to James’ description of the stream of consciousness.