The Proteus chapter has been the most experimental chapter we have read so far. By experimental I mean that it was incredibly elusive and hard to follow. As the title of the chapter calls itself Proteus, the shape-shifting ruler of the sea (second to Poseidon), I could have anticipated a radical departure from continuity and a radical interpretation of the changing of form.
Rather than the change of body, “Proteus” as a shape shifter, is better personified by Steven’s change of mind. As he first steps on the beach his mind dwells on what he sees, and looks at everything with equal scrutiny. “Signatures of things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snot green, bluesilver, rust; colored signs.” But then he decides to close his eyes and everything goes haywire. Stevens mind begins to go one hundred miles an hour, changing from this to that. Sometimes not even reaching a full sentence. Just a word, and then something else. He dives into his past, then back to the present, then into the further past, and then the future. All the while, the passages are written with the same amount of importance. At times, for example when he thinks about going to his aunt and uncles house, I couldn’t figure out if he was just thinking about it or actually going there. In conjunction with Homer, it is the reader who is Menelaus and Steven’s thought process personifies Proteus. It is a beautiful comparison; Proteus and the mind.
One part that I found very confusing is when Steven find the dogsbody. I am still not sure whether it is Steven who transforms into a dogsbody, or whether he just sees it. Remember, the dog goes over the smell the dogsbody.
“Ah, good old dogsbody. Here lies dogsbody’s body.
-Tatters! Get out of that, you mongrel.
The cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk back in a curve. Doesn’t see me…”
I cant tell whether it is Steven or the dogsbody that the master calls his dog away from. Does the dogsbody refer to the way Steven sees himself? Or the way he assumes other people to see him?