Ulysses by James Joyce
Analysis
PUBLICATION : Ulysses is a novel by
the Irish
author James Joyce. It is an experimental novel in
the modernist tradition. It was first serialised in parts in an
American journal in 1920, but it was censored because of obscenity. Then the
ban was lifted and it was published in its entirety in February 1922, in
Paris.
TITLE : Ulysses is the latinised name of Odysseus, the hero
of Homer's poem Odyssey, and the
novel establishes a series of parallels between its characters and events and
those of the poem. Joyce makes his hero, Leopold Bloom, a sort of modern-day
Ulysses. In fact we find the correspondence of Leopold Bloom to Odysseus,
his wife Molly Bloom to Penelope, and Stephen
Dedalus to Telemachus.
STRUCTURE : Ulysses was originally
going to be a short story in Dubliners, but then it grew. It is Joyce's
third book and it is divided into eighteen episodes.
During the composition of Ulysses Joyce compiled a working
outline or "schema", where he divided the book into three main
sections and indicated for each episode:
- the title of each episode,
- the approximate time and place of its setting,
- the bodily organ,
- the "art,"
- the colour,
- the symbol,
- the "technique".
SUMMARY : Joyce's Ulysses is
a novel all set in Dublin, between 8:00 am. and 3:00 am, on the 16th
of June 1904 (the day of Joyce's first date with his future wife).
The main characters are:
- Stephen Dedalus, a young school teacher and aspiring writer,
- Leopold Bloom, a middle-aged Jewish advertising salesman,
- Bloom's wife, the singer Molly Bloom,
- Blazes Boylan, Molly’s concert tour manager (Bloom suspects he is also
Molly’s lover).
The 16th of June is the day when Bloom and Stephen meet:
subconsciously Bloom is looking for a son, to replace a dead one, and Stephen
is looking for a paternal figure.
In the afternoon Bloom is at a pub. Here a belligerent Irish nationalist,
becomes drunk and begins attacking Bloom’s Jewishness. Bloom speaks in favour
of peace and love over xenophobic violence.
Stephen, who is drunk, goes to the most dangerous section of the town and
Bloom, feeling protective, runs after him and finds him in an argument with a
British soldier who knocks him out. Bloom revives Stephen and takes him a
coffee to sober up, then he invites him to his house. Here they talk about
their respective backgrounds.
THEMES :
- Journey : every
human goes on a journey, just as the mythical Odysseus. Bloom's journey lasts
one day and develops in one town, in fact it is an inner journey.
- Infidelity and Sexual Temptation (Molly Bloom and
Blazes Boylan).
- Anti-Semitism : the citizen Insulting Bloom in the pub.
- Paralysis : Joyce wants to portray the paralysis of Dublin at the turn
of the 19th century: it’s both physical, resulting from external
forces, and moral, linked to religion, politics and culture. Dubliners accept
this condition because they don’t have the courage for break this chains: all
Dubliners are spiritually weak and afraid. The main theme is the failure to
find a way out of paralysis: Dubliners live as exiled. Joyce names them “Lotus
eaters” because they seem to have eaten lotus, a sort of drug that causes
mental incapability of reacting, so mental paralysis.
- The Cycles of Life From Birth to Death (Mina Purefoy has a baby and Paddy
Dignam dies)
- Camaraderie (Bar Scenes, Bloom and Dedalus)
HOWEVER,
A DOMINANT THEME IS THAT OF EPIPHANY.
EPIPHANY : The epiphany in Joyce's works consists in a
manifestation, a sudden awareness, a moment when a man discovers the hidden
meaning of things while observing a commonplace object.
In Ulysses the two main characters are both yearning for something more.
As the day progresses, the two characters unknowingly cross paths until they
finally meet. In doing so, they find in each other ideals, in the form of
individual epiphanies, that are needed to complete their yearnings. This is the
epiphany.
Joyce uses this epiphany to represent his theme of the ability of a single day
to act as a microcosm of the many facets of human society. So very important is the power of one day, and the
fact that the epiphany day could be any day, or every day. This is what the
author wants to transmit.
STYLE
:
Ulysses is an
experimental novel in the modernist tradition.
The author writes in third-person point of view. With the stream-of-consciousness Joyce forces readers to
become intimately familiar with his characters' thoughts. This technique allows the reader not only to trace the actions of Bloom's
day, but also to follow the movement of his thoughts, to hear the inner timbre
of his conscience. In the last chapter of the novel Joyce omits punctuation
entirely in order to mimic the uninterrupted flow of naked thoughts.
The prose is experimental: it's full of abbreviations,
repetitions, coined words, passages in all-capital letters. He uses puns, allusions, parodies
(making a parody of The Odyssey). It also uses satire in ridiculing
religion, culture, literary movements, other writers and their styles, people,
places, things, and ideas.
Joyce uses Old English and modern English, refined language and
vulgar language, Dublin vernacular. In addition, he uses numerous sentences and
phrases from Latin, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Italian, and other
languages.
He writes one chapter in the format of a stage play, another in
the format of a Roman Catholic catechism and at times he includes poetry.
Because of all these techniques the novel is difficult to
comprehend for even the most intelligent and informed readers.
FEELINGS
ABOUT IRELAND :
- The imperial
imagery: Joyce
criticizes the tragic consequences of Ireland’s consumption of goods harvested
in the colonies of the New World.
- Mockery
of Religion: in Ulysses, Joyce mocks the Roman Catholic Church and
its rites and pokes fun at the Jesuits, an order of Roman
Catholic priests who educated him.
When he was growing up he was a devout Catholic, but as a young adult Joyce
abandoned his faith because he felt oppressed by its strict rules of morality.
- The consumerism : in the Cyclops
episode Joyce describes
the “superabundance” of the Dublin market. The writer criticizes the way that
political systems use propaganda to create a connection between surplus and
power.
- Joyce is always aware of the intricacy of the Irish question. In Ulysses
we find some clear expressions of the impossible symbiotic relationship between
Ireland and England.
References & Links