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The plot and theme of James Joyce’s Ulysses center on life as a journey. Joyce based the
framework of his novel on the structure of one of the greatest and most influential works in
world literature, The Odyssey, by Homer. In this epic poem of ancient Greece, Homer
presented the journey of life as a heroic adventure. The protagonist of this epic tale,
Odysseus (Roman name, Ulysses), encounters many perils–including giants, angry gods,
and monsters–during his voyage home to Ithaca, Greece, after the Trojan War. In Joyce’s
20th Century novel, the author also depicts life as a journey, in imitation of Homer. But
Joyce presents this journey as humdrum, dreary, and uneventful. Joyce’s Ulysses is a
Jew of Hungarian origin, Leopold Bloom, who lives in Dublin, Ireland. His adventure
consists of getting breakfast, feeding his cat, going to a funeral, doing legwork for his job,
visiting pubs or restaurants, and thinking about his unfaithful wife. His activities parallel in
some way the adventures of Homer’s Ulysses.
An example is Bloom’s attendance at a funeral in a chapter entitled “Hades.” This chapter
parallels an episode in The Odyssey in which Ulysses visits Hades, the land of the dead
(or Underworld) in Greek mythology. Bloom’s unfaithful wife, Molly, represents the faithful
wife of Ulysses, Penelope. A young aspiring writer, Stephen Dedalus, represents the son
of Ulysses, Telemachus, who searches for his father. Although Dedalus is not Bloom’s
son, Dedalus nonetheless is depicted as searching for a father figure to replace his own
drunken father.
Setting
The action in Joyce’s novel takes place in Dublin, Ireland, and the shore east of Dublin on
the Irish Sea. The entire story unfolds on June 16, 1904, except for a few hours on the
morning of June 17. Joyce chose June 16 as the date for most of the action in the novel
as a kind of commemoration of the day when he met his inamorata, Nora Barnacle.
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The Chapters
Telemachus: The narrator introduces Stephen Dedalus, representing Homer’s
Telemachus, along with friends of Dedalus.
Nestor: Stephen teaches a lesson in Greek at a school where an elderly man, Garrett
Deasy, is headmaster. Deasy represents The Odyssey’s King Nestor of Pylos (or Pílos), a
wise advisor to the Greeks during the Trojan War. Telemachus visits Nestor in quest of
information about his father, who has not returned from Troy. Joyce uses Deasy to parody
The Odyssey, for Deasy is anything but wise. He even needs Stephen’s help with a letter
to the editor of The Evening Telepgraph on foot-and-mouth disease. Proteus: In Greek
mythology, Proteus could change his physical form at will. In Joyce’s novel, the language
in the “Proteus” chapter exhibits many forms.
Calypso: The narrator introduces Leopold Bloom, the protagonist, who is preparing
breakfast in his home while his wife sleeps. In The Odyssey, Calypso is an immortal
nymph and daughter of the Titan Atlas. She lives on an island on which she holds Ulysses
as a love captive. Bloom’s wife, Molly, represents Calypso in that she holds her husband
captive in a marriage even though she is unfaithful to him. Lotus Eaters: This chapter
centers in part on mind-altering substances and on religion (which Marx called “the opium
of the people”). In The Odyssey, the crewmen from the ship of Ulysses eat lotus plants
after they arrive on the northern coast of Africa (present-day Libya). They then lapse into
euphoria.
Hades: Leopold Bloom attends a funeral. His confrontation with death parallels the
voyage of Ulysses into the Underworld. Aeolus: In The Odyssey, Aeolus was king of the
winds and ruler of an island. He gives Ulysses a bag of winds to speed his ship on its
journey. In Joyce’s novel, the island of the winds is a newspaper office. Bloom and
Dedalus are both there at the same time—Bloom to purchase an advertisement and
Dedalus to submit Deasy’s letter (“Nestor” chapter). In various conversations, there are
references to wind. For example, Professor MacHugh says, “The tribune’s words, howled
and scattered to the four winds.” Other references by different characters include the
following: “Reaping the whirlwind,” “Gone with the wind,” “The sack of windy Troy, “Funny
the way those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new opening,” and
“Enough of that inflated windbag.” Lestrygonians (variant spellings: Laestrygonians,
Laistrygones): The Lestrygonians were giants who ate many of Ulysses’ men. In this
chapter in Joyce’s novel, eating also takes place: Bloom eats a gorgonzola cheese
sandwich and drinks a glass of burgundy at Davy Byrne’s pub. There are also references
to cannibalism in a paragraph about food:
Sardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich? Ham and his
descendants mustered and bred there. Potted meats. What is home without Plumtree’s
potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad! Under the obituary notices they stuck it. All up
a plumtree. Dignam’s potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White
missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour.
Ought to be tough from exercise.
Scylla and Charybdis: In The Odyssey, Scylla is a six-headed monster poised on a rock
on one side of a strait. It eats men from the ship of Ulysses as it passes by. Charybdis is a
whirlpool near the opposite side that will swallow the ship if it veers too close. At the
National Library, Stephen discusses Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife, claiming
she was unfaithful. Her activity, he says, influenced Shakespeare’s writing, notably in
Hamlet. Dedalus’s friends challenge his views (perhaps the way Scylla and Charybdis
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challenged Ulysses). Dedalus also challenges their views, like a a monster such as Scylla.
Bloom is elsewhere in the library conducting research.
Wandering Rocks: This chapter focuses on characters who wander through Dublin.
Sirens: While Bloom dines in the Ormond Hotel, he ogles attractive barmaids
representing the Sirens in The Odyssey. Cyclops: In a pub, a man called “the citizen”
insults Bloom with anti-Semitic language. Because of his stupidity and blind prejudice, he
parallels The Odyssey’s cyclops, a one-eyed giant. Nausicca: In this chapter, Bloom
encounters a lame young girl, Gerty MacDowell, who solicits him. She represents–in a
mundane, ordinary way–the beautiful maiden Nausicaa, who escorts Ulysses to the court
of her father, Alcinous, the king of the Phaeacians. The lameness of Gerty may symbolize
what Joyce believes is the lameness of organized religion. Oxen of the Sun: Bloom goes
to the National Maternity Hospital on Holles Street to check on his friend, Mrs. Mina
Purefoy, who gives birth. There, he encounters Dedalus. Dedalus and Buck Mulligan are
having a drink with medical students who are friends of Mulligan. The language Joyce
uses in this chapter ranges from Old English to modern English as Joyce traces the
English language from gestation to birth. A reference to oxen (which include domesticated
cows and bulls) occurs in this chapter when discussions of a newspaper account (Deasy’s
letter) say that diseased cattle may have to be killed. “ ‘Tis all about Kerry cows that are to
be butchered along of the plague,” says a character named Frank. Also, a newly born calf
is spoken of in the same paragraph in which the birth of a human is discussed:
It should perhaps be stated that staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lowerclass
licensed victuallers signifies the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from
its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) which took place
in the commons’ hall of the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, of
which, as is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Midw., F. K. Q. C. P. I.) is the able and
popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once a woman has
let the cat into the bag (an esthete’s allusion, presumably, to one of the most complicated
and marvellous of all nature’s processes—the act of sexual congress) she must let it out
again or give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk of her own, was the
telling rejoinder of his interlocutor, none the less effective for the moderate and measured
tone in which it was delivered.
Circe: Dedalus and Bloom visit a brothel operated by Bella Cohen, the parallel of The
Odyssey’s Circe, a sorceress-temptress. Eumaeus: Bloom and Dedalus go to a cabman’s
shelter to eat. There, they encounter a drunken sailor, D. B. Murphy of Carrigaloe, who
has traveled the world, like Ulysses, and is expected soon to reunite with his wife. Ithaca:
Dedalus goes with Bloom to the latter’s home, where they continue their conversation. In
Homer’s Odyssey, Ithaca is the home of Ulysses, to which he returns after many years at
sea. Among the major events in this chapter are conversation and a urination scene in the
back yard. Although Bloom invites Dedalus to stay for the night, Dedalus goes home. The
chapter is written in the style of a Roman Catholic catechism. Penelope:This chapter
enters the mind of Bloom’s wife, Molly, and presents her thoughts in 24,195 words and
only one punctuation mark, a period at the end of the chapter.
Characters
Leopold Bloom: Jewish advertising representative.
Stephen Dedalus: Young aspiring writer.
Marion Tweedy (Molly) Bloom: Wife of Leopold Bloom.
Buck Mulligan: Irritating freind of Stephen Dedalus.
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Simom Dedalus: Father of Stephen.
Garrett Deasy: School headmaster.
Mina Purefoy: Woman undergoing labor; a friend of Bloom.
Gerty MacDowell: Young girl who propositions Bloom.
Blazes Boylan: Man having an affair with Bloom’s wife.
Haines: Oxford student visiting Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus.
Richie Goulding: Stephen’s Uncle.
Mina Kennedy, Lydia Douce: barmaids.
Lynch: Friend of Mulligan
D.B. Murphy: Sailor.
The Citizen: Man who insults Bloom with anti-Semitic remarks.
Bella Cohen: Operator of a brothel.
Priests, Newspapermen, Bar Patrons, Businessmen, Other Residents of Dublin
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cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the well-fed voice beside him.
The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had
stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her
rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.
.......Dedalus then chides Mulligan: “Do you remember the first day I went to your house
after my mother’s death?” Mulligan can’t recall so Dedalus reminds him that when Buck’s
mother asked who was with him, he replied, “O, it’s only Dedalus whose mother is beastly
dead.” Stephen says the remark offended him.
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photography and has a boyfriend who may try to take advantage of her. The letter brings
back memories of his other child, Rudy, who died when he was 11 days old, and of his
father, Rudolph, who committed suicide. The following passage later in the novel
describes events surrounding the death of Bloom’s father:
The Queen’s Hotel, Ennis, county Clare, where Rudolph Bloom (Rudolf Virag) died on the
evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour unstated, in consequence of an overdose of
monkshood (aconite) selfadministered in the form of a neuralgic liniment composed of 2
parts of aconite liniment to 1 of chloroform liniment (purchased by him at 10.20 a.m. on
the morning of 27 June 1886 at the medical hall of Francis Dennehy, 17 Church street,
Ennis) after having, though not in consequence of having, purchased at 3.15 p.m. on the
afternoon of 27 June 1886 a new boater straw hat, extra smart (after having, though not in
consequence of having, purchased at the hour and in the place aforesaid, the toxin
aforesaid), at the general drapery store of James Cullen, 4 Main street, Ennis.
.......Bloom interrupts his preparations to go to the butcher’s shop for a pork kidney he’ll fry
for himself. He then returns and serves breakfast to Molly, a professional singer of only
modest talent, while his pork kidney burns on the stove. When he returns to the kitchen,
he eats and enjoys the kidney. Bloom treats Molly well even though he knows she is
having an affair with Blazes Boylan, who is arranging a series of concert performances for
her, and hasn’t had relations with Leopold for years. .......After leaving home, Bloom sits
through part of a mass at a Roman Catholic Church, then attends the funeral of his friend,
Paddy Dignam. On the way to the church, he rides in a carriage with Simon Dedalus,
Stephen’s father, and two others. They make make small talk about death and about a
tramline. It is a “paltry funeral,” the narration says: “coach and three carriages. It’s all the
same. Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death. Beyond the
hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit. Simnel cakes those are,
stuck together: cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits. Who ate them? Mourners coming out.”
.......During the funeral, presided over by Father Coffey, Bloom thinks about the gas that
corpses fill up with:
What swells him up that way? Molly gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the place maybe.
Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of badgas round the place. Butchers, for
instance: they get like raw beefsteaks. Who was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down in the
vaults of saint Werburgh’slovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the
coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. Onewhiff of that
and you’re a doner. Afterward, he stops by The Evening Telegraph to arrange for the
printing of an advertisement. There, he crosses paths with Stephen Dedalus, although
they do not speak to each other. Later, Bloom continues his odyssey through Dublin, first
stopping for a cheese sandwich at a pub, then at the National Library to research
newspaper documents relating to the publication of the ad at the newspaper. Again, he
crosses paths with Stephen Dedalus, who is there with Buck Mulligan and others
discussing Shakespeare.
.......In the afternoon, Bloom has a lunch of liver and cods’ roes at the Ormond Hotel. With
him is Richie Goulding, Stephen’s uncle. A lively group of others–including Stephen’s
father, Simon–sings at a piano while Bloom eyes two attractive barmaids, Mina Kennedy
and Lydia Douce. He just misses seeing Blazes Boylan, who is leaving the same hotel to
rendezvous with Bloom’s wife, Molly, at 4:30.
At another pub, Barney Kiernan’s, a drunken man identified by the narrator as “the citizen”
insults Bloom with anti-Semitic taunts. Bloom defends himself, and another man, Martin,
joins the fray. Here is the dialogue:
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Bloom
-Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the
Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.
Martin
-He had no father, says Martin. That’ll do now. Drive ahead.
The Citizen
-Whose God? says the citizen.
Bloom
-Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me.
When Bloom leaves, the drunk hurls a tin container at him. So Bloom becomes an
outcast who, like so many other Jews before him and like Ulysses in Homer’s Odyssey,
must endure a diaspora. .......In the evening, Bloom slips his hand into his pocket when
he observes young Gerty MacDowell, “as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as
one could wish to see,” the narrator says of her. She propositions him and reveals her
underwear. But Bloom has already spent himself and ignores her.
At around 10 o’clock, the wanderer next visits the National Maternity Hospital on Holles
Street to check on the condition of his friend, Mrs. Mina Purefoy, who has been in labor
for three days. For the third time, he crosses paths with Stephen Dedalus, who is
drinking with Buck Mulligan and his friends. Bloom is disappointed to see that the son of
his friend, Simon Dedalus, is allowing alcohol and questionable companions divert him
from gainful intellectual pursuits. After Mrs. Purefoy has her child, Bloom follows
Stephen and his friends to a pub, Burke’s, where Stephen boozes on absinthe. Bloom
then continues to follow when Stephen and one of the young men–Lynch, a medical
student–visit a brothel. The experience makes Bloom think of Boylan and Molly
together. Stephen has a disturbing thought of his own: He imagines he sees his dead
mother asking him to pray for him, as she did before she died. .......Out on the street,
drunk, Stephen gets into a fight with two soldiers. After one of the soldiers, knocks
Stephen down, Bloom comes to his aid as a crowd watches and policemen come to the
scene. One of the soldiers, Private Carr, steps forward and tells one of the policemen
that Stephen insulted his girlfriend. Bloom, however, defends Stephen, saying, “ You hit
him without provocation. I’m a witness. Constable, take his regimental number.”
Another man, Corny Kelleher, says he knows Bloom and says he won money at the
races thanks to a tip Bloom gave him on a horse named Throwaway. The police
disperse the crowd and agree to forget the incident, and Bloom shakes the hands of
both policemen, saying, “Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you. We don’t want
any scandal, you understand. Father [Simon Dedalus] is a wellknown highly respected
citizen. Just a little wild oats, you understand.” One of the policemen, referred to as the
“Second Watch,” confirms that he will not have to report the incident, saying, “It was
only in case of corporal injuries I’d have to report it at the station.”
.......Bloom and Dedalus then go to a cabman’s shelter to get something to eat. There,
they encounter a drunken sailor, D. B. Murphy of Carrigaloe, who has traveled the
world, like Ulysses. He tells Bloom and Dedalus:
I’ve circumnavigated a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China
and North America and South America. We was chased by pirates one voyage. I seen
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icebergs plenty, growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the Dardanelles under
Captain Dalton, the best bloody man that ever scuttled a ship. I seen Russia.
GOSPODI POMILYOU. That’s how the Russians prays.
Murphy also presents this picture of his travels:
I seen a Chinese one time . . . that had little pills like putty and he put them in the water
and they opened and every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a
house, another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup . . . the chinks does.
Later, while Bloom converses with Dedalus, the subjects of violence, hatred, and
prejudice come up, and Bloom says, “I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or
form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due
instalments plan. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they
live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so to speak.”
People tend to accuse Jews of creating trouble, Bloom says, adding, “ Not a vestige of
truth in it, I can safely say. History, would you be surprised to learn, proves up to the
hilt Spain decayed when the inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered
when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer
for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper spirit. They are
practical and are proved to be so.
.......Eventually, Bloom takes Stephen home with him. He has to break in because he
has forgotten the key. After he serves cocoa to Stephen, they talk about science, art,
and Judaism. Bloom asks Stephen to stay at his residence, but Stephen rejects his
offer and leaves. .......After Bloom goes to bed, Molly remains awake. She muses
about Blazes Boylan and her younger days. Her thoughts then shift to food, wine, sex,
other married couples (including a husband who goes to bed with his boots on), her
singing of Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” war, soldiers passing in review, bullfighting, and
Stephen–how it would be if he did stay at the Bloom home. She also recalls the days
when she met Leopold. The passage that ends the novel focuses on acceptance of her
husband: the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to
kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we
missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O
that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the
glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little
streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the
jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of
the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I
wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well
him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked
me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes
and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart
was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
Themes
Every human goes on a journey, just as the mythical Odysseus (Roman name, Ulysses)
did in his heroic adventures in Homer’s Odyssey. But in the real life of modern man, this
journey is generally humdrum and uneventful, as in Joyce’s Ulysses, rather than heroic.
The novel presents many other themes, or sub-themes. Examples are the following:
Infidelity (Molly Bloom and Blazes Boylan)
Guilt (Stephen Dedalus and His Mother)
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Anti-Semitism (The Citizen Insulting Bloom)
The Influence of Shakespeare (Dedalus and His Shakespeare Theory)
Sexual Temptation (Bloom Ogling Gerty Macdowell and Others) The Cycles of Life From
Birth to Death (Mina Purefoy’s and the Death of Paddy Dignam)
Religion as a Nefarious Influence (Numerous References and Allusions)
Camaraderie (Bar Scenes, Bloom and Dedalus)
Dates of Publication
Magazine: Between 1918 and 1920, several installments appeared in The Little Review, a
U.S publication, but American authorities banned publication of additional installments,
declaring the book obscene. Book: After Sylvia Beach, owner of a Parisian bookstore
called Shakespeare & Co., agreed to sponsor publication of the novel, the first copies
were placed on sale on February 2, 1922, Joyce’s birthday. On August 7, 1934, an
American appeals court ruled in favor of publication of the complete novel by Random
House.
Type of Work
Ulysses is an experimental novel in the modernist tradition. It uses parody in its imitation
of The Odyssey. It also uses satire and burlesque in ridiculing religion, culture, literary
movements, other writers and their styles, and many other people, places, things, and
ideas.
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At times, he includes poetry, like the following triplet written in capital letters:
BEHOLD THE MANSION REARED BY DEDAL JACK SEE THE MALT STORED IN
MANY A REFLUENT SACK, IN THE PROUD CIRQUE OF JACKJOHN’S BIVOUAC.
Repetition also occurs frequently, as in the following passage:
Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly.
Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li
Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant.
Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye.
The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves
Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain
person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody
but God loves everybody. Joyce’s bag of tricks also includes the following passage that
associates members of a wedding with trees, in response a barroom discussion about
the necessity to preserve the forests:
The fashionable international world attended EN MASSE this afternoon at the wedding
of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the Irish National
Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara
Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy
Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss
Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs Maud
Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss
Grace Poplar, Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and
Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Mrs Kitty Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs
Gloriana Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma Holyoake
of Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their presence. The bride who was given
away by her father, the M’Conifer of the Glands, looked exquisitely charming in a
creation carried out in green mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming
grey, sashed with a yoke of broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of
darkerhued fringe, the scheme being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn
bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer, sisters of
the bride, wore very becoming costumes in the same tone, a dainty MOTIF of plume
rose being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and repeated capriciously in the
jadegreen toques in the form of heron feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor
presided at the organ with his wellknown ability and, in addition to the prescribed
numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and striking arrangement of WOODMAN,
SPARE THAT TREE at the conclusion of the service. On leaving the church of Saint
Fiacre IN HORTO after the papal blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful
crossfire of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, hollyberries,
mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a
quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest. All of these stylistic and technical devices, and
many more, help Joyce to depict his world as multifarious, like the motley-coated world
of Homer’s Odyssey, with all of its strange peoples and unfamiliar climes. But, of
course, Joyce’s world is mundane Dublin, reductio ad absurdam. These devices also
enable Joyce to show the world what a clever fellow he is. However, at times, his
language games and obscure allusions, many of which he admittedly designed to
confound “the college professors,” mar the novel, and many readers abandon it after
plowing through a chapter or two.
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Is Stream of Consciousness a Flawed Technique?
Stream of consciousness (described above) attempts to present the unedited,
uncensored, free-flowing thoughts of a person. However, Joyce and other writers who
use this technique do so with forethought and calculation. They are creating the
thoughts of fictitious characters, not brain-scanning the thoughts of real humans. The
thoughts these writers present to the reader are shaped to the theme of a literary work
or the mindset of its characters. Consequently, one may argue, they are not really
presenting true stream of consciousness.
Structure
The structure of Ulysses parallels symbolically the structure of Homer’s epic poem, The
Odyssey. In both works, a man goes on a journey, encountering a variety of people and
situations along the way. However, the journey in Homer’s work lasts ten years,
whereas the journey in Joyce’s work lasts about 18½ hours. The main characters in
Ulysses also parallel the main characters in The Odyssey. Thus, Joyce’s Leopold
Bloom becomes Homer’s Odysseus (Roman name, Ulysses); Stephen Dedalus
becomes Telemachus, the son of Odysseus; Molly Bloom becomes Penelope, the wife
of Odysseus; and Blazes Boylan becomes a representative of all the suitors wooing
Penelope. Joyce’s characters are ordinary and unheroic in contrast to Homer’s
extraordinary and heroic characters. For an analysis and summary of Homer’s
Odyssey, click here.
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Ulysses. Those who do decide to have a go at the thick, allusion-laden, language-
bending tome frequently put it down after reading a few chapters, never again to pick it
up.
Mockery of Religion
In Ulysses, Joyce relentlessly mocks the Roman Catholic Church and its rites and
pokes fun at the Jesuits, an order of Roman Catholic priests who educated him,
nurturing his writing talent and sparking his curiosity and imagination. A devout
Catholic when he was growing up, Joyce abandoned his faith as a young adult
because he felt oppressed by its strict rules of morality and because he resented its
influence on Irish society. His ridicule of the Jesuits and his childhood religion,
rarely executed with subtlety and nuance, comes across as petty and self-
indulgent.
Fascinating Fact
The name Shakespeare occurs 50 times in Ulysses. References to Shakespeare by
another name, as well as to his works and style, occur hundreds of other times. It may
well be that Joyce wanted to be another Shakespeare in stature. If so, his hope outran
his talent.
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