By naming his novel Ulysses,
Joyce leads his readers to align this novel with Homer's epic; however, early
readers didn't get it, so Joyce let Stuart Gilbert know that the chapters could
be thought of with particular episodes of The
Odyssey in mind. This game of implying and inferring makes for a sleuthing
experience that frustrates many (who often give up in Chapter Three) and
fascinates those of us enter into an imaginative pact with a writer who thought
himself the equal of Dante and Shakespeare in being the genius of his age.
The novel is so ambitious that readers of Joyce 's novel
often narrow the reader's task by focusing on one point of view, its realism,
its satire, its feminism, its mythologizing, its psychology, its narratology,
its philology. As we read and discuss Ulysses,
you may find it fruitful to focus on one of these ways of thinking about the
novel.
Over the years
that I have taught Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man,
I have engaged in this narrowing by encouraging students to focusing on four
contrasts that Joyce uses again and again to develop his fictions. I plan to
use these four contrasts to focus my reading this time through Ulysses. I welcome those who wish to
join me in this method and look forward to those who use one of the other, above-mentioned or a completely
different focus:
Isolation
and Community
Characters in Dubliners such as the young boy of the
opening three stories, Fr. Flynn of "The Sisters," and the queer old
josser of "An Encounter" seek counterparts as the central action of
the stories. Similar isolates--Eveline of "Eveline," Jimmy of
"After the Race," Lenehan of "Two Gallants," Bob Doran of
"The Boarding House," Chandler of "A Little Cloud," Maria
of "Clay," James Duffy of "A Painful Case" make less than
satisfying pacts with others in lieu of isolation. Farrington of "Counterparts," Mr. Kernan of "Grace," Mrs. Kearney of
"A Mother," and the politcoes of "Ivy Day" isolate
themselves from others as does Joyce's most developed isolate of Dubliners, Gabriel Conroy of "The
Dead."
Communal acts and symbolic communities abound in these
stories. Characters find themselves participating in or refusing eucharistic
moments throughout Dubliners and the
tension between the pain of isolation and the dissatisfactions of various types
of communities. The narrative schema of Portrait is of course a reflection of this
tension. Young Stephen chooses to be among others in Chapter One and Three and
embraces, for good or ill, his isolation in Chapters Two, Four and Five.
What Joyce does in his earlier works finds its way into Ulysses. The extent to which the Stephen
Dedalus of Portrait is a continuation
of the Stephen of Ulysses is obvious.
Even in Dubliners one can see Joyce moving toward Ulysses. Farrington of
"Counterparts" is a urUlysses in that he too engages in an odyssey as
he moves from pub to pub while ironically triumphing over the pawnshop keeper
of Fleet Street, but succumbing to the sirens from London and the mere stripling, Weathers, that
he meets in the pub. Upon returning home, the Ulysses beats his son and finds his Penelope away in the
chapel.
Awareness
and Blindness
Sight to Joyce and to Stephen Dedalus of Portrait and to the little boy and
Gabriel Conroy of Dubliners is an ideal state in Joyce's pre-Ulysses fiction. When
he breaks his glasses on the cinderpath in Portrait
or closes his eyes in the romantic prayer "O,Love" in
"Araby" Joyce's pre-Ulysses exposes himself to the same dangers as
the lesser characters in the ficitons: the sisters' succumbing to the cover
story and cliches about their pedophile-brother, the drunkenness of Simon
Dedalus in Portrait. Again and again the characters eschew
the dangers of seeing what actually exists and choose blindness as do Eveline, Bob
Doran, Corley, Maria and Gabriel Conroy. If Gabriel changes significantly in
the concluding moments of "The Dead" he does so in the darkness on the night of the
Epiphany in the Gresham Hotel when Gabriel learns of his passionate rival,
Michael Furey and accepts that he is not the hero of his own story but one
member of a very inclusive community like the snowflakes falling to their final
and inglorious end.
Growth
and Stasis
This contrast could just as easily be stated and Movement
and Paralysis. Probably the most paralyzed character--except the literal
paralytic, Fr. Flynn of "The Sisters"--is Eveline, who must choose a
life with Frank who will perhaps take her to the romantic land of Buenos Ayres
and a life as her mother's surrogate to be abused by her father until the end
of her days. She is among the living dead of Dubliners that "The
Dead" reprises in the culmination of that short story collection so like a
novel. Images of decay abound in the stories--Fr. Flynn's snuff-stained coat,
the pervert's decaying garment, the rusted bicycle pump and yellowing pages of
the romances of "Araby," the crumbling of Little Chandler's dream,
the ubiquitous dust and the broken harmonium of "Eveline," the
shriveled-apple like face of Aunt Kate and the graying hair of Aunt Julia. Some
characters like Corley of "Two Gallants" and the Christian Brothers
of Portrait move to no avail; most
move in repetitive patterns that cover the meaninglessness of the movements.
Those who grow are characters who move toward a moment of epiphantic joy that
links them with some meaningful community, like the Stephen of Chapter Four who
observes the bird girl of immortal youth and beautyon the strand, like Stephen
moving through the maze of the Jesuit residence of Chapter Two. These moments
are fleeting and rare.
Reality
and Romance
Romance is not the only blinding agent in Joyce's stories,
but it is one of the most pernicious. The tears the boy of "Araby"
sheds when he realizes how his unrealistic romantic, newly pubescent fantasies
have led him to be a "creature driven and derided by vanity" are
repeated again and again throughout Dubliners
and Portrait. How often are
characters tearfully blinded by romance? However, Eveline's fears lead her to
mistrust the romance that Frank the sailor really offers, so romance in and of
itself is not a bad thing. Michael Furey's passion certainly seems superior to
Gabriel's insufferable arrogance. And the irony of the title Two Gallants seems
to suggest that true gallantry is
preferable to the egocentric, mistrusting predatory taking of the biscuit of
life's possibilities. Romance, like the other ideals of Portrait, is fleeting
and rare. Romance, like the failings of the sisters to honestly appraise their
brother, exacerbates falls like the fall of Lucifer like Stephen when he feels
abandoned by Ellen after his performance in Chapter Three of Portrait.
The other three
contrasts seem to offer clear ideals--sight, insight, epiphany rather than
blindness, ignorance; a comic community rather than a confining community or
horrible isolation; growth, improvement rather stasis, enervating and meaningless,
repetitious movement or paralysis. However, though a literary realist, Joyce
seems to view the fourth contrast as a more complicated dichotomy.
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