THEMES "ULYSSES" JAMES JOYCE, Appunti di Letteratura Inglese

Scarica THEMES "ULYSSES" JAMES JOYCE e più Appunti in PDF di Letteratura Inglese solo su Docsity! Themes Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work. The Quest for Paternity At its most basic level, Ulysses is a book about Stephen’s search for a symbolic father and Bloom’s search for a son. In this respect, the plot of Ulysses parallels Telemachus’s search for Odysseus, and vice versa, in The Odyssey. Bloom’s search for a son stems at least in part from his need to reinforce his identity and heritage through progeny. Stephen already has a biological father, Simon Dedalus, but considers him a father only in “flesh.” Stephen feels that his own ability to mature and become a father himself (of art or children) is restricted by Simon’s criticism and lack of understanding. Thus Stephen’s search involves finding a symbolic father who will, in turn, allow Stephen himself to be a father. Both men, in truth, are searching for paternity as a way to reinforce their own identities. Stephen is more conscious of his quest for paternity than Bloom, and he mentally recurs to several important motifs with which to understand paternity. Stephen’s thinking about the Holy Trinity involves, on the one hand, Church doctrines that uphold the unity of the Father and the Son and, on the other hand, the writings of heretics that challenge this doctrine by arguing that God created the rest of the Trinity, concluding that each subsequent creation is inherently different. Stephen’s second motif involves his Hamlet theory, which seeks to prove that Shakespeare represented himself through the ghost-father in Hamlet, but also—through his translation of his life into art—became the father of his own father, of his life, and “of all his race.” The Holy Trinity and Hamlet motifs reinforce our sense of Stephen’s and Bloom’s parallel quests for paternity. These quests seem to end in Bloom’s kitchen, with Bloom recognizing “the future” in Stephen and Stephen recognizing “the past” in Bloom. Though united as father and son in this moment, the men will soon part ways, and their paternity quests will undoubtedly continue, for Ulysses demonstrates that the quest for paternity is a search for a lasting manifestation of self. The Remorse of Conscience The phrase agenbite of inwit, a religious term meaning “remorse of conscience,” comes to Stephen’s mind again and again in Ulysses. Stephen associates the phrase with his guilt over his mother’s death—he suspects that he may have killed her by refusing to kneel and pray at her sickbed when she asked. The theme of remorse runs through Ulysses to address the feelings associated with modern breaks with family and tradition. Bloom, too, has guilty feelings about his father because he no longer observes certain traditions his father observed, such as keeping kosher. Episode Fifteen, “Circe,” dramatizes this remorse as Bloom’s “Sins of the Past” rise up and confront him one by one. Ulyssesjuxtaposes characters who experience remorse with characters who do not, such as Buck Mulligan, who shamelessly refers to Stephen’s mother as “beastly dead,” and Simon Dedalus, who mourns his late wife but does not regret his treatment of her. Though remorse of conscience can have a repressive, paralyzing effect, as in Stephen’s case, it is also vaguely positive. A self-conscious awareness of the past, even the sins of the past, helps constitute an individual as an ethical being in the present. Compassion as Heroic In nearly all senses, the notion of Leopold Bloom as an epic hero is laughable—his job, talents, family relations, public relations, and private actions all suggest his utter ordinariness. It is only Bloom’s extraordinary capacity for sympathy and compassion that allows him an unironic heroism in the course of the novel. Bloom’s fluid ability to empathize with such a wide variety of beings—cats, birds, dogs, dead men, vicious men, blind men, old ladies, a woman in labor, the poor, and so on—is the modern-day equivalent to Odysseus’s capacity to adapt to a wide variety of challenges. Bloom’s compassion often dictates the course of his day and the novel, as when he stops at the river Liffey to feed the gulls or at the hospital to check on Mrs. Purefoy. There is a network of symbols in Ulysses that present Bloom as Ireland’s savior, and his message is, at a basic level, to “love.” He is juxtaposed with Stephen, who would also be Ireland’s savior but is lacking in compassion. Bloom returns home, faces evidence of his cuckold status, and slays his competition—not with arrows, but with a refocused perspective that is available only through his fluid capacity for empathy. Parallax, or the Need for Multiple Perspectives Parallax is an astronomical term that Bloom encounters in his reading and that arises repeatedly through the course of the novel. It refers to the difference of position of one object when seen from two different vantage points. These differing viewpoints can be collated to better approximate the position of the object. As a novel, Ulysses uses a similar tactic. Three main characters—Stephen, Bloom, and Molly—and a subset of narrative techniques that affect our perception of events and characters combine to demonstrate the fallibility of one single perspective. Our understanding of particular characters and events must be continually revised as we consider further perspectives. The most obvious example is Molly’s past love life. Though we can construct a judgment of Molly as a loose woman from the testimonies of various characters in the novel—Bloom, Lenehan, Dixon, and so on—this judgment must be revised with the integration of Molly’s own final testimony. LOVE Love matters. Yet throughout the book, characters struggle with problems related to love. At the end of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus's mother prays that he will learn that word known to all men (i.e., love). In Ulysses, brilliant as the young artist is, he still finds himself incapable of loving, perhaps held back by the need to understand love in an intellectual sense. Leopold Bloom knows the importance of love, but over the course of the book we find just what a risk there is of love falling into sentimentality or easy infatuation: how do you preach love without sounding like naïve? And the other big question the book poses is: how does love relate to sexuality (we'll get into this more in the sexuality section)? Quote #1 Ugly and futile: lean neck and tangled hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him under foot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved this weak watery blood draining from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? (2.69). Here, in "Nestor," Stephen observes his student, Cyril Sargent. Stephen initially resents Sargent, but then begins to sympathize with the student when he thinks of how Sargent's mother must have loved him. Is Stephen starting to understand the nature of love or does the fact that his thoughts quickly turn to his ownmother suggest that he still is far too self-absorbed to understand love? Quote #2 "- The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done." Signed: Dedalus. (9.207) How does Stephen's telegram to Mulligan in "Scylla and Charybdis" indirectly explain his own trouble with loving? Does he think that he has to justify his love? Is it possible to rationally justify love? Does the telegram explain how Stephen distinguishes himself from the constant-mocker Mulligan? Is the distinction justified? Quote #3 He gave a sudden young laugh as a close. (7.515-516) These are the last lines of Stephen's "Parable of the Plums" that he tells to Myles Crawford and Professor MacHugh as they walk out of the Freeman Telegraph office. What does Stephen's parable say about Irish nationalism and life in Dublin? To get you going, why do they throw down the plum seeds? Why does the parable involve two old women that have never reproduced in their lives? Why is that they climb to the top of a pillar meant to honor an Englishman? Patriotism Quote #2 Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She's passed. Then and not till then. Tram. Kran, kran, kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I'm sure it's the burgundy. Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph be. Karaaaaaaa. Written. I have. Pprrpffrrppfff. Done. (11.623-625) These are the last lines of the "Sirens" episode. What's going on is that Bloom is remembering the last line of the patriot Robert Emmet's speech before he was executed. At the same time, he is waiting for the noise of a passing tram so that he can let out all the gas that has built up in his stomach. To an Irish reader, this passage would be extremely offensive. Joyce is mingling the dying words of their beloved patriot with the sound of a fart. Why would he do this? Is it possible for a sincere and powerful sentence to become sentimental and powerless simply from overuse? How would Bloom's fart undercut this sentimentality? Patriotism Quote #3 "-Their syphilisation, you mean," says the citizen. "To hell with them! The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody thicklugged sons of whores' gets! No music and no art and no literature worthy of name. Any civilization they have they stole from us. Tonguetied sons of bastards' ghosts." (12.331) Here, the citizen rails against the lack of culture in England. This is one of his many "patriotic" rants in the "Cyclops" episode. It is plain to see how his Irish pride has caused him to renounce many things simply because they are not Irish. What would it mean for the citizen to be able to appreciate the culture of his oppressor? In what ways would it be degrading? In what ways would it be liberating? Quote #4 "A nation?" says Bloom. "A nation is the same people living in the same place." (12.403) Is Bloom's definition true? Here, he is countering the citizen's intensive nationalism. To what extent is his simple definition meant to simply calm down the patriotic fervor of the men around him? Patriotism Quote #5 "- What is your nation if I may ask," says the citizen. "- Ireland," says Bloom. "I was born here. Ireland." The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner. (12.408 – 410) Is one's nation always determined by the place where one is born? Imagine the case of an African slave born in the United States. Does that make the U.S. their nation? What more do you think the citizen wants from Bloom's definition? Is there anything you yourself would add to it? Patriotism Quote #6 By no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance. (14.3) These lines come from the start of "Oxen of the Sun." They are extremely convoluted because they are written in the style of English translations of old Latinate prose, but when we untangle them we find that the narrator is talking about the fact that part of a nation's strength can be found in the extent to which it respects procreation. What does it mean to treat a mother as a national figure? What national duty is she performing? Does anything seem morally wrong about treating mothers like Mina Purefoy as national heroes? Quote #7 BLOOM My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future. (15.315) These lines come from Bloom's vain fantasy outside of Bella Cohen's brothel where he imagines himself as an emperor and the people gather to worship him. Here, Bloom's pride as a Jewish man is turned into his imaginary call for a nation named after himself. Nationalism often gets talked about as if it were a form of selflessness. How can excessive patriotism mask the pride and selfishness that lies beneath it? Patriotism Quote #8 "You die for your country, suppose." (He places his arm on Private Carr's sleeve.) "Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to the present, it has done so. I don't want to die. Damn death. Long live life!" (15.975) These are Stephen's words to Private Carr at the end of "Circe," shortly before he gets socked in the face. At first glance, they seem selfish, but things are much more complex. How do these lines continue to build a picture of Stephen's pride in Ireland? What are the differences between Carr's nationalism and Stephen's (if he has any)? Is the desire to perfect oneself itself a sign of pride in one's place of birth? Patriotism Quote #9 "- That's right," the old tarpaulin corroborated. "The Irish catholic peasant. He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?" "While allowing him his individual opinions, as every man," the keeper added "he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible words, when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows." (16.190-191) At this scene in "Eumaeus," an old man and the keeper of the bar (who looks like Skin-the-Goat from the Phoenix Park murders) get in a big argument about the strength of the Irish peasant and which armies he should serve. Why is it that men who believe strongly in nationalism have to enforce their views on the people around them? How does the intentionally bored and cliché voice in this episode undermine their opinions? Quote #10 Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical? Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary.(17.103) This may seem like a bizarre quote for Patriotism, but we'll explain. In "Ithaca," Stephen and Bloom have just finished showing each other how to write in Gaelic and Hebrew respectively. Yet, here, we learn that their knowledge of these languages is only theoretical – that they don't actually speak them. Hence, instead of just sharing their respective cultures, what they are doing is enacting the sharing of their respective cultures (which they don't actually know that well). Why would the two enact the sharing of their cultures? Is this a sign of devotion to those cultures, or is there some other idea that is motivating their action? SEX You've probably heard that the plot of Ulysses hinges around the fact that Leopold Bloom's wife is having an affair, and on this particular day, June 16th, Bloom knows that she's going to sleep with Blazes Boylan. Sexuality, particularly in its relation to love, is an enormous problem that the text confronts. The question is: if you love someone, why is sex so important? The answer: sex is important, but it's not clear why. Over the course of the book, we learn more about the character's sexual desires, hang-ups, and neuroses than we could ever possibly want to know. At the same time that sex is revealed as a problem, part of the message of the book is that sex is something that's natural. It is not evil and it need not be hidden. According to Ulysses, though it complicates our lives, sex is something to be celebrated rather than something of which we should be ashamed. Quote #1 Wanted smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work. I called you naughty darling because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the meaning. Please tell me what perfume does your wife. Tell me who made the world. (8.110) As Bloom passes the Irish Times, he remembers that he put an ad in the paper for a lady typist. That is how he met Martha Clifford with whom he is now carrying on an illicit (though relatively tame) correspondence. What does it say about Bloom that he lives out his sexual life through written letters? Does language itself become sexualized for Bloom? In what ways is he repressed and why? Sex Quote #2 Ah! Mr. Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O Lord that little limping devil. Begins to feel cold MEMORY AND THE PAST Ulysses takes place in the course of one day, from 8am on June 16th to sometime after 4 A.M. on June 17th. People often joke about the fact that nothing happens in Ulysses. We readily admit that if all the book did was narrate the actions of the characters, it'd be pretty boring and you'd probably never had heard of it. But Ulysses does more. Much more. With the intimate view that we get of each character's inner life, we are exposed to the vast expanse of their memories. Events in the present inevitably make them think of the past. The book poses a lot of big questions about the relation of past to present, particularly in terms of happiness: is remembered happiness somehow inferior to happiness experienced first-hand? Quote #1 The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one. (3.6) Stephen here imagines the umbilical cord (omphalos) as a telephone cord that goes back into the past, allowing him to make a telephone call to Eden by dialing the Greek letters (Aleph, alpha). Why might he settle on the image of an umbilical cord? How can the umbilical cord become a metaphor for our relation to the past? Memory and the Past Quote #2 Quick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley Road, swiftly, in slim sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind. (4.63) Notice here how the external world ties into memory. The shifting of the sun jogs a memory of Milly for Bloom. Is this how memory actually works? Is it true to life? Memory and the Past Quote #3 Must have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window, watching the two dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up. She had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch, Poldy. God, I'm dying for it. How life beings. (6.29) In the carriage with the men on the way to Dignam's funeral, Bloom has this recollection of the moment that he thinks was Rudy's conception. What does it mean to remember your child in terms of their conception versus their birth? Does the fact that we as readers read this memory as a sentence (a sentence that looks like all the other sentences that depict the present) make our experience of this memory different than it is for Bloom? What gives this memory special poignancy today? How might it be tied in with Bloom's feelings of guilt over the death of his son? Quote #4 "- What is a ghost?" Stephen said with tingling energy. "One who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners." (9.53) In "Scylla and Charybdis," Stephen is arguing that the ghost of Hamlet's father in the play corresponds to Shakespeare and not to Shakespeare's father. The idea is that when Shakespeare left Stratford to go to London, he became a ghost-like presence in his house and that he realized this when he returned to Ann Hathaway. Compared to the common superstition that ghosts are only of the dead, what does Stephen's theory suggest is the relation between the folk idea of a ghost and memory? If one can become a ghost simply through absence, then is a ghost just a trace in memory of a person no longer present? Memory and the Past Quote #5 She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my soul. Salt green death. We. Agenbite of inwit. Inwit's agenbite. Misery! Misery! (10.477-480) Here, in "Wandering Rocks," Stephen's image of his sister mingles with his nightmare of his dead mother. His guilt over his mother's death and his guilt over not helping his sister out of her situation mingle to the point that they are indistinguishable. Does memory inhabit the present in this way? If it does, what might you take to be the purpose? In the scene, does Stephen's memory of his mother prompt or inhibit action? Memory and the Past Quote #6 Has he forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is it that from being a deluder of others he has become at last his own dupe as he is, if report belie him not his own and his only enjoyer? (14.35) In the savage style of the 18th century satirist Junius, the narrator here observes that Bloom has been judging the men around him for being insensitive, and that this thought is, in fact, hypocritical. What we're interested in here is how hidden self-interest (e.g. the desire to seem like a decent human being) can effect what one remembers and what one forgets. What role does self-interest play in memory? How can we become aware of the fact that our own desires are shaping our memories and deciding what we forget? Quote #7 He is young Leopold, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precious manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clambrassil to the high school, his book satchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's thought. (14.38) In imitation of the nostalgic style of the English essayist Charles Lamb, the narrator of "Oxen of the Sun" is here trying to capture what happens when Bloom thinks back to a younger version of himself. Our question is here is quite pointed: Would self-reflection be possible without memory? What role does memory play in self-reflection and self-evaluation? Memory and the Past Quote #8 "Stop twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten. Exercise your mnemotechnic. La cause è santa.Tara. Tara." (15.481) Here, in "Circe," Bloom has a vision of his grandfather. Bloom is complaining to his grandfather that he feels sexually inadequate, and Lipoti Virag tells him to try to use a "mnemotechnic" (memory device). Why has sex become a matter of memory for Bloom? How does Bloom live out his sexual life through memory and the past? Memory and the Past Quote #9 What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom? The Queen's Hotel, Ennis, County Clare, where Rudolph Bloom (Rudolph Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour unstated, in consequence of an overdoes 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. (17.86) In this scene from "Ithaca," Stephen's scene at Queen's Hotel sets off a memory for Bloom of his father Rudolph committing suicide. The memory is clearly elaborated on and particularized by the narrator. What parts of this memory do you think come from Bloom and what parts are embellished? Do we tend to remember days and dates and addresses or do we focus more on particular details and experiences? Does this tendency change when an event is especially personal and painful? If so, why might it change? Quote #10 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. (18.783) These being the last lines of the novel, they could be placed in a number of different "Theme" categories. As you'll notice, though, there are simply too many good quotes for us to repeat them. So we're going to look at these lines in terms of memory and the past. Molly's last lines are resounding lines of affirmation. Does the fact that this affirmation is remembered undermine it? Would it be more powerful if she was thinking these thoughts in relation to the present than to the past? Is she thinking this in relation to the present or the past or both? Does this promise of happiness get undercut by the fact that it is remembered or is happiness sustained through memory? TIME As you may have heard, all the action of Ulysses takes place over the course of a day. Joyce kept a detailed schema that had each episode in the book beginning at a particular hour. When the bells of different churches sound in Dublin, they fit in almost perfectly with his plan. Yet time isn't just measured by the clock in Ulysses. Because we get a window into the character's minds, we also have to think about how time works in thought versus how it works in the external world. In one episode, for example, a character's dreams go on and on for what would seem like hours, and yet we find that all the external action is taking place in just a few minutes. One of the many questions posed by the book is: to what extent do we live our lives in time? Quote #1 These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here. (3.62) What does this thought of Stephen's say about the role of language in relation to the past? Can language become eroded, can it become washed up on the beach like heavy sands? Just how much is our relationship to the physical world around us mediated by language? What effect does time have on the language that we use? Time This is a clip of Molly's thought from "Penelope" where she is remembering her daughter Milly. What we're interested in here is how having children heightens and changes one's sense of time. How does having a child that resembles you effect how you think of time? Is it more complex than that it just makes you feel old? Does it also make time seem somehow circular, as if things are repeating themselves? LIFE, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND EXISTENCE This is kind of a catch-all category for a theme, but there are a lot of big head-scratching nail-biting philosophical questions posed in Ulysses. Joyce is an author whose main concern is with how it feels to exist as a human being, with what it means to be alive. The characters in the book, Stephen Dedalus in particular, don't just struggle with personal problems, they are tormented by philosophical questions about the nature of truth. Yet the remarkable thing about Ulysses (and one of the things that makes it so hard) is that Joyce refuses to separate the abstract questions of philosophy from daily life. To an extent, there are parts of the book where the characters get more lost in thought than others, but in general they are both thinking and living at the same time. At no point do we get lost in universal questions about human nature without also getting drenched in the particular details of what it means to be, say, Leopold Bloom. In one moment, Bloom can simultaneously be speculating on how something came from nothing and also thinking that he has to pee badly. Quote #1 Thought is the thought of thought. (2.35) This is a thought of Stephen's as he speculates on Aristotle and remembers his time in Paris in the episode "Nestor." Does this mean that thought can only lead to other thoughts and thus never actually sets a foot in the world? For example, when I think about a bicycle am I only thinking about a thought-bicycle (distinct from bicycles in the real world) or am I actually thinking about that thing in the world that we call a bicycle? If you have some time to kill, mull through the Gifford annotations around this passage and see what you can work out. Maybe it's more moderate. Thought is always different than things in the world, but is still somehowconnected with them. How can you describe the relationship between thought and the world? Language and the world? Life, Consciousness, and Existence Quote #2 His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars. I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now. Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. You find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls, do you not think? Flutier. Our souls, shame-wounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more. (3.78) This quote gives a good sense of the stream-of-consciousness style in "Proteus." When we first read this, we thought this sounded like the thoughts of a man who had devoured encyclopedias and now had his mind on at full blast, as if he were hyped up on amphetamines or something. Do you find this an accurate portrayal of thought? If not accurate, what advantages does it have over the more traditional monologue form where the author is obligated to write in complete sentences? In what ways does Stephen associate goodness with being dark instead of bright? Life, Consciousness, and Existence Quote #3 "- Bosh!" Stephen said rudely. "A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery." (9.90) In "Scylla and Charybdis," this is Stephen's response to John Eglinton's contention that Shakespeare made a mistake by marrying Ann Hathaway. There are two real statements here. First, a man of genius makes his errors by choice. Second, a man of genius can turn his errors into portals of discovery. Which of these do you agree with, if any? To what extent might Stephen's view of the artist be motivated by his own experience? What particular mistake of Stephen's might he have in mind? How is the fact that Stephen's life informs his theory actually a support of his theory that the artist and his work are inseparable? Quote #4 "Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro- and micro-cosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. Amor matris, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he any son?" (9.301) Here, Stephen takes a typical church debate about whether or not Jesus was immaculately conceived and shifts it into another realm. No, Stephen says, that is not the main question. The main question is what it means to be a father versus a mother, especially because the father is so far removed from the birthing process (after donating his sperm). Stephen thinks that it takes a great deal of imagination to be a father, to imagine what it means and feels like to conceive a son. In what ways might Stephen's relationship with his own father shape his argument in this episode? Life, Consciousness, and Existence Quote #5 Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves. (9.373) Stephen is here talking about the role of the artist, how all of his characters can be found in his own mind. To what extent can Stephen's comments be applied to real life? When we imagine the other people around us are we only projecting our beliefs and desires onto them, making them up out of the stuff of our own minds? Is Stephen arguing for solipsism (that nothing exists except one's own mind)? If not (hint: he's not), then how not? Life, Consciousness, and Existence Quote #6 Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship. (14.7) These lines come from near the start of "Oxen of the Sun." In literature and philosophy, there has been a long tradition of romanticizing life for birth. According to the philosopher Nietzsche, for example, the first great tragedy of life is being born. What does it mean to cultivate nostalgia for life in the womb, that moment when one is having all of one's needs filled without making the slightest effort, when life is in perfect balance? What view of life does that suggest? (Hint: it's not a happy one.) Quote #7 "Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburg street!" (15.21) Lynch here derides Stephen's philosophizing as they approach Bella Cohen's brothel in "Circe." He combines four terms: pornography, philosophy, philology (the study of languages), and theology. How is this actually a good catch phrase for the view of life promoted in the book? Where are some instances of two seemingly disparate things being brought together, e.g. the sexual and the religious? Is there any philosophy in the book that is not woven tightly into the details of daily life? Life, Consciousness, and Existence Quote #8 "How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of self-pretence. Personally, I detect action. (He waves his hand.) Hand hurt me slightly. Enfin, ce sont vos oignons. (To Cissy Caffrey.) Some trouble is on here. What is it precisely?" (15.962) These lines come from the end of "Circe" immediately after Private Carr asks Stephen how he would like to be hit in the jaw. Drunk as he is, Stephen is still speaking some truth. In particular, he does detest action and maintain a theory of passivity. For Stephen, what matters is intensity of thought and firmness of conviction. How can passivity be a theory of life? What external circumstances of Stephen's (his life in Ireland, the influence of England the Church, his own guilt) might shape his particular theory of life? Life, Consciousness, and Existence Quote #9 Did Stephen participate in his dejection? He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational reagent between a micro- and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void. (17.149) Alright, let's parse this. First, Stephen is a rational person who knows some things and doesn't know others. He can use logic ("proceed syllogistically") from the things he knows to other things he doesn't know. As a "reagent," one who acts in the world, Stephen lives between his own world of Dublin and teaching ("micro- ") and the great big universe that he doesn't understand ("macrocosm"). According to the skeptical position, nothing can ever be known for certain because your mind could be deceiving you in some way or another. Thus, Stephen's life is "constructed upon the incertitude of the void." How might this complex philosophical thought be comforting for Stephen? Quote #10 Both then were silent? Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces. (17.168) Here, Bloom is showing Stephen out his back door in the middle of the night. They pause for a moment before Stephen departs. How does Joyce's wordplay here reflect his understanding of how the two men are relating to one another? Why would one man's flesh be a reflection of the other? What does it say about empathy, about how two people struggle to understand one another? Here is a bit of Father Conmee's thoughts from "Wandering Rocks." His thoughts are always extremely pious and simple. Do you find these thoughts an accurate portrayal of the way a priest might think? Do they seem to be parodying religious thought? If parody, is it over-done or do you think that it still makes a point about the ways in which strictly orthodox thought is confined? Religion Quote #8 When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And he answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe's in Little Green Street like a shot off a shovel. (12.561) This is the final image from "Cyclops." As Martin Cunningham's carriage pulls away with Bloom and the citizen yelling at one another, the episode takes on biblical language and portrays Bloom as the prophet Elijah ascending up to heaven. Does the religious language seem parodic or sincere or both? How is it possible for something to be a parody and to still communicate some sort of truth? Religion Quote #9 He said also how at the end of the second month a human soul was infused and how in all our holy mother foldeth ever souls for God's greater glory whereas that earthly mother which was but a dam to bring forth beastly should die by canon for so saith he that holdeth the fisherman's seal. (14.19) Stephen is rambling drunkenly in "Oxen of the Sun." He's here spouting off about the Church's teachings on when exactly the soul enters the body. What we're particularly interested in here, though, is how the style alters the affect of the religious words. Try re-writing these lines in plain modern English. Does one seem more legitimate or profound than the other? Tie this into particular details of the style and see if you can figure out where the difference in effect originates. Quote #10 "- Simple? I shouldn't think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a blue moon. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for instance to invent those rays Röntgen did, or the telescope like Edison, though I believe it was before his time, Galileo was the man I mean. The same applies to the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural phenomenon such as electricity but it's a horse of quite another colour to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God." "- O, that," Stephen expostulated, "has been proved conclusively by several of the best known passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial evidence." (16.151-152) Here, in "Eumaeus," Bloom presses the point on whether or not there is such a thing as the human soul. Stephen, still drunk and groggy from his absinthe, isn't too enthused about the discussion. Plus he doesn't like when people disagree with him. Does Bloom's intense scientism leave any room for religion or spirituality? Is Stephen's answer earnest? If it's ironic, why doesn't he answer Bloom straight? What might a straight answer from Stephen look like? PREJUDICE Leopold Bloom, the main character in Ulysses, is an Irishman. But in 1904 Dublin there are a lot of people that would not have thought so. The reason is that Bloom is also a Jew, and Jews were looked on as being somehow different – a separate (and inferior) race. The fact that Joyce makes the hero of his great Irish novel a Jew is a case of him stirring up a fuss. There's no doubt that he enjoyed driving Irishmen mad, but he's also challenging the prejudices of the time. Anti-Semitism was common throughout Europe, and Ireland was no exception. Throughout the novel, other characters speak disparagingly of Jews and Bloom does his best to stand up for them. It seems that Joyce already had a scent of the horrible prejudice that would become infamous world-round in World War II, with one of the most awful human rights disasters in the history of humanity. Quote #1 Haines detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke. "- I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame." (1.306-307) Haines, an Englishman, is here exposed to Stephen's feeling that the Irish are oppressed by the English (they were). In what way is Haines response a failure to empathize with the situation of the Irish? What does it mean that "history is to blame?" Who is actually responsible if "history" is to blame?" Prejudice Quote #2 "- I knew you couldn't," he said joyously. "But one day you must feel it. We are a generous people but we must also be just." "- I fear those big words," Stephen said, "which make us so unhappy." (2.121-122) Mr. Deasy has just asked Stephen if he could say that he has paid his way. Stephen admits that this is not true, and Mr. Deasy makes his call for justice. Why does Mr. Deasy's invocation of justice threaten to make Stephen unhappy? What does "justice" mean when it comes out of the mouth of an Englishman versus an Irishman? Prejudice Quote #3 "A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the right till the end." (2.167) Here, in "Nestor," Mr. Deasy is looking for another scapegoat; this time it's women. We later learn that Deasy's wife treats him horribly and goes and pawns their furniture on the weekends. How does anger over a personal incident turns into a real prejudice? Why would Deasy hide his personal anger with prejudice? Quote #4 Mr. Deasy halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath. "- I just wanted to say," he said. "Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that? No. And do you know why?" He frowned sternly on the bright air. "- Why sir?" Stephen asked, beginning to smile. "- Because she never let them in," Mr. Deasy said solemnly. A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm." (2.191-196) As an Englishman, why would Mr. Deasy find the joke funny? Do you think that the disgusting description of his laughter afterward might capture the fact that Stephen is repulsed by what he says? Prejudice Quote #5 Mr Dedalus looked after the stumping figure and said mildly: "- The devil break the hasp of your back!" Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as the carriage passed Gray's statue. "- We have all been there," Martin Cunningham said broadly. His eyes met Mr Bloom's eyes. He caressed his beard, adding: "- Well, nearly all of us." (6.111-116) In "Hades," Simon Dedalus shouts out at the Jewish moneylender Reuben J. Dodd as they ride in the carriage on the way to Dignam's funeral. The prejudiced comment is clearly directed at Dodd, but Dedalus doesn't consider that Bloom is also Jewish, which Martin Cunningham clearly does. How is prejudice different when it's directed at one person of a group and not another? How does this reveal the lie about prejudice? Prejudice Quote #6 "- Whose God?" Says the citizen. "- Well, his uncle was a jew," says he. "Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me." (12.542-3) For the record, Bloom is right. Why is this the most enraging thing that he could possibly say to the citizen? Quote #7 "I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king." (15.1023) These are Private Carr's words shortly before he socks Stephen in the jaw at the end of "Circe." There are a lot of factors at work here. One is Carr and Stephen's drunkenness. Another factor has to do with Carr's pride over the girl he has picked up, Cissy Caffrey. And still another factor deals with the crowd that has Quote #4 More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground must be: oblong cells. (6.330) At Dignam's funeral, Bloom can't help but think absurd thoughts about what we do with the dead. Is it possible to view death in a humorous light? Is Bloom just avoiding his own fear of death and sadness over the loss of his father and son by trying to be funny? Is it possible for death to be funny and frightening and sad all at once? Mortality Quote #5 A fellow could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. (6.337) Here, Bloom lets his mind wander at Dignam's funeral. Aside from its practicality, what is the human obsession with burying the dead? Is it a way of hiding the dead, of forcing the thought of death from our lives? How has it become such a large ritual? Is Bloom, by letting his mind wander to such random thoughts, disrespecting the memory of the dead? Mortality Quote #6 Bam! Expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit: forget you. Don't forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers. Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole one after the other. (6.345) How is death the great leveler? How does it show what we all have in common? Does Bloom's vernacular (everyday) speech seem more or less profound than the heightened Catholic speech: "Your are dust and to dust you shall return"? Quote #7 "As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies," Stephen said, "from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of the new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unloving son looks forth." (9.145) This is a part of Stephen's Hamlet argument in "Scylla and Charybdis." Does it seem that the idea of the body being woven and unwoven time after time could change one's notion of what it means to be mortal? If the body has been remade of entirely new stuff over and again, could that mean, in a way, that the body has already died many times? Since that old material of the body is presumably somewhere else in nature, does that make life seem less confined to individual people? Does it soften one's idea of mortality? Mortality Quote #8 "For sirs, he said, our lust is brief. We are means to those small creatures within us and nature has other ends than we." (14.19) Stephen is drunkenly pontificating in "Oxen of the Sun." What he's getting at here is that we always think of ourselves as somehow distinguished and set off from nature, but what if we are simply means to an end. Here's an analogy. Some people cultivate bacteria just in order to give cheese a certain taste. What if we're just the bacteria and there's some bigger cheese that we can't see? How does it change our view of mortality if we think of our whole lives as just some means to another of nature's ends? Mortality Quote #9 Stephen's mother, emaciated, rises stark through the floor in leper gray with a wreath of faded orange blossoms and a torn bridal veil, her face worn and noseless, green with grave mould. Her hair is scant and lank. She fixes her bluecircled hollow eyesockets on Stephen and opens her toothless mouth uttering a silent word. (15.894) Here, drunk on absinthe and dancing in Bella Cohen's brothel, Stephen has a vision of his dead mother urging him to repent. Why is it that in imagining death all we can imagine is a corpse or a skeleton? What else might death look like? What does it say about Stephen's guilt over his mother's death that she appears to him as a disgusting corpse instead of as she looked before she died? Quote #10 In reality evermoving from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity. (17.156) Bloom is here in the process of showing Stephen out his back door in the middle of the night. The thought itself is no doubt articulated much more clearly by the narrator (whoever that is) than it actually is in Bloom's head. But what about his current situation would get him thinking about the transience of life in such detail? Why here with Stephen? Why so late at night? FREEDOM AND CONFINEMENT In 1904, Dublin could be a confining place to be. No one feels this more than Stephen Dedalus (though many felt it as much). Between English oppression and the enormous influence of the Roman Catholic Church, it was quite hard for one to feel any true sense of independence or self-empowerment. As in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen strives for personal freedom, but in Ulysses, we begin to see a more mature search. Stephen begins to learn that complete freedom can itself be confining, and at the start of this novel he feels cut off from the world around him, isolated and trapped in his own head. At times, it is unclear if Stephen has become free or simply been abandoned. He does not give up the search, but the question does present itself: if freedom itself can be confining, than what exactly does it mean to be free? Quote #1 "Yes, of course," [Mulligan] said, as they went on again. "Either you believe or you don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God. You don't stand for that, I suppose?" "You behold in me," Stephen said with grim displeasure, "a horrible example of free thought." (1.294-295) What is Haines misunderstanding here? Stephen also has trouble stomaching the idea of a personal God, but what is the difference between his free-thinking and that of Haines and Mulligan? Why does Stephen have so much trouble with the idea of being a freethinker? What personal cares and connections does he have that the other two lack? Freedom and Confinement Quote #2 "After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own master, it seems to me. I am the servant of two masters," Stephen said, "an English and an Italian." (1.299-300) In "Telemachus," Haines is trying to understand why Stephen feels so oppressed. Here, Stephen refers to English oppression and the Roman Catholic Church (the "Italian" masters). Both were extremely dominant in Dublin life, but why should a free thinker like Stephen still feel that they are his masters? Educated as he is, couldn't he just break from their influence? Freedom and Confinement Quote #3 "History," Stephen said, "is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." (2.158) What control does one have over one's actions in dreams and nightmares? Why would Irish history seem like a nightmare to Stephen? How, as an individual, might he awaken from the history of his nation? Quote #4 Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the God-damned idiot! Hray! No- one saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once… (3.38) This is some of Stephen's stream-of-consciousness from "Proteus" where we get a glimpse of his enormous ambition and also his ability to make fun of himself. How does ambition imprison Stephen inside his own mind? What about Stephen's fear that he won't fulfill his ambition? How does Stephen's ability to make fun of himself bend the bars of the prison a wee bit? Freedom and Confinement Quote #5 Mr. Bloom reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in him than they she sees? Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes feel what a person is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just looking at them: well pared. And after: thinking alone. (6.89) We're in the "Hades" episode and the men's carriage has just passed Blazes Boylan. All the other men salute him and Bloom begins checking out his fingernails. How does this instinct show the way in which Bloom is trapped in his situation? What would Bloom's other alternatives be today (other than letting the affair happen)? In what ways do the society men confine Bloom? Freedom and Confinement Quote #6