The Literature Book

221

the most complex of all father–son

relationships, and on Shakespeare’s

Hamlet—torn apart by vengeful

thoughts about his father’s murderer,

who is now his own stepfather—

add layers of meaning to Stephen’s

quest. Conversely, Bloom (whose

son, Rudy, died 11 years earlier,

a few days after his birth) has a

deep psychic need for a son. This

adds poignancy to the Odysseus–

Telemachus dynamic.

Bloom and Stephen, after

several near misses, encounter

each other by chance at the Holles

Street Maternity Hospital; the

associations of the place with birth

and parenthood are no accident.

Bloom in due course saves Stephen

from getting arrested after a fracas

in Dublin’s red-light area. When,

later that night, they sit drinking

cocoa together in Bloom’s kitchen,

Stephen glimpses the past in Bloom,

while Bloom sees the future in

Stephen. It is typical of Joyce’s

fictional subtlety that this mutual

recognition is a fleeting suggestion

rather than an obvious climax.

Joyce’s Homeric framework, as

well as providing a set of symbolic

correspondences, also allowed him

to imply that Bloom, the ordinary

man and good citizen, could be

credited with a heroic dimension.

This is the heroism, or antiheroism,

of the everyday, conducted largely

within the mind, the arena of an

individual’s fears and longings. It

is here that he combats jealousy,

anger, boredom, shame and guilt,

and cherishes the hope and love

that give life its meaning.

Exile and belonging

After the closing paragraph of the

novel, Joyce left a reminder of his

own Odyssean journey as its writer:

“Trieste–Zurich–Paris, 1914–1921.”

While aware of himself as an artist

operating in a cosmopolitan milieu,

he also felt the tug of exile. Living

abroad made it possible for him to

recreate Dublin in all its vulgarity

and vibrancy as the home of his

imagination. Back in 1904, when the

book is set, political feelings were

running high, after the failure of

home rule—an attempt to make

Ireland self-governing. In the year

of Ulysses’ publication (1922), after

BREAKING WITH TRADITION

a bloody civil war, the Irish Free

State was formed. Reflecting these

political realities, the characters of

Joyce’s fictional Dublin are full of

anxieties about their relationship

with institutions: Irish nationalism,

the British Empire, the Catholic

Church, and the Irish Literary

Revival. While Ulysses presents

the details of individual experience

with unprecedented frankness, it is

also unflinching in its portrayal of a

restless microcosm of Irish society.

However, all themes in Ulysses

are subordinate to the living

richness of its fictional world. The

vitality of the novel comes from the

life invested in it, which fights back

against the book’s elaborate literary

artifices. At the core of this—the

most self-consciously artful novel

since the playful experiments of

Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy

in the mid-18th century—are the

lives and loves of Dubliners, realized

with amazing verisimilitude. ■

Homeric parallels in Ulysses

He heard then a warm heavy

sigh, softer, as she turned over

and the loose brass quoits of

the bedstead jingled.

Ulysses

Telemachus is the son of Odysseus

and Penelope, who searches in vain

for his lost father in an epic subplot.

Stephen Dedalus, an intellectual and

artist lost in a maze of his own self-

absorption, searches for a father figure.

Calypso is a beautiful goddess-nymph,

who enthralls Odysseus and holds him

captive for seven years.

Molly Bloom, later the dutiful wife,

is portrayed in an early episode as the

immortal nymph who enchants Leopold.

Odysseus travels to Hades, the

underworld, to ask the spirit of blind

prophet Tiresias the way home.

Bloom attends Paddy Dignam’s

funeral, his thoughts wandering in at

times humorous and inappropriate ways.

Circe is a beautiful witch-goddess, who

drugs Odysseus’s men and turns them

into swine. Odysseus becomes her lover.

Stephen and Bloom wander through

Nighttown to visit a brothel operated by

Bella Cohen, a modern-day Circe.

Penelope keeps suitors at bay while

waiting for the return of Odysseus,

missing and presumed dead at sea.

Molly dallies with a lover but, although

bored with her husband, Leopold, she

awaits his homecoming.

HOMER’S ODYSSEY JAMES JOYCE’S ULYSSES

US_214-221_Ulysses.indd 221 08/10/2015 13:08