The Literature Book

218

the story of Stephen Dedalus gaining

the confidence to liberate his talents

from the conformist pressures of the

Catholic Church, his upbringing,

and country. In Ulysses, Stephen is

first shown in the morning, verbally

jousting with cynical quasi-friend

Buck Mulligan, in the tower where

they live on Sandycove. He thinks

back to his mother on her deathbed

and guiltily reflects on his refusal,

on atheistic principle, to pray for

her. He then teaches a history

lesson and walks on the beach.

The novel then shifts back in

time to 8 am and enters full “stream-

of-consciousness” mode as the reader

follows Leopold Bloom planning

breakfast at home, shopping at the

butcher’s, and then cooking the

meal and taking a tray upstairs to

Molly. Joyce uses stream of

consciousness to varying degrees

to relate the experiences of Stephen,

Bloom, and Molly, although to move

the action forward in any particular

passage, he skillfully interweaves

stream of consciousness and third-

person narrative.

Bloom and the real world

Naturalism, or “scientific” realism,

had become the lifeblood of the

novel in mid-19th-century France,

especially in the fiction of Émile

Zola, who presented life’s seamier

aspects in meticulous detail. Later

French writers such as Henri

Barbusse, in Under Fire (1916),

deployed brutal realism to describe

the appalling horrors of World War I.

Ulysses, which Joyce began

writing in 1915, belongs to this

tradition of novelistic candor—

ULYSSES

although Joyce’s spiritual ancestor

was less Zola, whose naturalism

was pessimistic and didactic, than

Zola’s 16th-century compatriot

François Rabelais—a writer whose

broad comedy and fascination with

the excesses of the carnival Ulysses

parallels in certain sections.

Leopold Bloom is one of the

most fully realized characters in

all fiction. He is what the French

call “un homme moyen sensuel”—

an average man with the usual

appetites—intelligent but far

from intellectual. He has a genial

character and shows a liking

for comfort and a desire to avoid

confrontation. When he is first

introduced, the easy relationship

he enjoys with his own bodily

functions and with at least some

people within his social milieu sets

The numbers on the

map plot the events

of June 16, 1904

1

2

1

3

13

14

9

8

5

(^716)
12
10
6
4
17 18
11
15
The 18 episodes of Ulysses in Dublin
8 am The Tower
10 am The School
11 am The Strand
12 noon
The Newspaper
1 pm The Lunch
2 pm The Library
3 pm The Streets
4 pm The
Concert Room
5 pm The
Tavern
8 pm The Rocks
10 pm The Hospital
12 midnight
The Brothel
1 am The Shelter
8 am, 2 am
The House, The Bed
RIVER (^) LI
FFEY
2 The School:
Stephen walks from the
Tower, where he lives,
to Mr. Deasy’s School in
Dalkey to teach a lesson.
4, 17, 18 The House:
“Bloomsday” starts and
ends at Leopold and
Molly Bloom’s house,
No. 7 Eccles Street.
5 The Bath:
Wandering in a drowsily
complacent state, Bloom
picks up a letter, then
heads to the Turkish baths.
6 The Graveyard:
Bloom and three friends
share a carriage for the
funeral procession from
Paddy Dignam’s House.
7 The Newspaper:
Stephen and Bloom cross
paths, as Bloom chases
advertising and Stephen
places Mr. Deasy’s letter.
10 am The Bath
11 am The Graveyard
10 The Streets:
In this central episode,
19 characters pursue
mini-odysseys through
the streets of Dublin.
12 The Tavern:
Bloom is accosted by an
Irish nationalist “citizen”
when he stops for a drink
in Barney Kiernan’s pub.
14 The Hospital:
A group of drunken men,
among them Bloom and
Stephen, wait for Mina
Purefoy to give birth.
15 The Brothel:
After a hallucinatory
walk through Nighttown,
Bloom and Stephen meet
in a brothel.
16 The Shelter:
Bloom and Stephen take
refuge in a cabman’s
shelter. Fellowship is soon
undermined as the gulf
between their views
becomes apparent.
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