Deseay hates Jews....

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare in which I am trying to awake”

The annotations say that the first two scenes are apart of the “S” section, the portion focusing on Stephen. In the Nestor scene we learn a lot more about Stephen. One of the most pressing issues Stephen deals with is being a member of history. The scene opens with Stephen questioning his class about the history of Pyrrhus. The students disinterest in the subject displays one way in which Stephen is trapped in history. When Armstrong confuses “Pyrrhus” with “piers” it raises the question of knowledge versus action. The student thinks of a contemporary landmark, one he probably has been to. On the other hand Stephen is trying to teach history. Is knowledge of one more important than the other? Or has the confusion of language made one obsolete?
One aspect of this novel I see shining through is how Joyce will contemplate a subject endlessly without resolution. While early on Joyce creates one question concerning the role of history, he immediately moves towards another. “Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death?” (25). Stephen’s question makes one wonder how would the world be different in another course of history? But instead of contemplating a change in society, Stephen turns his inquiry metaphysical. He wonders, “but can those have been possible seeing that they never were?,” asking whether the “other possibilities” of time know of their inexistence. And there is a sense that Stephen is contemplating this question in regards to his own role in history. This is why I opened with the quote “history…is a nightmare in which I am trying to awake,” like Stephen is yearning to leave this world (34). The intensity of history is displayed on page 31 when Stephen lists occurrences of Irish plight. And I see Stephen’s disgust with money, “something soiled by greed and misery,” stem from his hate of history. For all these printed coins, he typically notes the monarch on the piece, are just emblems of the changing regimes of history.
One more important thing I see concerning Stephen is that the world of the novel is shown through the distortion of his eyes and thoughts. Like when reading through Deseay’s letter, we do not see the content, just what Stephen picks out. And like in the Telemachus section the narrative is often interrupted by the daydreams or contemplations of Stephen. But these sections are slowly turning into my favorite portions of this book. While each is obscure on its own, the complexity in which they are linked together with allusions or images helps form the outline of the puzzle. But beyond just the text slipping in and out of coherency, Stephen does too. Like on page 26 when he blurts out, “I don’t see anything,” to Sargent, but is not responding to anything Sargent said.

Questions:
I see similarities between Buck and Deseay’s repulsive character. But their ideals are quite different, religion versus science. Do you think that despite believing in different things Joyce is defining these characters similarly?