Oh the labor Joyce must have gone through when writing this book.

I’d like to hypothesize about how Joyce reworks myth in this novel. In this chapter particularly I have come to some realizations. While many would want read this novel alongside the Odyssey, or scene by scene with Hamlet, I think that method could distort someone’s interpretation. I see this being a problem because this novel(?) alludes to too many other works. While it is titled Ulysses and the scenes parallel those from the epic, the scenes are out of order. I see Joyce superimposing images, characters, and themes from past works to essentially create a second Ulysses. I think the significance of the Odyssey is that it is the original heroic epic. Being this I think Joyce is either showing, or merely exploring, the idea that every hero since Odysseus has followed his journey.

If one were to boil down the “oxen of the Sun” scene in the Odyssey, one could say that bulls are killed and part of the crew is hit by lightning. At one point, I think Stephen in his drunkenness is frightened by the thunder. Before, there was discussion of how no-one knows where the soul travels too. Stephen also makes a joke about the friar’s vows saying that he had “obedience in the womb, chastity in the tomb, but involuntary poverty all his days” (392). I assume some of this blasphemy angers the “black crack of noise in the street” (394). While this refers back to what Stephen called the monotheistic god, it is also “Thor thundering.” What Joyce does here is superimpose two scenes of God creating lighting. If my hypothesis is true, then these are rewritings of the scene when Zeus strikes Odysseus’s crew.

Joyce does not only superimpose images and events, but also styles as well. If he is trying to find who has relived Odysseus’s struggles, he will also be curious in how their stories are told. In this chapter there are examples of Roman philosophy, Old English Verse, and even drunken bantering. By doing so Joyce can be a critic of philosophies and style. With all the puns and auditory devices Joyce uses, one has to understand that this novel is a manipulation of language as much as it is with themes. By using so much word play one has to question whether there is something inherent in language itself. For example Mrs. Purefoy thinks of Doady, “to lay in his arms that mite of God’s clay, the fruit of their lawful embraces” (421). This implies that this couple has created an Adam, God’s clay, from their relationship. While the mention of fruit recall the commandment “be fruitful and multiply,” it also implies that these “lawful embraces” are related to the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and original sin.

At this point in the novel I think I’m starting to grasp what Joyce is doing and how he is doing it. I think I’ll wait until class to try to piece these thoughts together.

Questions:

Bloom is often shown as being motherly, even womanish. Do you think this is because he was never able to a father to a son, or rather do you think it might have happened poorly? In one way this is how Bloom’s tale differs from Odysseus’s, because he has no Telemachus.

Why do you think that Mrs. Purefoy’s baby is like Christ?