Irish Writer James Joyce

Categories: Leopold Bloom Stephen Dedalus Ulysses

Essay, Pages 8 (1982 words)

Views

141

One of the most important autors in Ireland is James Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941), a novelist, literary critic, poet and teacher. He wrote the short-story collection Dubliners, the well-known novel A portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and poems. He is known for using experimental language and new literary techniques in novels as Finnegans Wake and Ulysses which represents a parallel to Odyssey by Homer, published by Silvia Beach on 2nd February 1944.

Ulysses was first serilised and published in The Little Review from 1918 to 1920.

Don't use plagiarized sources. Get your custom essay on

“ Irish Writer James Joyce ”

Get custom paper

NEW! smart matching with writer

The novel has three central characters. One of them is Leopold Bloom who represents Ulysses, the Odysseus’ Latinised name, his wife, Molly Bloom who is Penelope and Stephen Dedalus, the same character as in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, who is Telemachus. The entire action takes place in Dublin on a single day, 16th June 1904. In Ireland this date is known today as Bloomsday, “a sacred date on the calendar of all Joyceans” (Rothman).

Bloomsday festival is named after one of the main characters in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom and it’s not celebrated only in Dublin, but also in other cities from Europe as Budapest and Vienna. This festival celebrates the day when the entire action took place, June 16th, following the steps of Leopold Bloom through Dublin from 8 am to early morning of the next day. (Bloomsday) The first

Bloomsday festival was celebrated in 1954, in Dublin and it developed quickly into an animated celebration. The participants can take part of different activities that are related to Joyce’s Ulysses.

They will eat the same breakfast that Leopold Bloom ate on 16th June, in the city center, bars and theatre people will perform scenes from Ulysses, they will dress up with clothes specific to that period and will follow the same route as Bloom followed in Dublin. Also, some of them may know that this day was also eventfull for James Joyce himself and so many scholars tried to answer the following question: why did the author choose this day and no other one?

There are different opinions about why the entire action takes place on Thursday 16th June. Richard Ellman says that “Joyce chose June 16th for a more pasional reason – as a gift to his partner and eventual wife, Nora – to commemorate the day which she went walking with him and changed his life.” (Groden) Joyce chose 1904 because the summer of this year was significant for himself, not only because he met Nora, but he started writing some of the stories from Dubliners and decided to leave Ireland. (Bloomsday) Some of the events that happened during that summer and some places that still exist will be also presented in Ulysses.

During Bloomsday people can visit the places that James Joyce mentioned in his novel. One of the most interesting buildings may be considered Martello Tower which is now The James Joyce Tower and Museum. In the first chapter, Telemachus episode, the action takes place here. Another place is Glasnevin Cemetery which dates from 1832 and it is presented in Hades episode. Here are buried some well-known figures as Micheal Collins, Luke Kelly of the Dubliners, Daniel O’Connell, Christy Brown. (Fitzgerald) Sandymount Strand, one of the Irleand’s most famous beaches, is also a landmark in Ulysses and here take place two episodes: Proteus and Nausicaa. Even if all these places are fascinating, No 7 Eccles Street may represent the ideal point from where everything starts and ends. In this place is presented Leopold Bloom starting his day. Also, on Eccles Street takes place Molly Blooms’ famous monologue (almost 40 pages with no punctuation marks). Another places presented in the book are Davy Byrnes on Duke Street, Trinity College, O’Connell Bridge, Sweny’s Pharmacy and so on.

Bloom’s walk through Dublin looks almost the same as Odysseus’ trip back home. Back then the Greeks had to fight the Trojans and Odysseus took part of this war. When the Greeks won the war with the help of a wooden horse, they decided to go back home. On their way back, they stopped in different places, for example: Land of Cicones, Aeolia, Telepylos, Aeaea. Some of these places’ names represent names of episodes in Ulysses, for example in Odyssey is presented The Island of the Lotus Eater, but in Joyce’s novel, episode number five is also named Lotus Eater. The same aspect apply to other chapters like Cyclops or Circe.

Ulysses represents a modern parallel to Odyssey and not only the episode names are related to Homer’s story but also the characters. Besides the main characters: Leopold Bloom, Molly Bloom and Stephen Dedalus, in this book are also present other characters from other novels by Joyce. In the novel will appear some characters from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man as Stephen Dedalus and his family, Father Dolan (mentioned in Circe), Lynch, MacCann and others. Some characters from The Dubliners will reappear, especially in Circe episode, as Lenehan, Corley, Paddy Leonard, etc.

But one of the most intriguing characters is still Leopold Bloom. This character’s name and personality is insipired by the author’s friend Leopold Popper. He represents the figure of Odysseus who is wandering through Dublin on 16th June 1904. “Though he never leaves the streets of Dublin, Bloom is a wanderer like the Greek mythological hero Ulysses (Odysseus).” (Britannica) Even if he is associated with Odysseus, he is “an uneducated man of commonplace information and limited vocabulary who speaks entirely within a repertoire of cliché.” (Byrnes)

He is 38 years old in the novel, born in 1866, being considered a middle-age person because Irish people, at that time, were living almost 47.8 years. (McCung) His mother is Ellen, an Irish Catholic and his father is Rudolph, a Hungarian Jewish. He has a normal life in Dublin, being married with Molly Bloom, having a daughter, Milly who is now 15 years old, and working as an advertising canvaser. His life turned upside down when his father commited suicide and his son died in infancy, so, later on, Bloom saw in Stephen Dedalus his own son. Despite the tragic episode in his life, Leopold Bloom is described as being pacific, decent, timid and curious, but also full of kindness and familial warmth.

His wife, Molly Bloom corresponds to Penelope from Odyssey, but does not share the same characteristics as her. Even if Penelope is Odysseus’ faithful wife, Molly decided to begin an affair with Hugh Blazes Boylan on 16th June 1904. Marion Bloom (Tweedy was her maiden name) is a 33 years old singer who enjoys the attention that men offers to her, so she has a few female friends. During conversations she is frank about certain topics that some people tend to sentimentalize, for example intimacy or motherhood. She is a half-Jewish raised in Gibraltar by Major Tweedy and Lunita Laredo and, like her husband, she is a Dublin outsider . In Ulysses she appears in many episodes as Calypso, Circe, Ithaca and Penelope (the final chapter that is well-known for Molly’s 40 pages solilloquy with no punctuation mark) and she is present in her husband thoughts.

The model in reality for Molly is considered author’s wife Nora. In the novel, James Joyce express through this character everywoman’s needs and desires. (McMullen) Even if she doesn’t share the same characteristics as Homer’s Penelope, she distinguishes from other characters. She is also apreciated that in a male-dominated world she dares to criticize the old-fashioned thinking and Catholic Church’s patriacal tradition, for example if she already confessed her sins to God why she must confess them to a man. (McMullen) Much more, the flow of her solliloquy shows an emotional procees and the author present it through an unconventional method. “I saw he understood how or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes”

Despite the fact that punctuantion marks do not exist, the sentences are grammatically correct. James Joyce observed that human thoughts do not respect the same rules as the written or spoken language and thoughts continuously change and they just appear and disappear from a person’s mind, so using punctuation marks will create full stops, emphasis and pauses in her inner discourse. (McMullen) The author using this technique makes Molly to express her emotions naturally. Her solliloquy begins and ends with the word Yes wich is considered a female word, so she represents an “union of opposites, the product of a dynamism that resolves into stability” (Kraemer)

During the entire story she is presented in contrast to Stephen Dedalus, the aspiring poet, who is also one of the main chatacters of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In Ulysses he is 22 years old and he is described more as a searcher for the meaning of his life. He corresponds to Telemachus, the son of Odysseus. The author named him after Daedalus, a mythical craftman who created wax wings for him and Icarus and he even sees himself as an Icarus who got closer to the sun and burnt his wings. Even if Stephen Dedalus is going through a thaugh period, the author’s tone seems optimistic, so the reader feels like at the end of the novel this character will find an answer to all of his problems. He finds in Leopold Bloom a father-like figure, while Bloom sees in him his dead son.

He feels guilty for the tragic episodes from his life: he refused to pray for his dying mother, he does not want to get in touch with his alcoholic father and he had a fake youth because he pretended to to be so pious while he was thinking of women. Marylu Hill says that “The real mother is what Stephen wishes for while the symbolic mother is the object of Stephen’s fears. In a sense, these two mothers are robbed of their subjecthood by Stephen’s perception.“ (Yuki) He thinks that his mother’s ghost will destroy his identity, but on the other hand he envision her as a protective figure. In the entire novel, Stephen is obsessed with the thought of the sin, that’s why his mother comes and reaproaches him in his imagination and sometimes he dreams about her: “in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood” (Ulysses: 1.102) His mother figure will reappear as a ghost during daytime and this apparition may have a function: to give Stephen a clue so he can understand his purpose as an artist. (Yuki) But in Circe episode, Stephen is shook by her grotesque figure and tells her “they say I killed you, mother… Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.” (Ulysses) This scene shows that he still feel guilty about not praying for his mother.

Circe is the name of a witch from Homer’s Odyssey. Odysseus ends up on the island of Aeaea which is Circe’s home. She has the power to turn men into swines, but Hermes will give Odysseus to eat a plant which will protect him from witch’s magic. Circe will transform his commarades back to their human form only if he stays with her to feast and enjoy each other. In James Joyce’s Ulysses, in Circe episode, the main characters are dunk and have subconcius hallucinations reflecting the characteristics of the witch’s island. The two characters ends up in the red-light district of the town, with the brothel keeper, Bella Cohen, as Circe. During this episode both characters feel guilty and have different hallucinacions: Leopold Bloom sees his family and parents, while Stephen sees his dead mother.