Ulysses: The Interpretation Of The Modern Odyssey

There are different theories on why the entire story takes place on Thursday, June 16. Richard Ellman states 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 are 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.

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Some well-known figures are buried here, such as Micheal Collins, Luke Kelly of the Dubliners, Daniel O’Connell, Christy Brown. (Fitzgerald) Even though all these places are fascinating, No 7 Eccles Street may represent the ideal point from where everything begins and ends. In this place is where Leopold Bloom starting his day. Also, on Eccles Street is where Molly Blooms’ famous monologue takes place (almost 40 pages with only two punctuation marks). Today the house on Eccles street doesn’t exist anymore and a hospital replaces it.

Other 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 participated in this war. After 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. The episodes in Ulysses are named after places and other characters from Odyssey such as: Lotus Eater, Cyclops or Circe.

Ulysses represents a modern parallel to Odyssey and the episode names and its characters are related to Homer’s story. Besides the main plot, this book also presents characters from other works by Joyce. For example: from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are present Dedalus family, Father Dolan, Lynch, MacCann and from The Dubliners are presented Lenehan, Corley, Paddy Leonard.

However, one of the most intriguing characters is still Leopold Bloom. His name and personality are inspired by the author’s friend Leopold Popper. He represents the figure of Odysseus who is wandering through Dublin on June 16. Even if he doesn’t leave Dublin, Bloom, exactly like Odysseus, is a wanderer. (Britannica) Besides the fact that he is associated with Odysseus, he is not an uneducated man, and his vocabulary is limited, making his discourse a cliché. (Byrnes 239) He is 38 years old in the novel, born in 1866, being considered a middle-age person because the average life expectancy of Irish people during that time was 47.8 years. (McCung 16) 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, with a daughter, Milly, who is now 15 years old, and working as an advertising canvasser. His life turned upside down when his father commits suicide and his son dies in infancy, so Bloom later sees Stephen Dedalus as his own son. Despite the tragic events in his life, Leopold Bloom is described as being kind and curious, but also full of familial warmth.

His wife, Molly Bloom corresponds to Penelope from Odyssey, but does not share the same characteristics as her. Even though Penelope is Odysseus’ faithful wife, Molly decides to begin an affair with Hugh Blazes Boylan. Marion Bloom (her maiden name is Tweedy) is a 33 years old singer who enjoys the attention of men and who has a few female friends. During conversations, she is frank about certain topics that some people tend to sentimentalize, such as 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 episode that is well-known for Molly’s 40 pages soliloquy with no punctuation mark) and she is present in her husband’s thoughts.

The model who Molly is based off of is the author’s wife Nora. In the novel, James Joyce express through this character every woman’s needs and desires. (McMullen 1) Even if she doesn’t share the same characteristics as Homer’s Penelope, she distinguishes herself from other characters. She is also appreciated that in a male-dominated world she dares to criticize the old-fashioned thinking and Catholic Church’s patriarchal tradition. For example, she does not believe she needs to confess her sins to a main if she has already done so to God. (McMullen 4) Furthermore, the flow of her soliloquy shows an emotional process and the author presents 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” (Joyce 643)

Despite the lack of punctuation marks, the sentences are grammatically correct. James Joyce observed that human thoughts do not respect the same rules as written or spoken language and thoughts continuously change, appear and disappear from a person’s mind, so using punctuation marks create full stops, emphasis and pauses in the inner discourse. (McMullen 2) The author uses this technique to make Molly express her emotions naturally. Her soliloquy begins and ends with the word Yes which 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 characters of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. In Ulysses, he is 22 years old and he is described 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 craftsman 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 hard period, the author’s tone seems optimistic, so the reader feels that 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 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 219) He thinks that his mother’s ghost will destroy his identity, but on the other hand he envisions her as a protective figure. In the entire novel, Stephen is obsessed with the thought of sin, that’s why his mother comes and approaches him in his imagination and sometimes in his dreams: “in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown grave clothes giving off an odor of wax and rosewood” (Joyce 102) His mother figure will reappear as a ghost during daytime and this apparition may have a function: to give Stephen clues so he can understand his purpose as an artist. (Yuki 232) But in Circe episode, Stephen is shook by her grotesque figure and tells her “they say I killed you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.” (Joyce 472) 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 comrades 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 subconscious hallucinations reflecting the characteristics of the witch’s island. The two characters ends up in the ‘nighttown’, with the brothel keeper, Bella Cohen, as Circe. During this episode both characters feel guilty and have different hallucinations: Leopold Bloom sees his family and parents, while Stephen sees his dead mother.

All the scenes from Ulysses show the main characters’ weak and strong points. The readers have different opinions about the story, and they may change it according to the presented events. Some of them considering the family Bloom “a romantic cliché” (Byrnes 246) or Stephen Dedalus being obsessed with his mother’s death. On the surface, some of the Ulysses’ connections to Odyssey may not be easily observed because the two main characters have different features, but the novel’s structure and the entire plot make Ulysses a modern Odyssey.