Joyce, James - Ulysses (plot, analysis, characters)

Joyce's innovative narrative

It’s Joyce’s masterpiece and it’s the final step of his development from tradition to innovation, indeed we can find all the novelties in the narrative technique but also in theme. It’s published first in Paris in 1922 but it was banished for the Molly’s sexual thoughts. It’s set in a single day that is Thursday 16 June 1904 in Dublin, it was a special day for Joyce because in this day Nora Barnacle accepted his wedding request, but it’s only presented a detailed description of 18 hours of an ordinary day of an ordinary life.

What is the symbolism of the characters?

During the course of the story we have 3 important characters: Leopold Bloom, a common man that represents the whole humanity so all human features, intellect conscious and unconscious and instinct; Molly Bloom, Leopold’s wife that represents instinct, flesh, sexuality and fecundity; finally Stephen Dedalus, an intellectual who embodies the search for maturity. In this day we have no particular actions because the central character, Leopold Bloom, went out for buying something for the breakfast, he attended a funeral and then during his wandering he met Stephen Dedalus who asked him for a brothel but Leopold waned to help him, he took him at home and Stephen, as a consequence, became his adopted son. While Molly is planning an afternoon of adultery with her music director.

Mythical method and narrative techniques

These characters correspond respectively to Odyssey, Telemachus and Penelope of the Homeric Odyssey because they are similar and both the works have almost the same structure. The mythical method is used by Joyce to represent the past and to express the universal from the particular and the reader had to imitate them. So we have a deductive and moral aim because it talks about the human life that means suffering and searching of good. The masterpiece, as we know, is the last attempt to create a new technique because we can find two levels of narration, one external to the character’s mind and the other internal that takes place in the character’s consciousness. It is a collage of different techniques that are similar to the different perspectives that we can find in a cubist artwork. For example we can find the dramatic dialogue, the stream of consciousness, the use of questions and answers, a language rich of symbols, slang expressions and puns and finally the use of cinematic technique that is associated to flashbacks, flash for awards, close-ups, tracking shots and suspension of the speech.