Joyce, James - Ulysses, detailed analysis

Ulysses and its characters

Ulysses is universally recognized as a hero, and Dante spoke and described Ulysses in the 26' Canto of Paradise. But everybody thinks of Ulysses as a hero, he is a brave man who is able to fight against every single thing. He is a wanderer: he wanders, he doesn't know what to do, he goes around the world without stopping, in source of his stability. There are three characters only: the central character is Leopold Bloom, he seems to be considered by some critics James Joyce himself. Leopold Bloom is a middle-age advertisement agent and represents in Joyce's idea the "common man". The other character is Steven Dedalus (the alienated character of "portrait of an artist as a young man"), who for this day becomes a kind of adaptissance by Leopold Bloom. The third character is Leopold's wife, Molly, who has some features in common with Homer's Odyssey. Leopold Bloom is Ulysses, because he represents the Odyssey, so the main character. Stephen Dedalus represents Telemachos, Ulysses's son. Molly Bloom represents Penelope, but with a lot of differences taking in consideration Homer's Ulysses with Joyce's Ulysses. So they represent three different characters, sharing something in common but most of the things are totally different.

The structure of Ulysses

It is made up of 730 pages, the events cover the period of one day only, (to be precise 18 hours: from 8:00 a.m. when the main character leaves his home, coming back on 2:00 a.m. of the following day.). The day was the 16'" of June, when Joyce met Nora Barnacle and he fell in love with her; this day is also known as "Bloomsday". This is a huge work; divided into 18 episodes and each episode covers one hour. Within this novel, there is a massive use of the "stream of consciousness" technique and a massive use of interior monologue. Stream of consciousness technique is a technique, which follows the rhythm of our thoughts and our emotions as an association of ideas as they follow at random, not in a logical order. This is the clear representation of the indirect monologue (example: iceberg, the part we see is the smallest part, the top: the interior monologue is like the biggest part of the iceberg that we cannot see, made up of dreams, wishes, flashbacks, everything that you cannot see in a person's life).

Innovative narrative techniques

Ulysses is famous for many things, but what really marks is its revolutionary prose. Joyce combined several methods to present a variety of matters: the steam of consciousness technique with the interior monologue, the cinematic technique (with flashbacks, suspension of speech, and jumps in time….); the collage technique: a kind of collage with all kinds of techniques. The attempt is the one of reproducing human thoughts as they occur in the human mind.

The three parts of Ulysses

This work is divided in 3 parts:

tthe first is called “Telemachiad”, stands for Stephen Dedalous, because he represents Telemaco (Ulysses's son, he is looking for his father). It is described right from the beginning of the day: it is 8:00 a.m. of the 16') June, a day in which Joyce met Nora. The scene is set in Dublin at the "Martello Tower", where Stephen Dedalus, the young university teacher, is having breakfast with two other men. Then Stephen goes to school, where he teaches history and English. He is frustrated, because his students are not really interested in the subjects he teaches, so he feels very alienated with this job position. After Stephen goes to the beach and goes to the seaside, he sees himself behind some rocks watching couples having a kind of romance. Part two is called "Odysseys", generally focused on Leopold Bloom. The time is still 8:00 a.m., the description starts at the same time in a parallel situation: at 8:00 Stephen was having breakfast, at 8:00 Leopold Bloom was preparing his breakfast, also for his wife Molly. Then he decided to go out to by a pork pie. He returned home the following morning, at 2:00 a.m.on 17th of June. During these 18 hours he did stupid things: he went to the post office, where he read a letter sent from by their daughter Milly; he also got a secret love letter from a woman. After that he met some people he knew, he also went to a funeral; then he went to the national library in Dublin. Then there is episode 11, which is dominated by the sirens (reminding Ulysses sirens). Then Leopold Bloom had dinner with Stephen's uncle and at the same time Molly (Leopold's wife) was meeting her secret lover, in

her bedroom. Then the scene was described while Molly was waiting for her lover at home, while Bloom was meeting Steven and the go in a brothel. After dinner, Leopold Bloom went back home with Stephen and Leopold

invited Stephen to spend the night there, but he refused his offer and went back home.

The beauty of Molly's monologue

Third part is called "Penelope" and it is considered the most beautiful part of Ulysses. It is all focused on Molly, who represents Penelope. Molly is having this soliloquy alone at home and this soliloquy is made up of 8 enormous sentences. Everything is sent from her point of view, which is that of a woman who has another lover. With this soliloquy, Molly, at the end of the day, accepts her husband in her bed. She's also worried about his health.

It's beautiful because it is a part where she remembers a past life with Bloom, a past meeting; she remembers the time when she was in love. It is the most beautiful example of interior monolog, of stream of consciousness. In this just last line, Molly recognizes that she still loves her husband. It is not a case that the last word was a woman's word «yes».