The stranger becomes a leader

What I mean by the title is that throughout this section Bloom is repeatedly likened to Parnell. This connects to the thematic Odysseus story line in that when Odysseus returns to Ithaca he is disguised as a stranger and over time he reveals himself to Telemachus as the heroic leader figure of his father. This allows us to see the paternal connection that Bloom feels for Stephen, in that until able to talk alone with Stephen and hear about his feeling towards the state of Ireland and family, Bloom is ever the foreigner/ stranger in Ireland. However, when Stephen and he agree on their feelings about pacifism and overblown nationalism, then Bloom is revealed to the reader as truly Irish, and similar to Ireland's national hero of Parnell.

some explicit similarities, even if not historically correct:
pg. 651 "Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between married folk?"
pg.649- rumors of Parnell as still alive and returning is like Odysseus, which is the figure of Bloom in this section.
pg. 652- Parnell's mistress is Spanish, Molly is half.
pg. 644 - Bloom's view on Jews and equality, slightly Marxist and hearkening back to his transformation into social leader during the Circe episode.
pg. 660 - Rumor that Parnell was not in his coffin or that he was killed by people that used to be his followers connects to resurrection and crucifixion, that Jesus was a Jew which is persistently in Bloom's thoughts, making his mental processes the connecting bridge between these events, making him into two of Ireland's national heroes at the same time.

Stephen embodies Telemachus in this section more strongly then I felt he did in any of the previous. His dilemma at not being to return home because of the trap of the usurpers at the tower aids in this connection as Telemachus meets his disguised father because he cannot enter the house due to the suitors.

One thing that came as a surprise at the end of this section was that Bloom's thoughts turn to how he can exploit the talents and friendship he hopes to make with Stephen. Suddenly he becomes similar to Buck Mulligan in a sense. And he and Buck Mulligan are repeatedly insulting each other to Stephen, discouraging him to associate with the other. This strikes me as odd since Mulligan has been, from the very first events of the morning, painted as the villain in regards to our protagonists. Now for Joyce to connect them feels very off putting and portrays Bloom as the Jewish figure in the typically prejudiced way that Jews are derided throughout the book. Did anyone else feel this way? Or are you all going to call me an anti-Semite in class tomorrow?

Anthropomorphism

In the Circe's episode of Ulysses we see inanimate objects personify Bloom's and Stephen's thoughts as they relive their pasts, deal with the guilt they both feel for their actions and identities. Rather than talking about what Bloom or Stephen is thinking abuot, or just writing their thoughts, as Joyce has been doing throughout. Here the people places and concepts become embodied and speak with them. So when Bloom thinks of Dignam and Molly he thinks of Metem[sychosis and Paddy appears at first we are thinking as a ghost, to carry along the Hamlet referrences, but actually as dog, which ties into the reincarnation issues that Bloom grapples with in the lines between life and death. It also ties Stephen into Bloom's unconscious as we know the Stephen thinks of himself as dog's body. More than having Bloom think of Stephen, Jouce here sort of mind melds Stephen and Bloom so that their thoughts are of the same thing.

In terms of Hamlet referrences, we get the most explicit usage of this when Bloom's father come to him and ask him if he has forsaken them. We see more and more guilt on Bloom's mind as he is in trial and then a masochist being dressed up in womens clothing and dominated. He becomes a woman and is still one when Blazes Boylan invites him to watch as he makes love to Molly. What was really great about this part was that we got a concrete hint at Bloom's self denial. He thinks of himself as Othello, as if his suspicions, his own head is his Iago, and that it is possible that Molly is not having an affair. However, using a dramatic format for this section makes all the things that happen seem much mroe real. It blurs the line between thought and occurence.

Paper Topics

I am thinking about writing about Joyce's deconstruction of nationalism as shown in the cyclops chapter. However, I think that there is ample evidence of this theme and many different techniques he employes to show it and so I am wondering if I will really be able to stop myself from bringing in fundamental things behind nationalism such as religion, which is so closely tied to Irish identity, the role of child birth and physicality in love. I am afraid that if I begin to talk about these things that this paper will get bigger than me.

I was thinking that I can tie these other things into this reading of the book, but I am wondering if it would be more worthwhile to focus on one of them, such as physicality and then use nationalism to support how that is shown. As of right now, my intention is to use the ideas, political, national, religious, that are brought up either as directly reflected upon by Stephen, or as shown as a negative image by the use of Bloom's character. What do you think?

WTF

Okay, I admire the craft and the use of different forms, dialects, styles, but I felt that in the Oxen of the sun episode the speaker and point of view was constantly misplaced within the general drunkenness of the characters, the changing tone of the sections and the settings. For one thing, why were Stephen and his friends drinking at the maternity ward with Bloom? And secondly why does Bloom feel the need to go check on Purefoy but then only get drunk with a bunch of young men that continuously unwittingly and, perhaps sometimes intentionally, slap him in the face with his predicament and troubles?

But besides my general frustration with this section, there are many lovely and insightful sections that explicitly state Bloom's heroic qualities, plight, and outline the sort of morality, debased, religious and otherwise, that he is surrounded by. The conversation on whether a woman who will die by childbirth should be saved and the child given up or vise versa, is somewhat settled by Stephen who argues that woman is naught but a vessel for the eternal or holy mothers gift of life and it is the female duty to bring babies into the world and that women are meant to suffer for this because of the first mothers (Eve's) sin. Then they get into a discussion based on a question by Bloom about who is more important for the birth of male children. This however, is somewhat overlooked by the company and there begins a discussion of the soul. That is reared by the church and in the course of their discussion it is feminized and we hear undertones of the idea of how long it takes for a baby to begin having a soul.

On the tail end of this Buck Mulligan enters and announces that he is going to impregnate women who are married to people like Bloom. People who cannot give them healthy children or who do not have sex with them. I found it interesting that at this point the prostate is compared to the uterus and we see that in subtle ways the conversation is growing towards who is responsible for birth and birth complications. In a way all this ties into the idea of the Oxen of the sun in that Oxen are known for virility and yet in Ireland at the time the cattle is dying and uneatable due to disease. In a very explicit way this makes Ireland into the island where Odysseus' men meet their downfall by trying to eat the cattle to satisfy their hunger, what for these characters would be thirst (for alcohol and sex). Which it seems on page 396 are afraid of- the result of their lust, namely children, and they seem to find themselves each a figure of Adam, someone who has or could be brought low by woman. In a way Bloom's son becomes a symbol for the mistake made by being foreign and satisfying your hunger for the meat of the soil you are on. On page 409, Bloom is dismissed as not being to preach to the young men since he is not Irish and it is stated that he was wrong for marrying and having children with Molly, and that this is why his son died, and it's ghost like the ghosts of the cattle will haunt him forever.

Then again Bloom becomes the father of all these men on page 413 and perhaps the one who will win in the end ("But in the straight on the run home when all were in close order the dark horse Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her." 415), and then once again is shot down by Stephen when he claims that Bloom's son is dead because of survival of the fittest 419.

A lot of other subtle and complicating things are written here enhancing the plethora of themes running throughout the book. However I would like to say how the different styles employed by Joyce here are enhancing the book. Well, I would like to say I don't really know how, but the line that stuck out to me was in the praise of Theodore Purefoy after his son is born by his wife how has given birth to a lot of children: "Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle." 423. Here I felt, Joyce described himself and this novel. He has combines and formed a whole out of various materials/ styles in his chronicle which is pretty inclusive, if not all.

Fireworks?

Part of me feels as if it is possible that James Joyce was one of the first people ever to synchronize the explosion of fireworks with male ejaculation so maybe it was a new concept. However reading this now when anyone writing or putting into a film, the explosions of fireworks to describe the climax of sex for a man would be called unimaginative, it seems sort of funny to me.

But onto something not so funny: public masturbation. What is not so funny about this is how we begin the section from a distance until we zoom into Gerty's head where we aware of Bloom, but she only slowly and without knowing him, begins to feel important in his eyes. Oddly enough I think that Gery is the granddaughter of the citizen from the cyclops episode. This sort of importance, the fact the they do not touch and barely look into each other's eyes makes this interaction, a physical one for Bloom, a completely non-physical process. It poses the question of where passion, desire, and arousal lay in the realm of human experience.

Gery is aroused by the idea of being something in this man's eyes that neither of her girlfriends are. More so she is turned on by the thought of him having been sinned against, or even having sinned, and her having the opportunity to play the virgin Mary as we see on 358 where she "just yearned to know all, to forgive all if she could make him fall in love with her, make him forget the memory the past." This right before the overheard mass asks the virgin mary "Ora Pro nobis. Well it has been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy can never be lost or cast away: and fitly she is too a haven of refuge for the afflicted..." Here Gerty makes Bloom's base act into one of pray, as if in his alienation from the culture around him his way of praying to a figure that portrays themselves and is portrayed as the virgin Mary is to masturbate.

Perhaps in someway this is in a way divine conception. The roman candle scene, right before Bloom is done, we hear the imagined taking of virginity, "to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O!" (366-367) From here it is as if Gerty is showered in the seed of the candle or Bloom.

Directly after this we see Bloom's guilt at being a brute, and yet some of his most machismo thoughts. However, it all ties back into his thoughts on the stars and then animals and we see again the split between physicality and ideals which is exemplified in the action of the section and then elucidated upon by Bloom's extended inner monolgoue.

The Christ-like hero

When first reading this section I felt like asking Joyce if he intended for this book to be readable for an audience not living and aware of early nineteenth century, Irish current events. However, as the discussion between the evening drunks gets further into themes of nationalism and as the idea of strangers and what a nation is comes to the fore, things cease being so time specific and we can see larger themes that are brought forth by Bloom.

In his attempt to widen the perspectives of the Irish men around him he states the his nation is Ireland, and that as a jew he also knows what it is like to be oppressed and persecuted as the Irish are by the English. He then states that there is no sense in violent reactions to this because it is everywhere. It is not just the Jews and the Irish. He spouts some sentimental talk of universla love.

All of this, rather than putting him on equal footing with the men around him, makes into a suspicious character whose sexuality is questionable, whose money situation is enviable, and who cannot be trusted. In this chapter Bloom goes from the "prudent member" to having tin cans thrown at him. The use of different newspaper writing styles makes us think of Bloom's job. Some of the over the top nineteenth century romantic/ sentimental exposition made me think of the novels Molly likes to read, and the use of biblical or myth/legend language connected to Homer and the Bible which bring to mind Bloom as a hero, but not just any hero, but the christ-like hero. That the citizen wants to crucify him and that at the ned of the chapter he ascends to heaven are explicit examples of how Bloom is shaping up as the hero we felt he would show himself to be in this novel. Or has it become a montage of writing genres? Journalism, parody, hyperbole, heretical? Maybe so.

The sweets of song

This section is packed. I was constantly flipping between the pages and trying to find where within the time signature, that Joyce establishes at the beginning of the chapter, we were. I know that Joyce does emply some anachronisms within the novel, yet I feel that he is obsessed with the timing of the day and the characters within this book. This is also a large focus for Stephen. Not just for the one day that we see him, but in general, Stephen feels time as an immanent force in his life. But what to say? I could go on about my admiration at Joyce's craft in this section, but that much is clearer here than it has been in other previous sections. I could also state how Joyce makes the thoughts of all of the characters in one room blend together through sound fragments and overheard conversations as well as past occurences.

But, I think that Bloom is really what is at stake in this section. He follows Boylan to the Ormond hotel. He writes off his third encounter with him as coincidence and yet chooses to see where he is headed. He also sits unnoticed in the hotel as people he was consorting with earlier do not even know he is present. He writes to Martha to arrange a meeting and before sending the letter regrets it. He thinks of first mmeeting Molly, he thinks of the community around him that he is not a part of and he hears himself and his wife being spoken about. It is beginning to break my heart.

The words exchanged between Henry Flower and Martha in writing are actually spoken by Simon Dedalus, "that was exceedingly naughty of you..."(261). This is one way that Joyce accomplishes creating a collective consciousness of what is happening between all the characters. I am left wondering though, if this is the same place where the concert of Molly is to take place and if the time siganture established by Joyce at the beginning of the chapter is supposed to fit with the piece Molly will be singing. Or if it is reflective of the pieces being sung by the other people at the hotel. Also is Bloom writing to Martha as Boylan is having sex with Molly? The onomatopoeia being used at times indicates a sort of flesh on flesh feeling, as well as some of images brought up are very sexual and involve wet caverns. Like around 284. I'm just not sure.

A Small City or Joyce Does Omniscience

This section, more than any other, allows Joyce's reader to realize that their suspicions of up-till-now-unseen characters are, for the most part, true. However we are also allowed a view into connections between seemingly dissimilar characters.

For instance, the reverend Conmee's walk through the streets feels much like Bloom's early morning walk to get his breakfast. They both focus on things like trams and exchanging salutations with some of the same people. These surface things however become rooted in more subtle similarities as we hear the reverend's thoughts on the first countess of Belvedere, "that tyrannous incontinence, needed however for men's race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our ways." (223) Here we see the reverend thinking about procreation, just as Bloom does often, and even in this section. Later on the Conmee is confronted by "a flushed young man from the gap of a hedge and after him came a young woman..."(224). This displays the ways that The reverend, sworn to chastity ("Blessed are the undefiled" 224), is reminded of his own form of impotence, just as Bloom is constantly followed by his. In a stretch of the imagination and probably Joyce's intent, one could say that a parallele between the man of God and the Jewish protagonist makes Bloom into a christ-like figure. This gains a sort of validity in the section of this chapter where Joyce has Bloom unwittingly utilize a tool of the prophets to open a book to the part at which it describes the infidelities of a man's wife.

Another unlikely pairing of characters would be Simon Dedalus with the dead Dignam. This manifests itself through many sections including Dignam's son's narration, the parts involving his daughters selling their belongings and going hungry, and where we see Simon, unwilling to get or give money to his children, yet going out drinking for lunch. However, the inversion here lies in that Dignam's son is suffering because his father, typically figured as the bread winner, has passed away. In the Dedalus family, the strife arises out of losing the mother figure of the family. This has a way of bringing to light a lot of Stephen's psyche in his longing for women and his problems with them, as well as his maternal qualities, when we see him interact with his sister who idolizes him in wanting to learn French.

We also get to see the darker side to Buck Mulligan which has only ever existed as an undertone to his statements, usually masked with a tone of joviality. But here we hear Buck admit that he thinks Stephen will never make anything of himself, that "his tragedy" (249) lies in his religious upbringing. I'm not sure that this connects his character with another in some way, but it doesn't make me like him. Even though I think Stephen is pretentious, I still find Buck Mulligan insufferable.

The "intrusions" must be meticulously placed, and yet they are not easily identifiable as connections between the scenes they are placed in and how they enhance a theme therein. The Wandering Rocks shows itself as the shifting scenes and ultimately as the carriages' pass through the streets of Dublin and the characters we have been following.

Physicality

James Joyce is no fair. No, I don't mean that. I only would have liked a little more of a hint towards whether the scene we walk into in the library was being seen from a distance by Bloom, being described in the thrid person by a narrator, or if we are in Stephen's head. It took a long time finally realize that, much like the first chapter, we were being presented a combination of the last two narrative structures.

One reason I had a hard time figuring this out was because of the physical nature of many of description of the people surrounding Stephen. This felt unusaul for our abstract and self-absorbed protagonist. However, this idea of physicality functions throughout this section as more than just a confusing literary device. We see the idea of the physical presented in discussion on Plato. Plato felt that truth was only found in thought, in the abstract nature of things, the physical form of things being just crude representations for thought. This seems to go against Stephen's struggle with forms and his idea of himself and his art. Thinking of Aristotle often, we can assume that Stephen feels that forms are important.

Yet, in his disucssion on Hamlet, this may not be absolutely true. Stephen describes the physical connection between child and mother, that amor matris is the only love in the world. However he shows how there really is no connection between the father and child, that there is no true physical sharing between them. In this way, Stephen gives the physical an importance, and yet he shows that it is not really necessary for life. This gets confusing, as Stephen is himself, when thinking about Stephen's feelings towards his parents. We can assume a certain amount of disdain for his father based on the Proteus episode, and we also see his guilt towards his mother. These things all combine to show a particularly torn, insecure and pretentious Stephen in this episode of the book.

Grotesque Man

It is interesting how being inside of Leopold Bloom's head can stand in such contrast to what we are shown when thrust into a room that he has just walked out of. In Bloom's head we see a practical man who looks around him and thinks about ownership (153), health care (162), public policy (157), and nationalism (164,165). These concerns make Bloom seem like the anti-Stephen; someone rooted in the reality of economics and social systems. However, being inside Bloom's head we watch these things transform so that his musings about an advertisement turn into, "How can you own water really? It's alway flowing in a stream, never the same, which in the stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream. (153)" Or Bloom combines all his other observations on the Irish people and their system of governance in a Yeatsian image of "wheels within wheels. (163)" From here he take us to one of his most insightful, if gloomy, rants; "Things go on the same; day after day... one born every second somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five minutes. Three hundred kicked the bucket... No one is anything. (164)"

Humanity becomes futile in Bloom's eyes and this, as the preface to witnessing the cannibalistic eating habits of Irish men in a pub, combines to give us a grotesque view of man. We see this in Nosey Flynn whose nose is running and constantly threatening to drop mucus into his glass. We see it even in the altruistic gesture made by Bloom to help a blind young man cross the street. What he notices is the stains on his clothes. It becomes overwhelmingly evident when Bloom discusses Sinn Fein (163) and how the Irish will not speak out against Parnell's brother because they don't want to seem un-Irish. In his discussion of Sinn Fien Bloom describes a system where man locks themsleves into an organization that could latter be seen as a trap, much as Bloom is accused of being a part of the Freemasons, a very tight knit organization.

All of this informs the grotesque image of man that Bloom offers and is heightened at the end of the chapter when, after giving us insights into the baseness of the Irish, we see him run and hide between the statues of Goddesses to avoid being seen by his wife's lover. This display of cowardess drives home the idea in this, the Legostrygonians episode of Ulysses, that most men follow each other, are gluttonous, and will "eat" each other for gain. In the light of this Bloom runs away, much as Odysseus does for the island where all the other ships had docked in a land locked area. While Bloom may seem connected to the hero in Odysseus, here for his clever forethought, ultimately he becomes a smaller man hidden behind Greek Goddesses. In a way, Joyce here makes a commentary on the character of Odysseus, or the nature of the hero itself.

Form, content, connections

I would like to say that I am impressed. While, at times I felt that the headlines would not function as headlines in a paper (Only Once More That Soap, ???, Short But to the Point, Sad) I felt willing to overlook this as the majority of the headlines functioned not only to give meaning to the setting of this section, but to aid in the meaning of the text. For instance, Short But To The Point, while not one of my favorite headlines as a headline, manages to draw the readers attention to something that may otherwise be overlooked. While the discussion of land and the repeated image of Bloom moving "nimbly aside" make an impact, it is the headline that really makes the reader see that a point is being made here. In some ways it is as if Joyce is giving his reader his own notes for this section.

However, I think that the form of this section functions to aid Joyce in an interesting way. In previous chapters we see the narrator switch from slightly omniscient, to close third, until finally it is in first person, and back again between all three. However, in the previous chapters we are only really concerned with one of our protagonists at a time, either Stephen or Bloom. In this section we have both of our protagonists in the same space and time and using this form allows Joyce to do things like have Stephen's entrance into the office be linked to Bloom's Exit by the presence of the wind (143) and with jumping into his inner thoughts as soon as he enters the office - "A woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks." (132) While, in earlier sections we are firmly rooted in Bloom's thoughts - "Feathered in his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that chap in the inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely." (126) By using this form of articles I think it becomes easier to digest these narratorial shifts because in a newspaper one is used to shifts in the speaker as each article is written by someone new.

I also just enjoyed this section because of how explicitly experimental it is. I think that Joyce in 1904 was more successful in stretching the boundarie of fiction than a lot of experimental fiction writers are today. I do not see why one would argue that this is not fiction.

The Likeable Protagonist

Thus far we have been presented with characters that exist in extremes. Whether or not we see their struggle with this depends on whose head Joyce takes us into. Most of the characters we have been shown have not been depicted as people a reader feels for. From Stephen's point of view, the people around him are base and insensitive, while he himself comes off as confused, contrived and incredibly insecure. Our next protagonist, Mr. Leopold Bloom shows us the Irishmen around him and they become stereotypes of themselves and at first he himself appears spineless.

I say spineless because he knows about his wife's infidelities and yet he allows it and waits on her hand and foot. However, as we get into his section of the story, we begin to see a pathos develop. In this way, I feel that Joyce has given us what a novel such as this one needs, a likeable protagonist. Through Bloom's trina of consciousness we are given a character that mimicks Stephen in some of his connotations, thinks or acts like Buck Mulligan at times, and a truley outside perspective, from an outsider.

Maybe, what I am currently feeling is pity or sympathy for the way that Bloom is treated while going to the funeral for Dingam, but more than that I am allowed to commiserate with him in a way that, as of yet I cannot with Stephen. In many ways Stephen thinks big but acts little and is so lofty and disconnected that the death of his mother, while acknowledged and appearing as a complex issue for him, cannot yet be defined. Contrary to this is the death of Bloom's son, which is given so much bodily detail and so many repeated images connecting back to the crucifixtion and the idea of the Son, that we begin to get a full understanding of Bloom's psyche and why he embodies an impotence when it comes to his wife.

The themes of life and death, the sacred and profane, have been strongly addressed throughout Ulysses with most everything else coming back to them. All images and actions seem to circle around the idea of what gives life, what takes life and if it matters. Being given the middle ground character of Bloom at this point in the book allows this theme to present itself clearly and gives the reader a little something solid to hold on to.

The Concealer

The Calypso episdoe of Ulysses seems to be the most easily identifiable in its references to The Odyssey.

Meeting Mr. Leopold Bloom after being submerged inside Stephen's head during the Proteus episode, creates a stark contrast that serves to show the different worlds that different people percieve. This manages to add meaning to the presvious sections discussion of the differnent ways of viewing things, either sequentially or stationary (rooted in images) while asserting Bloom's character in all its physical and tangible glory. While Bloom seems base in comparison to Stephen's lofty ideals for himself, we see Bloom's dimensions in his religious roots and in; "a soft qualm regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now." (67)

Bloom appears to turn away from the truth of his wife's infidelities but we see him tortured by it, we see him projecting his thoughts of sexual tension onto the life of his maturing daughter. Despite the obvious focus that Leopold has on bodily functions and the female bodies around him, the discussion about metempsychosis he has with his wife shows a space for the developing theme of the separation between the abstract and the physical world. Joyce's love for puns and word play becomes a bit heavy handed. Such as, "Bone them young so they metempsychosis. The we live after death. That a man's soul after he dies." (64) Leopold sees the act of reincarnation as happening within life, within growing older. He sees this in is daughter but not in his wife. He seems to feel that his wife was always the way she is now.

That Bloom is Jewish comes into his head repeatedly. The same way that Stephen is plagued by the shadow of catholicism that he feels falls over all of Ireland, Bloom's Jewish descent is a constant thought and a constant factor in the way the he views the world around him. While Stephen constantly referrences the Bible and places in the Bible, Bloom referrences Palestine at least four times. I would love to see Mr. Deasy and Leopold Bloom interact.

All or not at all

In the Proteus episode of Ulysses we see Stephen the poet writing. We are brought into a moment of his solitude walking on the beach and in his stream of consciousness and word play we see him franticly scribble notes on Mr. Deasy's letter. Perhaps the strongest image that stood out to me was the scene of a live dog finding the carcass of a dead dog, circling it and sniffing it.
"He stopped, sniffed it, stalked around it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffing rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody. Here lies poor dogsbody's body." (46)

This image set up for me an idea of duality (between things and narrative point of views) and connected back to the "cracked looking glass." Here this dog sees a distorted reflection of itself in the dead dog, an inevitable future and yet the dead dog remains something removed from the living dog. Much as later Stephen, when Stephen is writing, we are given the narrator's comment, "His shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star?" and then later in the same paragraph Stephen's voice, "I throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back. Endless, would it be mine, form of my form?" (48)

This image of Stephen and his shadow parlelles the image of the two dogs, one dead at the others feet. Stephen brings it back to an issue of the soul as the form of all forms and we are presented with his observations of finite man versus the soul, wondering if his shadow, what he seems to poetically transform into an ethereal essence, were to become infinite, would it still be his?

Ultimately we see Stephen searching, focusing on language and mentioning history again and again. The way that images are weaved into the narrative is arresting and sometimes needs re-reading to take a scene away from all the sensations that we are given in the description of sand under feet as Stephen walks on the beach.

Nestor

Immediately noticable, the narrator gets closer to Dedalus in this section of the book than in the previous one. This serves to give the reader deeper insight into the conflict of the character concerning religion. This issue is established at the beginning of the section rather heavy handedly as we see how intrinsically the nature of time and Dedalus' own anachronistic feelings are tied to his views on religion. On page 24 the first non-dialogue line begins one theme running through the section: "Fabled by the daughters of memory." This is followed by Stephen's visceral and ingrained memory of the distant past. We see him here feel the wieght of time and the past as immediate issues. The use of the word fable sets the connections to The Odyssey prominently, as does the role of the olympian muses.

On page 25 we see Stephen ponder the mutability of the past, the probability wave of things having gone differently than they did. "Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinte possibilities they have outsted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind." The reader is thrust into the unresolved ponderings of Stephen wherein history is created out of either endless possabilities, or else functions within a mode of determinism. But by the next page, we see Stephen find a resolution for his query in, "Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms." In his acceptance of things existing as they are and in no other manner Stephen finds tranquility, but as we see in his conversation with Mr. Deasy, not God or religion.

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to wake." (34) Stephen can accept that things are as they are, yet he still finds them oppressive in their nature. Deasy's response that all history is is moving towards "the manifestation of God," prompts Stephen to point out the commonplace sounds of children playing as God. Since Stephan sees History as unchangeable and unending (in that he sees it as cyclical and determined), God would manifest in the mundane, the everyday. In this way, "his shadow," the shadow of Christ, that Stephen sees as cast upon all people, is the inescapable cycle of history that is constantly butting up against the present.

Telemachus

Reading the first section of Joyce's Ulysses required having dictionary.com and babelfish open for most of it. Despite this, I am still uncertain what "ouns" are. Regardless, the over all tone has been set for a novel where class and race divides are a strong undercurrent within Stephen Dedalus' life. By the second page, or page four in the Vintage edition, Buck Mulligan establishes this dynamic by discussing Haines with Dedalus, saying; "A ponderous Saxon, He thinks you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English. Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Dedalus; you have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade."

This allows us to see much about Buck Mulligan as well as reigning issues between the English and the Irish within the novel. Buck Mulligan's name for Dedalus asserts his own work as a medical student and it also gives the reader insight into a character, the main character, that we don't hear very much from till pages into the first section. This nick-name makes Dedalus into a person who dissects things and is exacting, perhaps cruel, perhaps sterile and honest. We have yet to learn. And the way a reader does learn about Stephen is in the narrative shifts. The novel begins with a narrator that is not a character but an observer. It is difficult to tell at first if the narrator is ommnipotent and as one reads on by page six it is tempting to see the narration as first person unreliable when there suddenly appears the words "me" and the reader is thrust into an internal monologue. By page ten however it becomes clear that this "me" or "i" voice is the internal dialogue of Stephen Dedalus and the narration is close third person narration. This confusion manages to allow Joyce liberties with aspects of his descriptions which bring us close to the characters whose heads he does not enter, but he maintains his tie to Dedalus as the character whose thoughts he shares.

By page fourteen an interesting focus on language is given attention and we see an Irish peasant, romanticized in Dedalus' head into some ideal pastoral scene, bring the milk to breakfast. The focus on language arises when Haines, an English man begins to speak Gaelic to her and she mistakes it for French, not recognizing the original language of her own people. This allows the discussion on class to deepen and it shows social power structures at work, the same way that the key to the tower shows the power dynamic between Stephen and Mulligan. The power structure being connected to language is something entirely intentional on Yeats' part and shows not only his focus on history and nationality, but on the uses and weight of language. That an English man would speak to an Irish woman in Gaelic and then preach to her that "we ought to speak Irish in Ireland" is adding insult to injury, since the primary reason English became the dominant language in Ireland was because of the British occupation of the lands and their demand of obedience to the English king. Language is a tolken of culture and by taking away their language the English were breaking apart Irish culture to make them a part of their own. Joyce makes a commentary here on this porcess and an attempt at perhaps asserting his on view that Ireland should reclaim their language. This idea of misplacement within their own lands continues with Dedalus' statement that he is the "servant of two masters... the imperial British state... and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church." (20)

It seems that these focuses, so strongly asserted in the beginning of the novel will become dominant themes within the book, much as they are within Irish history.

Converse Truths

'In Memory of Major Robert Gregory' mentions "forgotten truth." The poems from 'The Tower' seem to remember these truths but approach them with a light heartedness. This attitude seems to arie from Yeats' enlarged perspective on the cycle of transient things whish he sums up in his reappearing symbol of the gyre. When younger and not yet embracing a view of all things as running paralelle and unceasing- a view adopted after he began utilizing a technique of automatic writing- Yeats' poems were more cynical and his view of aging and death were at times a terror and at times something to look forward to. His tone throughout the poems shows a new veiw that allows him to let go of a fear of death and an idea of a true end to things.
Sailing to Byzantium shows Yeats setting up this series of poems by describing his looking into the past since he now views it as necessarily connected to the present. In the first stanza he immediately sets up the same contrast between old and young, but the bird song commends both birth and death and the cycle of "begotten, born, and dies," is the cycle for all things. Yeats here admits that man, and he himself, at times fails to remember this. But in the second stanza we see Yeats study himself to reach Byzantium and in the third stanza he looks towards the external world to find his own soul and act within the gyre. This is significant in a form of synthesis, since so often in Yeats' earlier poems we see a disconnect between the external and the internal. By the end of the poem Yeats manages to portray this synthesis by asking to be made into a material thing.
"Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing
But such a form as Grecian goldsmith make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come."
By longing to be made into a staute he manages to create a symbol within the poem that embodies the material world but the material thing itself portrays myth. Yeats here fonds a way to incorporate the material world so to make himself into myth in order to spread his own mythology. After this poem he does just this. Throughout he likens himself to Homer and disavows long-standing philosophical beliefes, erecting his own.

We see that where change used to be source of pain to Yeats, he now celebrates it with lines from My Table such as
"No moon; only an aching heart
Concieves a changeless work of art."
This line manages to show his new attitude towards change as well as the inspiration for this attitude shift. The moon features strongly throughout Yeats' poems, but here begins to take on a new significance. His line breaks here are strongly intentional. That when at a phase in life where there is no moon, there is only an aching heart. Also that with out the changing phases of the moon life itself would be changeless, people would not progress or differentiate themselves. Therefore the aching heart that has no moon, or phase of moon to identify with, in their life would concieve of a changless art. This also incorporates a tone of self reflexivity. Since the tone of this book of poems has changed from his former writing.

In My Descendants we see Yeats give the image of the gyre a weighty meaning. Here we see him put a lot of stock into the future of his children and on his new idea of how the future relates to present and past.
"And what if my descendants lose the flower......
May this laborious stair and this stark tower
Become a roofless ruin that the owl
May build in the cracked masonry and cry
Her desolation to the desolate sky."
This function to show that this literal flower, the roses in his garden, that he has found in his new abode and married life, used to exist only as a metaphor for him. Again Yeats has incorporated the tangible world into his world of symbols, and vice versa. At the end of the third stanza we see this by the way that Yeats uses the stones of the house to mimick the movement of the universe, and this way makes a monument out of them. Throughout these poems Yeats seems to making a monument to his new found thoughts.

At first glance I felt that The Wheel managed to fit in closely with other earlier poems by Yeats. It seems cynical and expresses a longing for death. Ultimately though I see the "longing for the tomb" in this poem as a releasing of transient things. As Yeats has accepted that things will go on and have gone on, and while living one longs for a time that is not the present, but that this too is part of the cyclical nature of things. He manages to express that all this looking forward means only looking towards death and that one must be able to cease this in order to accept the cycles that he sees all things embodying. All this shows an acceptance on the part of Yeats to incorporate the converse truths of his old age and his young, of the tangible world with the intangible and of his blood thirsty country men with himself.

Is Yeats (in these 7 poems) comfortable with not knowing? able to let the mysteries of life be, and not define and pin them to a page, solved at last?

"The Wild Swans at Coole"- Yeats has changed, but the swans have not. They are indefagitable, unwearied. But they will leave one day and delight another's eyes. It is the autumn of life and Yeats has changed, "all's changed since I, hearing at twilight, the first time on this shore, the bell-beat of their wings above my head, trod with a lighter tread." Yeats walks heavier, perhaps because his heart has grown old with passion and conquest, unlike the swans' hearts.

"Lines Written In Dejection"- here is Yeats again, looking upon a favored scene- the moon- and lamenting that all of the mystery and magic have vanished now that he is fifty years old. All of the imaginings of childhood- the witches on broomsticks, the centaurs- have vanished and left him to face the day without the armor of myth and story. The sun has shed light on the imaginings of childhood and uncloaked the moon, leaving Yeats un-storied to face the day.

"An Image From A Past Life"- A woman imagines an image of her lover's former sweetheart as they gaze into a stream and covers his eyes so that he cannot see the image. He doesn't know why see is so distressed, after all, he is hers, he is right there at her shoulder, how could he be fonder of an image than of her? She does not know, but she is afraid of this image. In this poem we see that Yeats is comfortable with leaving the reader with the mystery of love and jealousy. He leaves us as he leaves the woman, guessing at her fear.

In the Seven Woods

Yeats' focus within this book of poems seems highly concentrated in themes of age/time passing, beauty, and love. Aging takes on qualities of both praise and disdain, showing an ambivalence on the part of the poet about growing older. Lines such as "I could weep that the old is out of season," from The Arrow, show a feeling of longing for the past and yet a longing for "old" to be admired. In others Yeats sees age as a good thing. In The Folly Of being Comforted
"Time can but make her beauty again:
Because of that great nobleness in her, when she stirs,
burns more clearly. O she had not these ways
When all the wild summer was in her gaze.'"

Yet ultimately growing old indicates a loss of beauty, as is strongly expressed by the poem The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water. Perhaps more dynamically we see this idea as a result, not of time, but of dreams, in the final lines of each stanza of The Withering of the Boughs
"No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams."

Here a dream manages to be destructive in the beauty of nature just as the passing of time can be the destroyer of beauty in a person. This brings up the idea of the physical versus the intangible that is mentioned in the first stanza of the poem when Yeats writes "there is no place to my mind." The mind is as intangible as time or dreams and in contrast with the physical reality of nature and bodies.

Love is also featured as this intagible conflict for Yeats as in the poems Never Give all the Heart, O do not Love Too Long, and Old Memory. In all of these poems love runs into reality and Yeats seems to feel futile in the face of love, saying "when we have blamed the wind we can blame love"

Besides these strong motifs within the poems there is also a strong sense of disillusionment with mythology. This makes itself most aparent in the first line of Under The Moon
"I have no happiness in dreaming of Brycelinde,
Nor Avalon the grass-green hollow, nor joyous Isle"

This collection combines to give a feeling of despair and a lack of something to take comfort in. In the future is old age and a loss of beauty as well as of love. In the past there are myths which are easy to dismiss as ideals which can taunt reality. So we see Yeats' struggling with something to believe in which is coupled with the crisis of not being to place a physical self and reality within one that seems comprised of abstract concepts.

Setting and identity- 1/28

Perhaps after reading Malcolm Brown's The Politics of Irish Literature and then a brief history of Ireland I find my focus to be preoccupied with the geography of Ireland. Therefore I am focused on the role of physical setting in Yeats' poems. It seemed that often times nature, internal and external, as well the thresholds between the nature of these two settings, dictated moods, sanity, and circumstance. King Goll's madness manifests itself throughout Yeats' poem in the repetition of the leaves that will not hush. Finally this madness comes to fruition as King Goll leaves his men in favor of nature so that eventually in the solitude of wilderness:
"the grey wolf knows me; by one ear
I lead along the woodland deer;
The hare runs along me growing bold."

More prominently than 'The Madness of King Goll,' I saw 'To an Isle in the Water' as a poem that adds dimensions to Yeats' focus on the physicality of Ireland. Not only does the isle itself speak of Ireland as a real place, but the "shy one" can be seen as the essence of this isle. It speaks of a longing to bring Ireland to itself. Yet within this poem we see the "shy one" unable to enter the lighted internal space, but standing "in gloom" at the doorway, "pensively apart." Much as Ireland is from the continent nearest it.

In 'The Ballad of Moll Magee' we see Yeats, again, writing about a woman, but this time as her, rather than longing for her. What struck me about this poem was lines such as, "No neighbor could I see" or the repetitive mention of shut doors and silence. This signifies a certain focus that Yeats has with internal and external spaces which stands out as his own strife in assimilating, or unifying, his thoughts and the parts of his person, or more, an Irishman.

It wasn't until I read 'The Lake of Innisfree' that I was overwhelmed by the Rousseau-ian ideas that Yeats seems to have agreed with. That to find isolation and live a simple, more primitive life would be a solution to modernity's problems is what Yeats longs for here. His hearing water wherever he is draws attention to his focus on the physical limits of Ireland as being an island. The feeling is that, although he inhabits an island, he cannot find isolation. While this poem, as well as the others, manage to talk of Ireland constantly, we see here, stronger than elsewhere, his own struggle at identifying as Irish and yet longing to throw off Dublin's metropolitan life and embrace an Ireland he never knew and perhaps exists only as myth perpetuated by a people who feel they lost the essence of what Irish is.

'Who goes with Fergus' stands out as a similarly natural poem in which Yeats looks at "pierc(ing) the wood's woven shade" as a form of liberation from fears. But it is 'The Man who dreamed of Fearyland' that manages to turn this idea of nature's liberation on its head. In this poem nature offers an idea of a mythical and unattainable life that a man wanders dreaming of. The songs of animals tells the man of a world unlike his own which makes him discontented, much as the Irish people are discontented with their loss of a mystical Ireland they have been denied by the British. At his entrance into sleep and his waking, is the only time we know the man of this poem and we see Yeats feel bitter at the sun as the destroyer of dreams. This poem stands out as Yeats' dissillusionment with an ideal of a better world and nature in perpetuating this ideal becomes an object of disdain. The weight of this culminates in the last line where even in the next life, this man can find no comfort.

In the juxtaposition of nature and industrialization, open and closed spaces, as well as the rising and setting of the sun, we begin to see Yeats' identity as a person and an Irish man begin to flesh out. His own conflict becomes clear and the conflict of his country becomes clear through his own turmoil.