James Joyce: Ulysses

James Joyce: Ulysses Chapter 15

James Joyce was born on February 2, 1882, in Dublin, Ireland, into a Catholic middle-class family that would soon become poverty-stricken.
After graduating in 1902, Joyce went to Paris with the intention of attending medical school. Soon afterward, however, he abandoned medical studies and devoted all of his time to writing poetry, stories, and theories of aesthetics. Joyce returned to Dublin the following year when his mother died and met his future wife, Nora Barnacle during the year he stayed there.

Nora and Joyce left Dublin again in 1904, and spent most of the next eleven years living in Rome and Trieste, Italy, where Joyce taught English and he and Nora had two children.

Joyce began writing Ulysses in 1914, and when World War I broke out he moved his family to Zurich, Switzerland, where he continued work on the novel. In Zurich, Joyce’s fortunes finally improved as his talent attracted several wealthy patrons. In 1919, the Joyce family moved to Paris, where Ulysses was published in book form in 1922.

Ulysses recounts the goings-on of Leopold Bloom on June 16 1904 in Dublin. It strives to achieve a level of realism which no author has ever managed, by rendering the thoughts and actions of the characters in a scattered form. This form is similar to the way thoughts, perceptions and memories actually occur.

The book is written in detail, using a mix of literary structures and parodic styles. Ulysses' careful structuring, and experimental prose—full of puns, parodies, and allusions, as well as its rich characterizations and broad humour, made the book a highly regarded novel in the Modernism movement. In Ulysses, Joyce uses interior monologue extensively, and radically shifts narrative style with each new episode of the novel.

At the same time that Ulysses presents itself as a realistic novel, it also works on a mythic level using Homer’s Odyssey. Stephen, Bloom, and Molly correspond to Telemachus, Ulysses, and Penelope, and each of the eighteen episodes of the novel corresponds to an adventure from the Odyssey.

In the tenth year of the Trojan War, the Greeks tricked the enemy into bringing a huge wooden horse within the walls of Troy. The Trojans had no idea that Greek soldiers were hidden inside, under the command of Odysseus. That night they emerged and opened the city gates to the Greek army, and Troy was destroyed. It was then time for Odysseus and the other Greeks to return to their kingdoms across the sea. On his trip home from Troy, Odysseus and his shipmates encountered a number of perils.

At one point their ship was blown far off course, and they shored on a small wooded island. Odysseus could hear goats on a larger island nearby, and so sent out a group of men to fetch them some food. They found a huge goat pen outside a cave and, inside, all the cheeses and meat they could want. They helped themselves, and were relaxing in the cave when the shepherd came home. This was a Cyclops, Polyphemus, who trapped them in the cave, and began eating the men. One night, the Greeks sharpened a pole and rammed it into Polyphemus’ eye. When the Cyclops went to let his goats out the next morning, the men were clung to the belly of the animals and escaped.

The next time Odysseus and his men shored on an island, he put someone else in charge and sent them to find provisions with half the crew. The explorers came upon a little house in a clearing, where a beautiful woman invited them in for tea. They'd already observed that the yard was full of lions and wolves of a surprisingly docile nature, but they chose to overlook this. All but one of the sailors accepted the invitation and went inside. The hostess, was actually an enchantress by the name of Circe, who turned them all into pigs.

The one crew member who hadn't shared this fate reported back to Odysseus, who went to help his men. As he was approaching the house, he ran into the god Hermes, who had been sent to help by the other Gods. He gave Odysseus an antidote to stop him being transformed. When Circe’s spell failed, Odysseus threatened her life, until she turned the pigs back into men, and she and Odysseus become good friends.

Back in Ithaca, Odysseus wife Penelope believed her husband to be dead, and other potential suitors were trying to win her hand in marriage. Odysseus returned and went to see the swineherd Eumaeus, and revealed his identity to him and Telemachus. Together, they went to the palace. Odysseus was disguised as a beggar, and was beaten and ridiculed by the suitors. Only his old dog Argus recognized him, wagging its tail before it died.

When Penelope looked after the beggar she asked him if he had heard anything of her husband. Odysseus told him he would be back very soon, but Penelope did not dare to believe him. Cleaning him, Odysseus old nurse recognized a scar on his body, but he told her not to blow his cover.

Penelope now put the suitors through a final test. She showed them Odysseus bow and said she would marry whoever could shoot an arrow through the holes of twelve axes in a row. One after one they tried, but they couldn't even pull the string.

The beggar Odysseus asked to have a go, and under ridicule and laughter he shot a perfect arrow through the twelve axes, then turned the bow against the suitors and started killing them with the help of Telemachus. After this, the treacherous maids were punished, and finally, the palace was clear.

By killing the suitors, Odysseus had blood on his hands and he cleaned the house with sulphur. Penelope still doubted, but when Odysseus told her that their bed was made of olive tree, a secret only he would know, she finally believed him. Odysseus then went to his old father and they all lived happily ever after.

Joyce first encountered Odysseus in Charles Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses—an adaptation of the Odyssey for children. At school he wrote an essay on Ulysses as his "favourite hero"because he was the only all-round character in literature. He thought about calling Dubliners by the name "Ulysses in Dublin", but the idea grew from a story in Dubliners in 1906, to a "short book" in 1907, to the long novel that he began in 1914.

Joyce divided Ulysses into eighteen chapters or "episodes". At first glance the book appears unstructured and chaotic; Joyce once said that he had "put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant", which would earn the novel "immortality"

Episode Fifteen takes the form of a play script with stage directions and descriptions. The majority of the action of the episode occurs as drunken hallucinations. It is the longest in the novel yet occurs within a rather short time-frame.

Stephen and Lynch walk toward a brothel in Nighttown, Dublin's red-light district. Bloom follows the two men, but loses his way. In a hallucination, Bloom is confronted by family and acquaintances, who reprimand him for various offences.

Awakening from this hallucination, Bloom feeds a dog. This leads onto another hallucination in which Bloom is questioned by a pair of Night-Wardens. From here, Bloom then imagines facing trial, accused of a variety of crimes, including forgery and bigamy. Other characters accuse and testify against Bloom. Shaking off this fantasy, he is approached by Zoe Higgins, a local prostitute who tells him Stephen is currently in the brothel that she works in. Another fantasy ensues, in which Bloom gives a campaign speech. Attracting the attention and admiration of both the Irish and Zionists, he is subsequently hailed as the leader of "Bloomusalem." However, he is accused of yet more outlandish offences and for having sexual abnormalities. Bloom is then declared a woman, and spontaneously gives birth to eight children.

Zoe reappears, signalling the end of the hallucination. Bloom has another hallucination after he sees Stephen in the brothel, in which is grandfather lectures him about sexual attitudes and conduct. The owner of the brothel, Bella Cohen, appears and turns into a male version of herself "Bello," who dominates and humiliates Bloom. In this hallucination, Bloom "dies". After his "death" he talks to the nymph from the picture in the Blooms’ bedroom, who berates Bloom for his fallibility. Bloom stands up to the nymph, questioning her own sexual attitudes.

Bloom returns to reality, finding Bella Cohen before him. Stephen pays far more than necessary for the services received. Seeing this, Bloom confiscates the rest of Stephen's money. Another hallucination starts, involving Bloom watching Boylan (Molly’s manager) and his wife, Molly, have sex. Returning to consciousness, Bloom finds Stephen dancing to the Pianola.

The next hallucination belongs to Stephen, in which the rotting corpse of his mother rises up from the floor to confront him. Terrified, Stephen uses his walking stick to smash a chandelier. Bloom quickly pays Bella for the damage, and then runs after Stephen, worried for his safety.

Bloom finds Stephen having an argument with an English soldier who knocks out Stephen, believing he insulted the King. The police arrive and the crowd disperses. As Bloom is tending to Stephen, the ghost of Bloom's deceased child, Rudy, appears.

Episode Fifteen serves to bring Stephen and Bloom closer together. Bloom has followed Stephen to Nighttown with the intention of somehow protecting him—in the more action-packed second half of Episode Fifteen, Bloom begins to fulfill this intent. Bloom overcomes the paralyzing nature of his own sexual guilt and anxiety about Boylan’s sexual prowess to take control of several situations—the payment for the prostitutes, Stephen’s money, the dispute with Bella over the broken chandelier, and the attempt to save Stephen from the police. Comparatively, Stephen, in the latter half of “Circe,” seems drunkenly unaware and emotionally overcome by his hallucinations.

In the final scenes, Stephen attempts to become intellectually and artistically independent through his rejection of “priest and king” and Ireland. Yet he is mainly depicted as having been abandoned: by his mother, by his father, by Buck and Haines (who have taken Stephen’s key and ditched him), and by Lynch (whom he called “Judas”). When Stephen is left knocked unconscious at the end of the episode, with his belongings scattered around him, it is Bloom who is there to act as symbolic father and pragmatic caretaker. This preliminary culmination of the father-son union has the tone of a wish-fulfillment for Bloom, a fact underscored by Bloom’s final hallucination of his dead son, Rudy.

Sources:

James Joyce: Ulysses (Chapter 15)

www.google.com

www.wikipedia.com

www.sparknotes.com

www.mythweb.com/odyssey

www.in2greece.com/english/historymyth/.../odysseus.htm