James Joyce - novel - 1922 - p. 202, 203, 204, 206, 207, 208, 209, 211, 213, 221, 222, 223, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 231    

A landmark work in modernist literature, Ulysses takes place on June 16, 1904, with a narrative that primarily follows Irishman Leopold Bloom through the course of a day in Dublin. Joyce’s complex, unconventional structure--changing narrators, obliquely connected events and individuals, and slippery, paronomasiac language make it a rich but highly challenging text for any reader.

The title is the Latin version of the Greek “Odysseus,” the hero of Homer’s epic poem Odyssey in which the adventures of a protagonist circuitously returning home from war are recounted. The story in Ulysses is divided into eighteen distinct episodes with names borrowed from Odysseus’ exploits, including “Telemachus,” Odysseus’ son; “Penelope,” Odysseus’ wife; and “Hades,” the Greek underworld. The book opens with a focus on Stephen Dedalus, the hero of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, who is now an up-and-coming scholar; the first three episodes follow him. In episode four, “Calypso,” the reader’s gaze is redirected to Bloom, who is preparing breakfast for his wife while knowing that she will later in the day have a tryst with her lover. He goes out and, after entering a church to ruminate on religion, attends a funeral at which he contemplates his own deceased son, Rudy, who committed suicide. He and Stephen unwittingly cross paths several times throughout the day but do not meet until episode 14, “Oxen of the Sun.” Prior to that, Bloom spends time thinking about marriage, masturbates to a young female he sees in the distance on the Sandymount Strand shoreline, and attempts to dissuade an anti-Semite in a pub.

Later, at another pub, Bloom meets Stephen, who is drinking with a group of his friends who are in medical school; conversation turns to birth and reproductive rights while the narrative style progresses through various historical stages of the English language and colloquialisms. Sometime thereafter, Stephen gets punched in the face during an argument, and Bloom takes him to his own house until he is steady enough to go home; whether they will ever meet again remains unclear. The novel ends with Molly’s stream of consciousness as she lies in bed and thinks about various relationships throughout her life.

As in much of Joyce’s work, prominent themes include schooling, Irish national identity, death, fatherhood, love, desire, literature, and the Catholic Church.

Key elements: art, Europe, fatherhood, Greek mythology, infidelity, marriage, suicide