David Price 4/12/12

Joyces Use of Style in Ulysses to Convey the Complexity of Reality

Reality is a very complex, multi-faceted and diverse conglomeration that cannot be fully grasped by an individual because of the subjective and sensory limits of knowledge. Joyces use of the conventions of realism and naturalism reveal both the importance and limits of the sensory world and our minds perceptions of such a world. Joyces vision of reality in the early episodes takes on many of the deterministic qualities of realism, but begins to point the ambiguities and contexts that produce a larger, and more nuanced view of reality. The worlds these characters occupy is dependent on their senses, but is also affected and influenced by history, feelings, and associations of the mind, as well as spirit. As Joyce articulates the multiplicity of reality he avoids reducing reality to one simple definition, and explores the tensions between the articulations of reality. While there appears a multiplicity of styles presented in the novel they are still building on Joyces complex view of realisms mimetic approach to reality. Joyces use of the epic style is to reveal the grand nature of life, but without resorting to absolutism, or a teleological narrative. Joyce is able to account for the spiritual reality of life in two ways. First, by having the spiritual be present in the lives and thoughts of the characters, and second, by having the Ulysses narrative not be limited by empirical or ideological realities. He achieves this, ironically, not through the use of elevated language, but by keeping his characters within the frame of realism, and using a variety of styles and allusions to reveal the

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larger contexts that go into reality. John Gordon in his book, Joyce and Reality, affirms that the novel never breaks from the mimetic approach of realism, even when stretching the idea in some of the novels most challenging episodes, suggesting the style reflects a psychological realism. In using realism in the first part of the novel, Joyce introduces us to the characters and setting of the novel. We are able to see the issues, themes, and conflicts in their raw power. The reality that the novel imitates is imaginative and cultural, involving not just objects and events and persons, but an array of values and meanings and schemata (Thornton, 11). Additionally, as an exposition, this style privileges interior monologue and description, so the questions posed by the style will frame our interpretation of the novel. Why do we hear certain characters thoughts over others? Does this truly reflect reality? What role does the sensory have in shaping ones thoughts? How does language reflect reality? Lastly, what are the intentions of the

author/narrator in shaping this story? This last question is the most pressing as the realistic style obscures the fact that, in shaping a story, a perspective is being formed. This perspective is partially shaped by a narrator who can influence how we see the story. Thornton states that the omniscient primary narrative voice simulates the cultural psyche, or collective mind, of the world of the novel (29). Joyces purpose is to move away from the omniscient narrator as a God-like figure, but I think this terminology is equally troubling. While there is some sense of the cultural in a narrative, the narrator seems to be also lost as a representation, rather than a provider or shaper of the narrative and voice of the novel. The opening scene reveals how reality is dependent on the storyteller as much the cultural milieu of the novels setting; while using the materials around him, the narrator takes on the reality of Buck Mulligan, fanciful and cynical. The scene is not elaborate or ornate, but its plainness and attention to accurate detail still connotes an added meaning to what would be an

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ordinary routine of morning preparations.

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the

stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossedHe held the bowl aloft and intoned: -- introibo ad altare Dei (1. 1-6). Mulligan turns a simple daily preparation into a treatise on the Catholic church, critiquing the high minded solemnity of the ritual of eucharist. One issue we see with the realism style is the way that objects are more than just objects. They are never wholly objective. With Buck Mulligan, realism is the product of the performance. One would expect subjectivity to be shown through interior monologue, but Mulligans reality is constructed by his character in the world. We are not privy to his interior thoughts, but get only the constructed act, evidence of the subjectivity that exists even in the material world. Its also important that it is performative because one tends to associate reality with what something truly is and not the effect it can produce. Mulligan shows that things are things by their very usage; their material reality does not determine what they are. Mulligan also provides a foil and antagonistic element to Stephen. While Mulligan is destructive performance, Stephen is deeply philosophical and the process of thought that builds within him is seen. While Stephen is unsure of the world, Mulligan acts as though he has it all figured out. Although Mulligan is a nuisance to Stephens nature and disposition, his presence forces Stephen to think about the present world. Mulligan causes Stephen to confront issues that may lay dormant or unsettled. The first episode shows how external reality of the senses can bring about different thoughts and memories, but the individuals are the ones who create a reality that influence each character as well. Mulligan uses things around him as source of his This shows that realitys

commentary, whereas with Stephen there is a deeper meaning.

complexity is dependent on the subject once again. Stephens personality allows an ideological reality to be more apparent. One of these external examples is the Dublin bay outside their

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dwelling. Mulligan associates the sea with an epic history, but again his grand performance has a mocking tone: Isnt the sea what Algy calls it: A great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening seaAh, Dedalus, the Greeks! I must teach you (1. 76-79). Mulligan takes tradition and cultural heritage, and the possibility of something wonderous and great and reduces it base human characteristics. This type of realism is characteristic of a destructive and reductive rhetoric that can never get at what reality has to offer. This shows how the technique of realism can reduce reality to materialism. Once again there is a lack of the internal monologue with Mulligan; he is the characters that represents a pure realism as readers can easily see how Mulligans mind works as there is no process from external material source to spoken performance. He almost immediately associates the connection of the sea as mother which can be taken to great heights, or ineffable thoughts, and pins it on Stephen with a lack of thought, in an almost accusatory tone, which we see later he is unaware of. He turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to Stephens face. The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. Thats why she wont let me have anything to do with you (1. 87-88). The swiftness of association reveals the lack of thought that goes into Mulligans characters reality, emphasized by the insensitivity with which Mulligan talks about Stephens final moments with his mother. When Stephen utters the cryptic Someone killed her, (1. 90) which could refer to an accusation of his father, Mulligan is more concerned with and appalled by Stephens apparent lack of respect. For Stephen this is a deep and conflicted moment, a possible origin of which we see later in the episode, but Mulligan cant see past the surface of the act. On the one hand this reveals the limitations of a reductivist realism that does not go past the surface of things, but on the other hand it brings to mind to Stephen an important and unresolved moment that may not have come to the surface had the material reality of Buck Mulligan not disturbed it. Joyce shows

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that material reality and ideological reality cannot be separated, and influence each other. These issues arise later in the episode when we again are reminded of the sea, an external source taking on meaning of the characters, The seas ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat(1. 574-75). The association here is with Haines and British rule. It is a strong historical association, coloring reality with the historical and political. This connects to not only to Thorntons view as the initial style expressing a collective cultural milieu, but also that it reflects different levels of awarenesssustained and connectedby nonverbal psychic elementssuch as images, affects, visceral states and feeling tone (64). The sea has a protean, mystical quality mirroring all that reality has to offer; here it is reduced to politics and history. Its a historical empiricism, a naturalism that takes into account material causes, but does so in an abstracted way. The abstract is a function of the mind, so it is a mental reality, but again, similar to the reductionism of a material/objective realism it reduces reality to a historical narrative. Mulligan begins with another mocking performance, a jocular song concerning Christ. Yet again though, it spurs Stephens thinking and readers see another perspective in Haines. Haines also seems interested in ideas like Stephen, but brings them to a level of civility that seems to take from the heart of the matter, and is dependent on socially accepted views of reality. Its another type of surface, but an abstract surface that disguises real thought in terms of orthodoxy, and absolutes, Either you believe or you dont, isnt it? Personally I couldnt stomach that idea of a personal God. You dont stand for that I suppose? You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought (1. 622-26). Haines sees things in absolutes, black and white, a cultural advantage of not having to look too deeply into things. For Stephen though things are more complex and nuanced; free thought refers to both his individualistic views on dogma, and his admonishment

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of British Imperial rule. Stephen is well aware of the influence institutions have on his reality as he states, I am a servant of two mastersan English and an Italian (1. 638). Stephen

understands that reality is grounded in these larger, external forces that shape ones thoughts and responsibilities. According to Derek Attridge this sense of history is a product of narrative, of the ceaseless creative activity of the human imagination working withand uponthe materials of language and other sign systems to present itself a version of experience with which it can live (79). It would seem that this conception of history is not real, but as we saw in Stephens inability to acquiesce to his mothers dying wish that he make peace with God, narrative is very real. But for Attridge this brings home the point that history as text or ideology is as real as the unfathomable history that hurts or gives us a kick back (84). Haines though keeps things at a superficial abstract level, We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame (1. 648-49). Haines use of history as an agent shows how abstraction and language can eschew reality. His absolutism, as if history is stands own its own as an entity, reduces reality to merely abstraction without the connection to the conditions and powers that produce ideas and concepts. The problem of philsophical abstraction as a means to understanding reality is addressed in Nestor where internal monologue allows the reader insight into Stephens mind. As he is teaching, his lessons cause him to go off into thought and he tries to make sense of reality through philosophy. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms (2. 74-6). Here Stephens thoughts reveal the limitations of thinking of reality in purely philosophical terms. Like Hainess overly abstracted view of reality in the first episode, Stephen reverts to absolutism. We see how this view of reality devolves into a fatalistic tautology.

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Stephen jumps too high into the realm of abstraction as his mythical name implies, but he returns to the earth, substance and in doing so has a moment of possible revelation. Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snails bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mothers prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. (2. 139-50) Much of the language here describes despair and futility as it is linked to the natural, which can be ugly, and vicious and must pass on. There is also something noble and everlasting here, as humanity is reduced to something as low as a snail and yet still loved by the mother. This awakens in Stephen a revelation. If we look at reality as that which is everlasting and transcends temporality then love can be something that constitutes reality because even though his mothers body is gone, her soul has gone to heaven, the memory of love still remains. The idea of continuity is first seen in the language, She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Because love exists between people and within people, it is not wholly external, nor

wholly internal. It is spiritual not in the sense of idea only, but is transcendent and immanent, incorporating both substance and idea, neither absolutely abstract, nor absolutely material. The initial style of the beginning episodes both utilizes and critiques a tradtional realism and points to the complexity of reality, one that incorporates the many layers of reality that can be delineated by the often separated realities of material, mind, and spirit. As we move to the middle styles disruptions and the abandonment of realism critique totality and duality, but also point to the way form influences meaning. These styles offer meaningful commentary on larger

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issues, but dont lose sight of the humanity of the characters as real. Aeolus, is similar to the initial episodes in that the reality is influenced the cultural and sensory setting of the newspaper office. The disruption to the realism style comes from newspaper headlines that seem to have little connection to the action. Attempts to read these headlines as bearing significance and realistically ordering our reading prove fruitless as they do not accurately correspond to the plot moments they preface. Weldon Thornton says that the headlines offer a perspective upon the events or the characters, but have no authority over them (108). While this perspective offers some insight into the purpose of these headlines, it seems illogical to say that something offers a perspective and has no authority. By virtue of their announcement and style, the headlines gain authority in how we read the novel. Joyce is pointing out that a feature of reality is its

incommensurability with language at times, a pre-Sausserian critique of language as referent. This contradicts, according John Gordon, the view that Joyce held towards the naturalness of language, but I think it shows that Joyce held a more nuanced view of language, one not yet privy to Saussere, but one that sees language as producing a world separate from reality. The headlines, and we will see later the sounds of the machines are connected to a source that encompasses dimension of both the material and the ideological. It is precisely because we cannot ignore these headlines that this disruption in the structure causing the reader to account for it. Joyce wants to show that he is not painting an absolute picture of reality, but a reality that takes into account artifice and intentionality, like Mulligans performances. The events and characters must deal with disruptions to the solipsistic universe because of the material and ideological dynamics of reality, as was pointed out in the earlier episodes in the interactions between Mulligan, Stephen, and Haines. The headlines also contribute to a critique of realism by revealing the way that language

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has a contextual logic distinct from a representative mimetic function. The headlines indicate a journalistic need to succinctly grab readers attention. For that reason, they often distort and adapt the meaning to fit an ulterior purpose. Although Thornton does not see this technique in relation to the communication of the cultural milieu that influences reality the way Joyce does in the earlier episodes, it does indicate a cultural milieu in that it shows how cultural institutions and media are intertwined and can direct ones attention by highlighting or misinforming through their authority as means of communication. While the headlines are not of the newspapers in the episode, the characters are in the setting of the newspaper business culture. This has a twofold impact. On a cultural level, newspapers were an important source of information in the setting of this novel, and at the immediate level, similar to the earlier episodes, this cultural atmosphere is affecting the thoughts and decisions of the characters. John Gordon argues that the headlines way of segmenting and serially encapsulating the discursive narrative reflects both the business of the environment (a newspaper office) and its residents putting-in-a-nutshell cast of mind (for example U, 7.139-44, 196-202, 643-44)(qtd. from Thornton, 110). And even on a larger

cultural level, in the modern world of capitalism and industry, communities are reliant on these headlines whose purpose dictates an attention-grabbing style. As Gordon suggests this environments ethos has implications for the characters as well. Blooms purpose here is business, and Stephen has brought Mr. Deasys letter concerning foot and mouth disease to get published. We see here the practical and commercial side of modern society at the detailed level and how this creates a world, not an all encompassing one, but one that works at many levels: Slt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard with the sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the

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way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt. 144-47) This detailed description is reminiscent of the naturalism style of the opening episodes, but again we see a divergence and a microcosm of the episodes style. Like the disruptions of the (7.

headlines, the smoothness of the mechanism is interrupted by the sounds of production. On one level this parodies the realism of interior monologue as the machine is personified as though it contains its own consciousness and language. On another larger level though it implies a critique of modernism viewed as a smooth, logical machine. It has a reality that is beyond the theoretical and a world of its own that speaks in its own way that is not intelligible to human language and may best be expressed by an artifice. This detail could also deal with the mind/object dichotomy that Joyce wants to subvert. Episode 8, Lestrygonians, continues the disruptions to naturalism and the exploration of larger contexts of culture and humanity. In Did it Flow?: Bridging Aesthetics and History in Joyces Ulysses Ariela Freedmanexamines how the motif of water in the novel can reveal the way that Joyce limns the outlines of a world where something always comes from something else, a world that leads us back, like water through pipes, to an origin both beckoning and necessarily elusive (854). Looking at this idea specifically in the text presents a real way of seeing in the world in that we are aware of the production that goes into the world, but there is not the strong and false demarcation between history and artifice that can destroy the reality of the meaning of lived experience. In other words, Joyces realisms connection to reality is that it does not try be a purely historical, nor purely aesthetic, but incorporates them insofar as they contribute to an experienced reality. In general, Ulysses as text insists that nothing comes from

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nothing and emphasizes the materiality of the tactile, lived world (Freedman 854).

This

encapsulates how Joyces version of realism is enriched by the material world, while remaining conscious of its role and place as literary art. Its a deeper realism that acknowledges the materiality of the world without being beholden to an empirical or deterministic philosophy. That is just as reductive to reality as pure artifice, but at the same time recognizes the materiality of the world as material, and its construction of reality. I mention this here because in going beyond a strict adherence to traditional realism, Joyce is also using a literary motif to show how artistry has a role in reality. Evidence that Joyce is working on a larger literary level is exemplified by how Joyce appropriates what (Robert Adams) Day terms the AquaCities of his native city for the verbal, metaphorical, and material flows of his text. Water becomes a kind of master metaphor for the economies of circulation of the novel (855). Water is an appropriate metaphor for the reminder of the texts literary quality because of both its material and symbolic properties. Specifically, in Lestrygonians water gives insight into Blooms personality and issues of the text. The motif of flux and stability in flux is an important motif of the novel and here exemplified by Bloom. How can you own water really? Its always flowing in a stream, never the same, which in the stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream (Freedman 862). In these lines Bloom is concerned with daily life concerns, and it segues into a metaphor about life. There is a natural flow to Blooms thoughts, in going from object, to practical, to philosophical. Bloom is able to see the bigger picture of reality without losing sight of what is apparent. That Bloom uses a water metaphor for life is also appropriate given his identification with Odysseus, and we begin to see epic associations. The religious, historical, literary, cultural elements of reality hinted at earlier begin to

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disrupt the text. This is paradoxical to the stream metaphor, but makes sense if we see the larger stream. These disruptions make us think about things in a larger context. Objects cannot fit together as separate entities, but if things in a stream are separated then they can come together and are separated only temporarily. The first disruption we have is the throwaway and we are brought into a religious context. The throwaway is a pamphlet with news and religious content. On the pamphlet are the words Blood of the Lamb, but when Bloom grabs it he thinks it might refer to him; Bloo Me? No (8. 9). This is where the novel is making a move towards not only the religious, but the epic as well because of the epics ability to assign a larger significance to events due to their contextual properties. Bloom as a religious figure would produce an allegorical reading with larger implications that what is happening in just this present day as the narrative takes on a religious element that would emphasize the themes and motifs addressed by religious narrative, particularly the Judeo-Christian, with its emphasis on God as outside history, sacrifice, love, and universalism. Reality becomes more than a strict adherence to naturalisms emphasis on strict adherence to the facts and science that deny the existence of transcendence, myth, or religious miracles in reality. There is still the plain as day reality, but the novel, in beginning a religious and possibly epic context, suggests that reality is multifaceted. The fact that Bloom dismisses this religious association, which seems logical, given Blooms lack of religious knowledge and persona, does not dismiss this transcendent reality as we are becoming aware of a narrative presence that also has a voice in how larger reality is articulated. Again this is not to suggest an omniscient narrator as a God-figure, but refutes a reduction of total reality to a subject/object or ideological/material dichotomy. Yet, it is

important to see Blooms dismissal of religious context as a struggle against this type of association because he is more scientific minded, thus his subjective reality is more scientific.

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At the same time he is avoiding a solipsistic reality because it is part of a larger scientific context which relies on an empirical view of reality. Because of this complexity, a major of the conflict of the novel is to resist and incorporate a religious/epic context. In this context Bloom then takes on the characteristics of a religious figure: Elijah is coming. Dr John Alexander Dowie restorer of the church in Zion is coming. Is coming! Is coming!! Is coming!!! (8. 13-15). If he is to be this figure, then it is beyond Blooms control because a religious/epic context brings in the concept of fate. At the same time though, Bloom resists this characterization as he espouses a more scientific view of the world. In this instance though, the style of this episode is fanatical and it brings Bloom to think about religions propensity to fool people. Ultimately, Bloom wants to throw away this reference in favor of the scientific view; after he sees one of the Daedalus girls and critiques the Catholic Churchs policy on birth control, increase and multiply, as a cause of poverty: He threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirtytwo feet per sec is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of swells, floated under the bridgepiers. Not such damn fools (8. 57-9). While there are elements of reality within scientific and religious ways of thinking about the world, they can also present illusionary ways of looking at the world when they try to fully explain reality. This episode is an interweaving of many ways of thinking about the world and reality. It plays with space, time, and contextual elements of reality. The mind and body, religion and science, history and the present are an interwoven tapestry. Even though Bloom tried to reject the religious association when he feeds the bird the Manna cake it elicits an allusion, and by extension, comparison to Elijah: In Exodus 16, when the children of are wandering hungry in the wilderness and murmuring against Moses, God sends Manna, a miraculous bread, to feed

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them (Gifford, 159). This shows once again an epic viewpoint as one cannot avoid destiny. When the novel moves to Wandering Rocks we see many of the same motifs of reality that challenge an epic reading and present alternative or multiple realities, but in a more deliberate style. One of the illusions of reality that we have as subjective individuals is a singular point of view. John Gordon suggest that this is why the novel is expanding on the idea of realism. It does not lose the mimetic, so much as portray reality through the subjectivity of the characters (90-91). There is no way out of the fact that we see the world from our own mind, senses and ego. The novel form and any narrative structure necessarily mirrors this perspective in that in telling its story it becomes the novels reality. Of course, we can imagine other scenarios or outcomes, but for these possibilities to exist we must come back to the reality of the text. Additionally, for a novel or a narrative to make sense it requires the development of some singular viewpoint where causality and meaning can be developed. Nausicaa addresses this power of context and language on subjective reality as it adopts the style of a romantic novel. The return to interior monologue brings us back to the realism of earlier episodes. The difference here is that Bloom and Stephen are characters fit for the style of realism, while Gerty isnt, as she is operating out of a different social and cultural milieu, despite living in the same time and place as Bloom and Stephen. It shows how the development of time and the influence of place can affect people differently and thus things that we think of as absolute become dependent. Gertys section of Nausicaa represents a

sentimental style and incomplete view of reality(Thornton 102). We see the effects of this style on reality as Gertys interpretation of events does not match the reality we can glean from the facts of her narrative account. Her picture of marriage is not only sentimental and fanciful, but her object of affection seems disconnected from the dream. Strength of character had never

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been Reggie Wylies strong point and he who would woo and win Gerty MacDowell must be a man among men(13. 207-08). With all the heart of her she longs to be his only, his affianced bride for riches for poor, in sickness in health, till death us two part, from this to this day forward (13. 216-8). One can easily see that Gertys vision of the world rests on this idealized vision of marriage to the point where all her hopes and dreams are wrapped up in this fantasy. To further emphasize the sentimental and clich picture she has of the world, she also imagines that her husband would be tall with broad shoulderswith glistening white teeth under his carefully trimmed sweeping moustache and they would go on to the continent for their honeymoon (13. 235-8). There is nothing real about this scene, the particulars only serve to paint a superficial stock character that could help fulfill this dream. We see even more clearly how Gertys sentimental thinking disconnects from reality when she paints a wholly inaccurate picture of Bloom. Additionally, her erotic performance for Bloom juxtaposes her prim and proper notions of marriage revealing how easily fantasies can change. In fact, it is the overly sentimental, conservative fantasy that makes the act taboo and thus eroticizes it for her. Blooms act of masturbation undercuts the fantasy and brings the overly sentimental act of the mind down its most primitive bodily function. In Joyce and Reality, John Gordon states that Bloom thinks the non-carnal Gerty into being because he needs to think away from the all-too-carnal Molly (76). While on the one hand, I think this re-affirms the way the subject is influencing reality, it also ignores the recognition of Gertys acquiescence to participating in Blooms fantasy: because she knew too about the passion of men like that (13. 700-1). Gerty lets Bloom fantasize about her by exposing herself to him. This shows that it cannot be all in Blooms mind, but rather the point is to contrast Gertys sentimentality with a sexual knowledge that humanizes her, brings her back to a recognition of her body as well.

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Circe provides the most surrealistic episode and has much in common with the realism of Nausicaa. In Nausicaa it is clear to see how a certain style, a discursive logic or narrative can paint a false or misleading picture of the world. Additionally, we see again the interior monologue that suggests a connection between the external and how one sees the world. Lastly, we see Bloom in one of his least flattering, and glaringly human states, a motif that has been seen in previous episodes, but puts Bloom in his least epic or heroic context thus far. In Circe a theatrical style, and surrealism suggest a major break from reality. This episode suggesting that the Freudian conception of human psychology that posits a scientific understanding of our subconscious as more apt articulation of reality is subject to the same propensity to mislead as other narratives. Thornton speculates that some early readers and critics admired this episode because of the contemporary authority of Freudian psychoanalysisthat is, the presumption that Freudianism involved an undeniable (if unsavory) truth about human nature and that modernist, avant-garde Joyce would concur with modernist avant-garde Freud (160). This type of reading gets seduced by the association between Joyces use of interior monologue as a technique of realism that suggest their something hidden underneath the surface, but there is also the seduction of Freudianism as a narrative that employs the modern notion of science combined with modern notions of behavior to explain a more real version of reality, as though human thoughts and actions are better explained by a scientific understanding of the subconscious. Thornton though wants to reject this episode as a more truthful version of Stephen and Bloom. Though not total fabricationthe secondary narrator is not permitted that latitudenone of thee hallucinations counts for nearly as much as the Freudian/expressionistic presenter would have us believe (163). What this episode reveals then we as readers have the same potential to be seduced by language and narrative as Gerty in Nausicaa That this is meant to be taken as

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more fabrication than reality is emphasized by the theatrical style of the episode which relies on artifice and the suspension of disbelief. Austin Briggs cites a letter from Joyce that stated, I want to make Circe a costume episode also. Bloom for instance appears in five or six different suits, as evidence that despite all the roles and transformations that Bloom undergoes we still recognize the real, individual Bloom that we have known throughout the novel (cited from Thornton, 162). Just as in other episodes where there are deliberate obfuscations and disruptions to our ability to see reality, characters, it takes more effort as readers to see the person and the events. This makes our characters and the events more real because, despite all the glossing and mirages, the plot and characters still maintain their essence. This sets up our reading of Ithaca as well because the text once again uses a style that contradicts or obfuscates the action of the novel. The return home and the meeting of minds between Stephen and Bloom should be warm and significant moment for the novel, but is told in a cold, and distant style. This is another critique of the modern narrative that comes from a scientific understanding of reality and places objectivity as the primary rhetorical and hermeneutic strategy towards the attainment and communication of truth. The irony is that this narrator takes us away from the truth as this style is unable to convey the nuance and warmth that is the truth of this moment. This style is in direct contradiction to Thorntons contention that when a (realistic) writer does depict an object, what he is evoking is not some discrete Newtonian entity, but the object as it exists within a psychic/cultural continuum (17). Joyce shows us what happens when the narrator treats everything in this objective way and thus dismisses objectivity as the great conveyer of truth in all circumstances. At this point, it is most important to see the subjects and realize that not all objects and facts can equally contribute to conveying meaning. This brings us back to the beginning issues of narration and truth. Even in

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an objective style we perceive a judgment in values. By equating the virtues of shaving with what Stephen said to Bloom, we realize that there is more to truth than objectivity and this style has missed the point. Despite this, we still can see the epic and religious hero destiny that Bloom has fulfilled. What were Stephens and Blooms quasisimultaneous volitional quasisensations of concealed identities? Visually, Stephens: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted by Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanus Monacus as leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair (17. 781-4). Stephen seeing Christ in Bloom fulfills the novels epic narrative, and associations with Bloom as a heroic, religious figure. Yet, it is done within the confines of a variety of styles depicting a reality that is commensurate with a contemporary view of the world. While this is no ordinary, the events and characters adhere to the idea of Joyces contemporary world. Bloom does not do anything beyond his human capacity, or understanding of reality, nor does he literally become a transcendent being, yet through his kindness to Stephen and humanitarian acts he is able to transcend the determinism of naturalism and the cultural milieu of his reality. Through the variety of styles, beginning with realism, the privileged style of the time, Joyce examines the levels of reality that make up the real world that one lives in. While the novel is at times a critique of styles and language, Joyce also wants to create a novel reality and an epic narrative that fulfill the artistic purpose of literature. In the initial style of the early episodes we see the external materials and internal associations that create reality for the characters. At the same time, through allusions, and misinterpretations of reality by the

characters we see how this realism hints at a deeper reality. In the middle and later episodes readers begin to see how disruptions in the style of realism and secondary narrators that experiment with style also help to determine a larger reality that goes beyond the individual.

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Ultimately, we see a reality that is dependent on context, but does not devolve into relativism because of the need to adhere to an indefinable reality that is beyond our understanding through language.
Works Cited

Attridge, Derek. Joyce Effects: On Language, Theory, and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Freedman, Ariela. Did it Flow?: Bridging Aestethics and History in Joyces Ulysses. Modernism/modernity, John Hopkins U. Press. Volume 13, Number 1, January 2006. pp. 853-868.

Gifford, Don and Robert J. Seidman. Ulysses Annotated. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008.
Gordon, John. Joyce and Reality: The Empirical Strikes Back. 1st ed. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse U. Press, 2004. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Hans Walter Gabler. Ed. NY: Vintage Books, 1986. Thornton, Weldon. Voices and Values in Joyces Ulysses. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000.

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