Important Quotations Explained

1.
Amor matris: subjective and objective genitive.

This quotation, part of Stephens inner monologue, appears in Episode

Two. Amor matris translates to mother love, a concept that Stephen ponders
while giving extra help to his student Sargent. Sargent reminds Stephen of
himself at the same ageStephen was similarly dirty and disheveled, a child
only a mother could love. Stephen thinks of mother love frequently in Ulysses
he contrasts the concrete, bodily reality of a mothers love to the disconnected,
tension-ridden relation between a father and a child. In Episode Nine, Stephen
calls amor matris the only true thing in life, and skeptically identifies paternity as
a legal fiction. The phrase subjective and objective genitive refers to the
confusion about the translation of amor matrisit can be either a childs love for
a mother or a mothers love for a child. This touches on Stephens difficulties in
deciding whether to be an active or a passive being. In Episode Nine, he frames
the choice this way: Act. Be acted on. In the quotation from Episode Two
above, we see Stephen trying to understand the ethics and power relations
involved in his teacher-stu-dent relationship with Sargent in terms of the
compassion entailed by mother love.

2.
History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

This quotation appears in Episode Two, during Stephens conversation with Mr.
Deasy. With Sargent and his class earlier in Episode Two, Stephen was the
reluctant teacher, and now Deasy attempts to position him as the pupil. But
Stephen blithely maneuvers out of this role by way of a few cryptic statements,
such as the one above. Here, Stephens version of history as a nightmare is an
explicit challenge to Deasys conception of history as moving toward one goal
(the manifestation of God), and an implicit challenge to Hainess version of
history in Episode One as something impersonal and cut off from the present (It

seems history is to blame). Stephens conception of history has several

meanings. Stephen sees history, and Irish history in particular, as filled with
violenceDeasys and Hainess conceptions of history enable this violence by
excluding certain people from history in Deasys case (those who do not believe
in a Christian God) and by absolving those who perpetrate violence from any
blame in Hainess case. Stephens comment also refers to his conception of the
tensions between art and historyStephen sees history as an impossible chaos
and art as a way of representing that chaos in an ordered fashion. Finally,
Stephens statement is also an extremely personal onehis own history is
something he is trying to overcome. At the opening of Ulysses, Stephen is feeling
particularly hopeless about the possibility of rising above the circumstances of his
upbringing.

3.
What is it? says John Wyse. A nation? says Bloom. A nation is the same people living in the
same place. By God, then, says Ned, laughing, if thats so Im a nation for Im living in the same
place for the past five years.

This dialogue occurs in Episode Twelve, during the confrontation scene at

Barney Kiernans pub. Led by the citizen, the men at Barney Kiernans explicitly
identify Bloom as an outsider, his Jewish-Hungarian roots being incompatible
with their essentialist conception of Irishness as a racial and Catholic category.
Here, Blooms conception of a nation may seem excessively loose (especially
when he backs up several lines later to qualify, Or in different places), but
Blooms position on nationality as a self-selected category is part of the triumph
of Blooms compassionate humanism over the violent essentialism of the citizen
and others. Ned Lamberts sarcastic response to Bloom here is an example of
another way in which Bloom is repeatedly marked as an outsiderthe Dublin
men with whom Bloom associates are skilled in using mockery and sarcasm to
establish authority over others, while Bloom does not use humor in this way.

4.
. . . each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces.

This quotation occurs in Episode Seventeenit is a narrative description of

Stephen and Blooms wordless interaction in Blooms garden just before Stephen
leaves. Their meeting is in no sense ideala father-son connection is not
explicitly made, and Stephen declines to stay the night and probably will not see
Bloom again. Yet the narrative of Episode Seventeen manages to convey their
union as symbolically meaningful, by tapping various themes. This sentence
manages to include an optimistic set of thematic connotations: the recognition
theme from (disguised) Odysseus and Telemachuss meeting in The Odyssey;
and an idea of the father-son relationship involving versions of the same bodily
self (flesh). The reciprocal aspect of their meeting implies that Stephen has
managed to find a medium in the troublesome dynamic of activity-passivity. The
theirhisnothis narrative play also manages to suggest that the meeting is an
ideal balance between a coming-together and a realistic recognition of
otherness.

5.
. . . and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around
him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was
going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Mollys final words seem to refer immediately to her memory of accepting

Blooms proposition of marriage during their day spent on Howth. However, the
ambiguity of the many masculine pronouns in Mollys monologue also exists here
in the same paragraph, she remembers a similar outdoor scene of love with Lt.
Mulvey, and the ambiguity of this seeming affirmation of the Blooms marriage is
typical of Joyces endings. However, the looseness of Mollys language in these
final lines also enacts a combination of the immediate realistic level of the text
with the idealistic, symbolic levelMollys Yes here is an unqualified affirmative
of natural life and of physical and emotional love.