Critical Analysis of Main Aspects Presented in James Joyce's Ulysses

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I or Eye

This essay ponders upon one of the main aspects present in James Joyce’s Ulysses, namely Joyce’s ‘postmodern’ turn, discourse parallax. In order for this to properly happen, the first and foremost issue to discuss should be the chapter titled ‘Cyclops’, this being the chapter in which I opt to analyze this aspect. During my analysis, it is mainly important to ponder upon the meaning of parallax and the use of it, but what is even more important than doing this is first to understand the literary genealogy within which the work can be situated. Other aspects are also important, these, however, will not be named in the introductory part of my essay, the reader of my work is going to get acquainted with them during the process of reading the work.

Joyce never outlined a literary genealogy within which his own works might be situated, scholars even stated that ‘it has always been far from easy to determine. . . what his literary tastes and opinions were’

One reason why Joyce’s Ulysses may be called postmodern instead of just modern is because it contains interior discourse (whether direct or free indirect) and this involves parallax since the events are presented from the narrator’s point of view and from the characters’ interior. The reason for this parallax is to juxtapose two or more character’ different constructions of the same world – or some part of a world. This multiplication of versions has two simultaneous functions, the first being that of confirming the stability of the world outside consciousness and the second one being that of exposing the similarities and differences between different minds.

Since it has already been mentioned, I find it important to define the word parallax. Parallax happens when an object is viewed from two different points, it resulting in an apparent change in the position of the object. A method to better understand this concept is to take astronomy into consideration, where it refers to the different perceiving of the same celestial body from two points in space. This method is used for example in astronomy to measure for example the distance of a star from our planet. By viewing something from different points it also makes the viewed object to having different backgrounds. This can easily be sensed if one takes one of their hands and puts it in front of their face. Without moving the hand, if one closes one of their eyes and keeps the other open, after which does the same with the other eye, followed by doing this consecutively for a few times, they can observe that the background of the hand constantly changes, it is similar but not the same when viewed with the different eyes.

In such manner if a specific event is explained from different points of view, even if the told event is the same, it could be rendered in two different manners, this being possible due to the fact that the two receptors paid attention to different aspects or maybe they focused on different elements of what happened. Parallax in Ulysses is mainly based on Bloom’s and Stephen’s perspective. Reality has become fluid, metamorphic, not merely as a function of the consciousnesses it is constructed from.

There are multiple types of parallaxes, two of them being the parallax of subjectivities/individual reality and the other, parallax of discourse. The former helps to confer stability on the world that is outside of consciousness if we have more points of view, it is easier for us to understand how the world of the novel works, so the more observers we have, the better we can understand the narrated events. The latter on the other hand has the opposite effect, it dissolves the world presented in Ulysses into a plurality of different and diverse worlds. Two other types of parallaxes include the interior or authorial discourse of characters, more specifically two adjacent sentences from it. It may sound strange to have parallax that includes only one character, but two adjacent sentences of an interior discourse can also differ due to numerous factors. These could include either interior or exterior factors, the former being either a medical condition or it could just simply happen due to the free flow of thoughts that could cross one’s mind. The latter, meaning the exterior factors, could also differ, it could occur due to what the character sees or hears, it could be due to another character – what they say, how they act- or simply what could be seen or heard in the close or further environment of the character. Another parallax could occur within a character’s discourse, this is a bit complicated than the one mentioned before, because, while the other concerns only the character and the reader who has the job to properly understand the parallax, this one comes into contact with other characters and the job of the reader is even harder, deciphering it is more complicated. Each character’s discourse proves on closer examination to be more like a mosaic of heterogeneous discourse fragments: quotations, allusions, echoes of other characters, bits of anonymous social wisdom or prejudice. In order to properly understand these quotations, allusions and/or echoes of other characters, the reader must pay attention to more bits of evidence, thus the whole web created is even more complicated.

When it comes to parallaxes and properly understand a novel that one is reading, one of the most important quests when one starts reading is to figure out how the complicated web of thoughts folds and to solve the complex puzzle the parallaxes create. This is a very hard quest, especially in the case of James Joyce’s works, especially Ulysses since it is particularly hard to decipher. One needs to pay attention to its every puzzle piece in order to properly understand it, and even after getting acquainted with the whole of the novel, one could never find every piece of the puzzle. And in my opinion, this is what makes James Joyce a great writer. Not only this but also the fact that even if one reads this novel of his for multiple times, even then the puzzle is not complete, moreover, more and more pieces of puzzle appear in order to make the whole picture more and more complicated.

When it comes to the chapter ‘Cyclops’ of Ulysses, the job of the reader to decipher the complicated webs created by the events and the characters is even harder. The process of getting acquainted with this part of the novel can be compared to Odysseus jabbing a ‘pike into the eye of the Cyclops’ (Moser and Stone) since Bloom throws in the same manner ‘verbal wrenches into the gears of conversation that occur in this episode’ (ibid.). Moreover, as Bloom does this in the novel, the writer of the novel does the same thing with his readers, moreover, as it was already mentioned in my work, because of these, the reader cannot get fully acquainted with the whole of the novel.

A very interesting issue about this chapter of the novel is the fact that the concept of parallax stands on the direct opposite of the title, ‘Cyclops’. Being forced to understand all the allusions, all the webs created by the parallaxes, to see everything at least from two points of view is completely antithetical to the concept that revolves around the title, that of having one eye. The fact that the whole chapter starts with the first person pronoun, I. This is also very strange because the whole novel is built on third-person narration -besides some parts that are not based on it, this episode, on the other hand, announces at its very beginning that this part is nothing like the ones it presented before. The fact that the speaker is never announced and also does not appear in any other chapter of the novel makes this chapter even more mysterious. Moreover, this aspect also changes the receiving of the whole, the readers are subjected to the narrator’s very limited point of view and compared to the other chapters of the novel, it feels very constraining to read such a chapter. The pronoun used at the beginning of the chapter thus becomes a ‘metaphor for the Cyclops, for only being able to see things one way’ (Ulysses Readalong Ch 12: Cyclops). The reader on the other hand, as it was previously mentioned, must read the events in order to successfully manage to understand what is told, to properly connect the dots to understand the whole.

Another allusion to the one-eyed being could be found at the very beginning of this chapter when the reader gets acquainted with the narrator of the chapter and the first sentence uttered already alludes to almost having only one eye because a chimneysweep almost poked one of his eyes out with their brush. Even if at first glance these allusions are not that evident, on a closer look they really are important in understanding the whole concept of parallax and being one-eyed.

In order to properly understand this chapter, others must be mentioned to properly understand the discrepancy between this part and the others. Throughout the novel, the reader is exposed to multiple points of view. These are Leopold’s, Stephen’s, and Molly’s. Besides these, there are other minor ones that the reader must differentiate between. These are used for short periods of time: Father Conmee, Patrick Dignam Jr., Gerty MacDowell, and, last but not least, the narrator of ‘Cyclops’. As for what concerns parallax in this aforementioned chapter, there is, for instance, the following sequence: ‘I dare him, says he, and I doubledare [sic] him. Come on out here Geraghty, you notorious bloody hill and dale robber’ (Joyce). There are some sequences that were intentionally italicized, these constitute most of the sentence spoken by Geraghty, this being entirely sure because it was recently related by the anonymous narrator of the chapter. The rest of the quotation, on the other hand, is a variation of another sentence, ‘ that’s the most notorious bloody robber you’d meet in a day’s walk’ (Joyce), said by the narrator to characterize him. The second sentence of the quotation, on the other hand, which is not italicized is highly ambiguous because the reader is not told who said these words, moreover, it is also unsure who was the receiver of this sentence. By using this method, Joyce steps one step closer to its masterpiece and pushes the reader one step further, letting them in the mist created around his work. Through this method the readers have no chance of really figuring out who said the aforementioned sentence, they could just speculate upon it, there is no way that the reader could find out whether these words were said once but written down two times, or spoken twice by the narrator, or repeated once by Joe, who hears the narrator, or it could be the narrator who is mocking the character who he has created.

This aforementioned issue is present in the novel because of the postmodernist part of the novel, without it, they would not exist, thus this is a more complex parallax because the reader is not acquainted with its explanation.

On another instance in the novel, the men are in the bar and they are discussing several topics. There is Citizen who offers his perceptions on all of the topics that he and his bar mates discuss. Bloom is also there who also tries to express his opinions on the discussed subjects. He explains whenever explanation is needed, he uses counterarguments in order to express his own points of view and by this he creates parallax, he makes the reader’s job harder to properly understand the topics discussed. A subject discussed by them in the bar is that of identifying the source of Ireland’s problems. By giving two opposing arguments to a topic he makes the whole arguing process harder, moreover, it creates another parallax. His two arguments are the following: ‘Foreign wars is the cause of it’ (Joyce) and A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that’s what’s the cause of all our misfortunes’ (ibid.). Using more than one argument usually serves as a clarification, here, on the other hand, the speaker uses these arguments to place the responsibility for all of Ireland’s problems on singular events. This worldview, on the other hand, that Citizen presents it one that Bloom refuses to accept. In another instance, again, while discussing several topics in the pub, the men argue upon the subject of the nation, more specifically, they would like to find out what is it. Bloom brings forward two arguments, the second broader than the first one, these being ‘A nation is the same people living in the same place’ (Joyce) ‘Or also living in different places’ (ibid.). These completely opposing definitions he comes up with are just the sole evidence that Bloom finds definitions unimportant (Moser and Stone)

To conclude, it must certainly be said that by writing Ulysses, James Joyce truly proved to his audience that he is a great writer. One of the main principles of his when writing this masterpiece was to step one way closer to his work and pushing the readers one step away from it in order to make their job of deciphering the text harder. This is the main aspect that makes him great and makes the reader read his novels for more than one time, doing this in order to understand it better, which in the case of other writers works perfectly, in the case of Joyce on the other hand it makes the reader realize that with reading his novels many times, more and more dots appear that had to be connected but fewer and fewer methods to connect them.

Works Cited

James Joyce. ‘Cyclops.’ Ulysses, http://m.joyceproject.com/chapters/cyclops.html. Accessed 7 February 2019.
Moser, Anna, and William Stone. ‘The Cyclops’ Modernism Lab, https://modernism.coursepress.yale.edu/the-cyclops. Accessed 7 February 2019.
Richardson, Brian. ‘The Genealogies of ‘Ulysses’, the Invention of Postmodernism, and the Narratives of Literary History.’ ELH, vol. 67, no. 4, 2000, pp. 1035–1054. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30031950. Accessed 7 February 2019.
‘Ulysses Readalong Ch 12: Cyclops.’ Girl Detective, WordPress, 14 April 2015, http://www.girldetective.net/?p=6239. Accessed 7 February 2019.
Ungar, Andras. Joyce’s Ulysses as a National Epic. The University Press of Florida, 2001.

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Critical Analysis of Main Aspects Presented in James Joyce’s Ulysses

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