James Joyce Novel 'Ulysses'

James Joyce Novel 'Ulysses'

        In 20th century novels went through a sea change. Plot and character went behind the stage and mind of the character received more importance. Novels became a medium to express their inner feelings,  thoughts . The incessant atoms of thoughts cross and recross the mind of the characters. Novels become not an escape from emotion but letting loose of emotion. James Joyce and Virginia Woolf became the pioneer of the genre - stream of conscious novels. 

           James Joyce's novel ' Ulysses ' deals with the event of one day. Stephen Dedalus , the hero from Joyce's another novel ' Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man ' and Leopold Bloom, a Jewish advertisement canvasser and his wife, Molly are the principal characters. The various chapters correspond to Homer's classic ' Odyssey ' - Stephen representing Telemachus, Bloom as Odysseus and Molly as Penelope. 

        Buck Mulligan,  a medical student has breakfast with Stephen Dedalus , his teacher.  Stephen's heart is tormented as he cannot attend his ailing mother and he cannot pray to God due to his hatred towards the Church. He thinks that his life has become aimless or like one of the blind alleys in Joyce's dear dirty Dublin. He finds respite in happy,  meditative life out of the educational institutions. 

         Leopold Bloom,  a Jewish Advertisement salesperson gets out of the bed, prepares breakfast for him and his infidel wife. Molly is a sprawling bulk of a woman who is defiled their conjugal relationship.Bloom's kitchen – shabby, functional, domestic – is a typical setting for this epic of the commonplace. It is the starting point of a day which will traverse the unremarkable city streets as Bloom runs errands. He reads a letter from his daughter,  Milly and thinks of his deceased 11 year old son, Rudy. He goes to various stores and post office,  picks up a letter from a woman with whom he has been flirting.  He joins the funeral procession of Paddy Dignam, and rethinks of his dead son again.  

       Bloom and Stephen meet at first in a newspaper office and then at public library. Slightly intoxicated Stephen expounds his theory on Shakespeare. Finally, they run into the pub . Bloom following Stephen goes into the brothel of Dublin. Stephen Dedalus thinks of his mother while Leopold Bloom ruminates of his wife's infidelity. Stephen is engaged in a scuffle with soldiers and Bloom rescues him. 

          When Bloom enters his house and stands looking down at his slovenly wife who is lying in the bed thinking of her lovers and of her romantic meeting and honeymoon with Bloom in Spain. Her thoughts continue to flow on as Bloom begins to snore by her side. Bloom's relationship to faith and fatherland is similarly unstable. His Odyssean journeyings are shadowed by the legend of the Wandering Jew, punished for taunting Jesus on his way to the Crucifixion by being cursed to wander the earth until the Second Coming. Bloom's Jewish heritage marks him as dangerously different in an Ireland constrained by narrow definitions of nationhood and blighted by casual, often vitriolic, anti-Semitism. In the 'Hades' episode, Bloom is excluded from his fellow mourners' easy camaraderie.