Ulysses

Alba del Rosario Cano Albero Grado en Estudios Ingleses Literatura Inglesa desde 1890 hasta nuestros días ULYSSES, by James Joyce Episode 18: Penelope  INDEX Introduction – page 2 Some important data – page 2 Biography – page 4 James Joyce’s main works 6 Dubliners –page 6 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – page 6 Finnegans Wake – page 7 The Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach –page 7 Exiles – page 8 Ulysses –page 8 Chapter eighteenth: Penelope. A critical commentary – page 9 Main characters – page 12 Molly’s monologue in “Penelope” –page 15 Narrative techniques: the use of the “stream of consciousness” – page 16 The role of Dublin in the book –page 18 Ulysses parallelism with the Odyssey – page 19 The symbolism and imaginery present in the book – page 19 Conclusion –page 20 Bibliography –page 21 Introduction This essay is aim at explaining the different features that appear in the literary work called Ulysses by James Joyce. Specifically, this paper is going to be focus in the episode eighteen of the book, the last one: “Penelope”. But, before starting with the deep analysis of the chapter it would be convenient to provide an introduction to the topic that will be explained and then, some information about the author’s biography and his most important works. Some important data James Joyce has been a very critized author because of his work. His novel has always been accompanied by polemics and also both good and bad opinions. When he decided to publish the novel, England and the United States were having a very difficult time. Besides, the publication was also full of legal problems which caused drawbacks to Joyce and the rest of people involved in the edition. Ulysses was first published in the North American magazine called “Little Review”. Initially, it was published in the form of fascicles. Nevertheless, its publication was stopped in the fascicle number thirteen by the Government. The novel was considered a scandal, a way of perverting the society which was something not permitted during this time. It can be said that Joyce’s work was best known for all these polemic aspects rather than for its literary quality. As previously stated, the book has eighteen chapters. It is said that the most controversial of all of them is the last one. There, a monologue is interpreted by one of the protagonists of the novel called Molly Bloom. Maybe the controversy that this chapter inspired was the reason of the appearance of both allies and enemies of the novel. That is why it is said that no one can stay indifferent among this work; or you are a supporter or, on the contrary, a detractor. Joyce’s Ulysses has created an inflectional point in the literature’s history. It is different from a current literary work. As some authors believe, the novel has a new literary genre which characterizes it as a revolutionary book for the age in which it was published; a period of the history which was not prepared for this type of writing. A society still stuck in the past, in traditional points of view that sees innovation and the appearance of new feelings and thoughts as something revolutionary. That is why James Joyce’s novel must be analyzed deeply. Otherwise, the reader will not be able to appreciate which were the real intentions of Joyce when he wrote the novel; to represent the modern hero, not to describe the classic one. The title itself of the novel brought a lot of criticism. Why was it named like a classic hero from the Odyssey? It is important to state that the feminist sector of the society of that time found very interesting this novel. As it has been said, this book broke with what was conventional. All the protagonists are different when compared with the type of characters in other novels so far known. This book presents us a vision completely opposite to the classic ideas such as the typical gallant men. Two characters of this novel are Bloom and Dedalus. They are described as strongless, unwealthy, current men without any special feature that will help them to conquer a lady. Quite the opposite occurs with Boylan who is frivolous and also arrogant. This idea of such uncommon characters and heroes liked feminists. Joyce wanted to show how the hero of this new emerging society was. This novel contains a description of the everyday life of the characters, their problems, preoccupations, experiences and personality. All the characters are inspired in people that Joyce met in the moment he was writing the novel, so he characterized them with some of the features of this people. The author chose only few people from the society to represent all types of personality stereotypes because he thought it would be sufficient. He wanted to capture in his novel some aspects of real life, the situations occurred to the people that surrounded him, something that made him to think about what was happening in this progressively changing society; a hypocrite society that was looking for no change. Every aspect of the novel was chosen carefully, not only the characters. As just stated, a mixture of characters is present in the novel but also sceneries. In the same way as Joyce did with the characters, all the sceneries were real too but this is not a coincidence. As later on will be described, the action takes place Dublin. Joyce situated all his characters and the plot in this city in a masterly way. He expressed with great realism all the streets and places where the action takes place although not all the locations were completely described. Most significantly there is that he did it in the form of a Dubliner, that is to say, if the reader comes from Dublin he/she is going to be able to recognize the places without an explanation. The book includes such an outstanding description of Dublin that Joyce once said that the city could again be perfectly rebuilt if it was destroyed. Notably, Joyce tried to represent the situation of Ireland in 1904. Characters and locations are as real as the society in which the action is developed. In his desire to describe the society he focused in the low bourgeoisie which was in trouble as a consequence of the difficulties that the country was suffering. This social class was not characterized by their good manners or intelligence in business. On the contrary, Joyce gave us a different vision of this bourgeoisie social class. He shows us the decadence they are suffering, how people spend their time without doing anything, continuously discussing. There are only some flashes in which we can see them working but they do it without illusion or passion. Without doubt Joyce has been perfectly able to combine a mixture of characters, locations and the society in order to obtain the goal he wanted: a representation of some aspects of his current everyday life such as the social and economic situation that was surrounding him and some of his experiences. All these elements form this complex novel which is said to be a metaphor of the Odyssey, a classic work written by Homer. In the same way as in the work by Homer, James Joyce shows the evolution of the characters during a period of time of one day. He describes his characters’ particular travel in the city. It can be classified as an urban adventure but with each own heroes. Thanks to the Odyssey he put order inside the chaotic of the novel, adapting the classic world to the modern one. Biography James Joyce was born in Rathgar (Dublin) in 1882 and died on January 13, 1941 because of a duodenal ulcer. He was the oldest brother of ten children and he born in a deeply catholic traditional family. His father, who had problems with alcohol and saving money, was John Stanislaus Joyce. His way of behaving provoked the impoverishment of the family. Despite that, he had a good education. He studied in a Jesuit school and then continued his studies in the National University in Dublin. Once he finished university in 1902 he went to Paris to study medicine and to write. But, after a shortly period of time he returned to Ireland. Joyce again returned to Paris but definitely, in 1903 he returned to Ireland because his mother was about to die and also he started to work as a teacher. In June of the next year he met a woman called Nora Barnacle who will be his wife for the rest of his life. The famous “Bloomsday” that appears in Ulysses is probably the day he noticed that he was in love with that woman. Few months after the wedding they moved to Zurich. In 1905 he moved again to a place called Trieste where he opened a language academy to teach English. The period from October, 1904 to June, 1915 was one of the most difficult ones for Joyce. He disliked Trieste, the publication of his work Dubliners was delayed, the rumors that his wife had been unfaithful and the failure of his cinema business were his main worries during those years. But not only bad things occurred to him during this period. He had a son and a daughter and also received the support of some friends such as William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound and Dora Marsden. Thanks to them he published his works A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and The Egoist. During his stay in Zurich his economic situation improved. In the same way as happened with his father, he also had economic problems. Because of the insanity of his daughter (schizophrenia) he needed a lot of money so they started to save money and being more careful with his costs. Besides, he received a grant for the Royal Literary Fund thanks to the help again of Pound and Yeats. With this improvement he showed kind of anger and also hate towards Ireland which he decided never to visit again. In the year 1917 the first of many eye operations took place and at the end of 1918 he began an affair with a woman called Martha Fleischmann but this ended in a sad way. Finally, in 1919 he left Zurich for Trieste but only for one year because in 1920 he will move to Paris for a long period of time. The first years in this cosmopolitan city brought to him happiness. Ezra Pound got that her friend’s book were translated into French and for this reason Joyce though that Paris would be the best city to make available for the first time his book Ulysses. The novel was finally published on the fortieth Joyce’s birthday by Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare and Company. One year after this publication Joyce started to write Finnegans Wake. This work was mysterious and difficult to understand so this is the reason why he lost most part of his old literary associates. Besides, Pound’s relationship with James Joyce was affected. Its publication took place few months before the beginning of the World War II. James Joyce’s main works He published between 1907 and 1939 some short but intense literary works. He was influenced in all of them by his beliefs but also by some authors like Homer, Dante Alighieri, Thomas of Aquin and, William Shakespeare. He wrote the following works which are going to be briefly explained: A tale book: Dubliners 2 books of poetry: Chamber Music and Pomes Penyeach A theatre play: Exiles 3 novels: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake Dubliners (Dublin 1904-Trieste 1914) It contains fifteen tales written with a realistic style and strongly influenced by Joyce’s experiences. His aim was to portray or reflect all the negative experiences, manifestations and realities that the paralysis in which the Dublin’s society was stagnant provoked to him during this age. Some of these tales are inspired on his childhood and some others in his adulthood. Obsessively, Joyce describes in detail the society and this is the reason why publishing his works was so difficult. With the help of William Butler Yeats this tale book was printed in 1914. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 1907 This semi autobiographical novel was written in 1907 but it was not published until 1916. In 1905 there was another version of this novel called Stephen the Hero but Joyce destroyed it. He used this version as an inspiration for the one that he will start writing two years later. There can be find the real writer who is Joyce. He develops himself as the great writer he would be recognized in the future. The main character, Stephen Dedalus, represents the author himself in the novel. This character fights against the Irish society bourgeoisie and both catholic beliefs and traditions, trying to escape from the claws of a traditional and suffocating social vision of life. Joyce uses the remaining characters as a way to develop its own personality and experiences. Finnegans Wake, 1939 This was the last work of Joyce appearing just only two years before his death. He had to face a lot of problems during the production of this work which he took twenty years to complete. On the one hand, the psychological problems of his daughter Lucia and, on the other hand, his own eye illness. He started going blind and needed the help of some assistants so that he could finish the work. The book makes references to a popular Irish ballad dated form the 19th century. In this ballad appears an alcoholic Irish man called Tim Finnengans who dies and resurrects. The story takes place in a tavern and it tells us a dream that the owner has. His dream is mixed with the dreams of the rest of his family so it makes the story more complex. Clearly influenced by the Italian authors Giambattista Vico and Giordano Bruno in his work can be seen a cycle between the characters. This book starts with an initial phrase which is completed at the end of the book so here the cyclicity too. The novel has been criticized because it was very much difficult to read. Joyce introduced invented words obtained as a result of mixing different languages but also playing and experimenting with new grammar rules. Some authors establish here a similarity; they say that this way of writing corresponds with the complexity of the surreal dreams. Chamber Music (1907) and Pomes Penyeach (1927) James Joyce did not highlight in poetry something which has been very difficult to understand by some critics. Why such an original and advanced modernist author in prose during his time was so traditional, lineal and tasteless when writing poetry? The poems contained in Chamber Music deal with young love. In them can be seen the “lyric purity” so much estimated by Joyce. Certainly, they seem to be made for reciting rather than be read. On the contrary, Pomes Penyeach covers more themes. These poems were considered a kind of answer to all the critics he has received so, as a consequence of that, we can infer that the author treats in them his publication problems, sadness and illness. He was clearly influenced by the Elizabethan poetry of the 16th century and some other important authors such as William Shakespeare and William Butler Yeats. Exiles, 1914 Again in this work it is possible to find similarities between the main character and James Joyce, something that allow us to know more information about his problems and personal life. It has been considered a psychological study of a middle age marriage couple. Some critics say that this work was based in one of Ibsen called When We Dead Awaken. He tried to adapt to the new dramaturgy techniques some of the traditional themes and methods of his age but he failed. Ulysses, 1922 It was the biggest work of James Joyce. Initially, he divided it into three parts but because of the complexity of the book he had to divide it in eighteen episodes. The first part is formed by the first three chapters and it is called The Telemachiad. These three chapters tell us a set of facts that happened to Stephen Dedalus which is the main character. Stephen Dedalus is a disillusioned school teacher which works without any incentive. Throughout these three chapters it is possible to perceive different facts of this character life, for example, his sadness because of his mother’s death or his internal aversion to Buck Mulligan and Haines. This part of the novel shows us a more mature Stephen and the problems and fears that pursue him. It is important to notice here that Stephen is the same protagonist of the previous Joyce’s novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The second part, the central one, called The Odyssey is composed by twelve chapters. In this part of the book Stephan and Bloom appear in action. They met each other in different situations, in a burial, a hospital, a bar and a brothel. They coincide in so many situations but they do not see each other. Maybe Joyce tried to show us arbitrariness and the real life stress with this situation. There it is possible to perceive Joyce’s preoccupations and troubles which are reflected in these two men. His problems publishing his articles, the way he behaved when his mother died, his sexual fantasies as well as his passion for the music and his thoughts about Shakespeare and other authors were some of his preoccupations. For the first time there is presented the main problem of Bloom. He is going to stay all day long out of home because he knows that Molly, his wife, is going to have sexual intercourse with Boylan. The truth is that this situation takes place in his mind and he analyzes the infidelity and the problems that led his marriage to this situation. Indeed, through hallucinations Stephen and Bloom’s deepest fears are represented in this rich part which also provoked them problems with the police. Finally, the last part is called The Nostos which is composed of the last three chapters of the book. The very beginning of this part starts with the confusion of the masculine characters, their personality disorder and even the misogyny of Bloom after the police’s incident. Stephen wants Bloom to stay at his home that night but he refuses so. It is at this point where starts a very interesting conversation based in catechism in which they start a set of questions and answers before the farewell. The book ends with Molly’s soliloquy. Her feelings and her thoughts are expressed whereas she lies on the bed next to her husband as well as her experiences, concerns and infidelities from both parts. A reflection concerning marriage is done at the very end by Molly. Chapter eighteenth: Penelope. A critical commentary Odysseus is reunited with Penelope, in the Homer’s epic, after he has killed the numerous men that wanted to marry her. Initially, Penelope does not notice that he was her husband. It is when he describes how their bed was constructed, information only known by them, that she recognizes him. This scene corresponds with the Blooms’ bed that appears in Ulysses. Joyce does not use too much the stream-of-consciousness narrative technique in this chapter. However, Molly’s thoughts are not presented in a consecutive way. In “Penelope” Joyce follows a narrative pattern in which he reproduces random thoughts proper of a woman who has just wake up. So, it can be said that Molly is infinity. Her physical position, reclining, remembers us the mathematical infinity symbol. Notably, she is described as the infinite variety of womanhood. Joyce used eight sentences to enforce some order in the chapter. Both the beginning and ending of this episode contain information about Molly’s thoughts about Bloom. In words of Joyce “Penelope” goes in a circle around “four cardinal points… the female breasts, arse, womb and…” Nevertheless, he contradicted himself saying that his aim when he wrote this episode was to portray the wild deluge of womanhood. Molly is a character very interesting because of being unusual in all of fiction. Her personality is full of a deep feeling of sadness which lasts for a long time and cannot be explained. What she wants is to be loved, not used by Boylan. She dreams of being hold in the arms of a man while he kisses her but the truth is that she is lonely. Her loneliness together with the rejection of his husband, who writes letter to Martha Clifford, is the reason why she writes herself letters. But although she does not find a man with whom stay she does not consider herself a defeated woman. On the contrary, she can be defined as a survivor woman who perfectly knows the feminine tricks. Additionally, another feature of Molly is her jealousy, her contempt of other women. She sacked Mary Driscoll accusing her of having steal oysters simply because she attracted Bloom. Moreover, she is jealous of Josie Powell who was Bloom’s old love. Molly thinks that she is very fortunate of being married with Bloom instead of Josie’s husband. He is said to sleep in muddy boots and now he is the laughing stock of Dublin. The singer Kathleen Kearney is considered by Molly, who feels bitter, a competitor. In any case, as Edward A. Kopper said “Molly is refreshing, even when her scornful criticism is directed towards Joyce’s other characters in the novel, for her observations shed new insights into their actions and motivations”. There are two men in Molly’s life towards which she directs her skepticism: Boylan and Bloom. Boylan hit Molly’s backside and she felt that she was not an animal. He also was not so manliness when practicing sexual intercourse with her and at her insistence of not getting pregnant he withdrew himself. Also, he was not a sophisticated person as he undressed in front of Molly’s annoyance. Although she dreams with being Boylan’s wife she actually knows that this is impossible so she thinks how to obtain presents from her lover. Definitely, for a real understanding of Ulysses it is extremely important Molly’s portrait of Bloom. It is possible to infer from her thoughts about this man that her adultery is the result of the failings of two people. Bloom is a peculiar character leaving aside his sexual abnormalities. He is a man that becomes easily angry with others, especially employers. Although Bloom shows indifference to beatiful girls, Molly perfectly knows that he looks them secretly, with a sly eye. He hates working and also he is kind of fuker, that is to say, he wants to do things when the real thing is that he has no idea like when he tried to row and was about the end drowned. But, what really alienated Molly were Bloom’s sexual habits. He asked her to walk in horse dung, to give him a piece of her underwear and also to take pictures of her without clothes in order to sell them later. At this point it is possible to establish a connection between Bloom’s cold feet on Molly’s bed and his cold heart. Without doubt Molly has been as Synge pointed out a victim of the “loveless Irish marriage”. Molly feels angry when Bloom brings Stephen home. He maybe wants Stephen to have sexual intercourse with Molly although some critics have talk about some signs of homosexuality in Bloom as the relationship with Stephen sometimes is seen as a little bit obsessive. Despite that, it has been Molly’s sexuality the one which has led to more criticism. She is a religious woman because she accepts both God and his manifestations in nature. She completely accepts her body with all its faults and virtues. Thanks to this character Joyce is able to reveal the real thoughts of the Irish women when their subconscious began to be more opened. He is also able to see and understand the truth of some physical aspects of the personality of women. Molly touches a wide variety of sexual experiences; there is flagellation, exhibitionism, female masturbation, the dream to have sexual intercourse with boys and sailors but maybe the most important thought that flowed from her mind was to have sex in front of Bloom with Boylan in order to provoke some punishment to him. The main concern of this episode is the honesty with which Molly accepts herself as most of her thoughts were not so strange for the late twentieth-century standards. There it is described in detail the shape of the male sex organ, the irritation that a woman suffers in her vagina before the period or rough sex. In any case, she is agreeing with the fact that life has to enjoyable. At the end of the book a question remains in the air. The reader does not really know what is going to the Molly’s and Bloom’s future relationship. Although no answer is given, the author by means of his writing lets us see some possibility of reconciliation. This chapter ends with a breakfast that Molly will prepare for Bloom and her memories of the meeting on Howth Hill when she proposed Bloom marriage. Symbols of rebirth appear in this episode. The breakfast will have eggs which were a symbol of rebirth y Joyce’s poetry. The moment where Molly passes Bloom a bit of seedcake is another sign of this rebirth already mentioned. If there is to be a future in the relationship between Bloom and Molly it is because the latter knows him very well. She knows all Bloom’s tricks as she is still able to remember how he was. She knows about his pornographic collection, his eating habits when he is in love with a new woman, his susceptibility manipulating women and the fact that he is a laughing stock for people. Throughout the story Molly presents us Bloom in a kind of ridiculous way but in the end she presents him in a better way. Main characters Leopold Bloom He is the modern Odysseus. He is thirty-eight-years old. His father has Hungarian Jew background so this was one of the main reasons of being excluded from all circles. He was also shut off from his Roman Catholic associates because of some religious differences. All these exclusions did not affect him. He is considered one of the novels characters best described in literature. He is a man who does not like troubles or even to drink so it can be said that he is a quite relaxed man. Very calm and thoughtful he suffered and faced the insularity of Ireland and Irishness that took place in 1904. His sexuality was clearly defined in the novel. He can be described as an obsessed voyeur always thinking about sexual intercourse or as stated few lines ago with women’s underclothes. He is very different of Stephen who gets easily nervous and stressed but at the same times seems to be a novice in these matters and even seems to practice celibate. He was also a poet and a music lover although in the novel he shows us an image of an unrealized artist. His serenity helps him to face and analyze problems if needed without suffering pain attacks. Basically, in the novel there are two problems that affected him the most. On the one hand, his father suicide and the death of one of his sons only few days after having birth. On the other hand, he had problems with his wife’s infidelities. All these events cause him a sense of loneliness and powerless. It was the first problem the one that brought the second one, that is to say, with the loss of his son he refused to try to have another one. As a result of that, Molly started to search for sex in her manager that is Boylan. He is so passive that he even likes the fact that his housewife is attractive to other men. He analyzed this problem in a very cold way and he understands the other people point of view achieving a contextualization of his problems again. It is in this point where Bloom’s heroism resides. His sexuality has been questioned by other characters of the story because of his personality. Stephen Dedalus He is a version of James Joyce at the age of twenty-two. He was the unique protagonist of one of his previous novels, the so called A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The author’s childhood is described there. He has returned to Dublin in order to take care of his mother who is ill and to assist her when she died. At this point he continues being an unrealized artist who works as a history teacher in a school. He will be marked by his behavior during his mother’s death for the rest of the novel. At the very beginning of the novel, the reader sees Stephen Dedalus as a self-consciousness man which is still in the process of building his own personality. He is a man very much focused in his own world of ideas, something that separate him from others. He is very big-hearted; by means of this generosity he shows his contempt for the material things. As the story develops this character seem to be lost. As a result of all the problems he has, most of the times he is drunk. He starts to reject his family and a sense of loneliness appears in the novel. His father tried to teach him some moral principles and respect for the church and the British Empire. The truth is that the only person in which he finds relief is Leopold Bloom. Molly Bloom Throughout the whole novel it is possible to obtain a clear image of both Bloom and Stephen. The action is developed around them, we know how they behave with other people and also which are their thoughts and feelings thanks to their soliloquies. But the case of Molly is different, we only have an idea and it is that she has been a bad woman because she has been unfaithful to her husband. The information we know comes from the different points of view coming from the remaining characters and situations. Everything seems to change in the last episode of the book which is the one we are focused on. Analyzing her monologue we can find a woman who is very proud of her husband. Due to some circumstances during her marriage she has not received the love she was expecting. So it is at this point when the vision of Molly needs to be reevaluated. In the same way as Bloom, Molly was a Dublin outsider. When she was a child she lived in a military atmosphere in Gibraltar. She grew up surrounded by military men so not so many feminine friends she had. She enjoyed and perfectly knew when men were looking at her. She can be described as a self-aware and perceptive woman maybe as a result of her work as a stage singer. She was very open-minded, she does not accept at all typical roles of women and for so, she also has not problems to speak freely about her husband, feelings or emotions. In the end of the book, she started to accept roles. Molly’s sense of humor together with her memories have provoked in her mind reconciliation with Bloom through vivid recollections. Hugh “Blazes” Boylan A complete picture of this character is presented in the last episode of the book although throughout the novel some other details can be obtained about him. Frequently, he is in Bloom’s thought as he knows that Boylan is more popular than him. He has been described as a crude and superficial man. In “Penelope” we notice that Molly is not so happy with their encounter as she said: “I didn’t like his slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall though I laughed I’m not a horse or an ass”. A Boylan’s feature which is best known is that he is good in bed. In the book Molly graphically remembers his energy and enthusiasm and thinks that he had at least four or five orgasms. From this the reader may think that Boylan is a sexually excited and selfish character; he is very happy visiting Molly and he does not think about the pain he is probably causing. This character is based on two Joyce’s friends. They were Cosgrave and Oliver St. John Gogarty and he did not trust in them. The first one made Joyce feel jealous because he told him that at the very beginning of this relationship with Nora, he also was seeing her. Joyce would have never sympathized with this kind of character. Boylan’s points of view are conspicuous because of its absence in the novel. This is one of the cases in which Joyce’s lesson can be used against him. Certainly, the information that the novel provides us about Boylan is not sufficient to know how he really was. Molly’s monologue in “Penelope” This part is going to deal with an analysis of the last chapter of the magnificent work of James Joyce's Ulysses. Ms. Bloom’s soliloquy takes place at two to three in the morning after having his husband gone to bed. The soliloquy is made up by eight long sentences of Molly’s mind in which she is not morally inhibited in her erotic obsession which is also alternated with some domestic and laundry issues. In her is still present the visit of Boylan the promoter and his promise to return again one day. Bloom is not bad and is in that precise moment where Molly’s language acquires a poetic tension never seen before. Molly is symbolized as the Mother Earth; she is an adulterous in his body but not in her thinking. Her thinking enters in the realm of suspicion; she cannot stop thinking about Leopold because of her uneasy jealousy. She acts by temperament while Bloom is irrational. In Ulysses we can see two different images of Joyce which are joined. They are united in the field of awareness and acceptance of language. The book’s value resides in the voices with which the vulgar world is expressed. There is a voice among them that dominates the other ones. The inside word is derived from his mind in his inevitable linguistic fluency which is currently known as “stream of consciousness” but Joyce preferred to named it as “inner word”. The character of Penelope became through all times the symbol of female fidelity. Skillfully, she kept her suitors at a considerable distance and waited twenty years for the arrival of Ulysses. Furthermore, Molly is the opposite figure. Her life is marked by a succession of lovers that sometimes come to occupy the bed. The chapter begins and ends with the affirmation “yes”. It is a yes that expresses all the affirmative force of a woman who wants and loves with her whole being. Molly is the most complex character. She was born in Gibraltar. Her father was Irish and her mother Jewish and also Spanish. She is an inclusive picture of reality, mixing both races and religion. Tender and tough, loving and distant is the woman that wants to be loved and who needs to be also understood. The amount of lovers that Bloom ascribed only exists in their imagination. Her comparison with Penelope has to be admitted in its mythical sense, she only loved Leopold Bloom. She is present in nearly every chapter of the book. Character’s thoughts interrupt in the middle of the conversation while listening and talking. The monologue is of resigned style and there are Molly’s inner words. The interesting thing about the book is that each part of Ulysses includes the mind, body, psychological adventure and nature elements. In the last episode Penelope awakes at three in the morning because of the return of her husband. Eight sentences of five thousand words that unfold one similar rotational Earth movement in space in the last picture of Bloom’s character that we have. Bloom is again young in the memory of his wife. It is how a woman receives the man who is lying down on her side. It is the return of the man to the cozy bosom of the earth rotating and it is the woman with her appetites, her sexuality, and fertility. The cause of the extraordinary length of the book in relation to the short period of time that underlies the story is due to the continued use of what has been called the "stream of consciousness" in which the author offers all that parades through the mind of the central character regardless of the logical coherence logic of the transcript. This, together with various formal devices, the lack of punctuation in many pages, the use of dreams and sexual subconscious, the audacity of certain scenes, an orgy in a brothel at the end of the work and a lot of things more caused a literary and moral to the more high praise from critics objected . The mainstream audience is just interested in the work but his influence on the subsequent novel technique has been considerable due to the originality of the technical resources used to their psychological strengths and poetic suggestion many times. Without doubt, one of the most famous parts of Ulysses is the very extensive end monologue summit Molly Boom. It is an example of the stream of consciousness technique in which through an uninterrupted flow without punctuation or typographic differentiations. The thoughts and impressions of a woman lying in the rush emerge mixing present and past associations. Narrative techniques: use of the “stream of consciousness” It is a narrative technique in which the author tells his thoughts and feelings. The author expresses his individual point of view using a character as a manner of expression. It can be represented by an interior monologue or by the own actions of the character. The speaker usually uses a soliloquy or a dramatic monologue addressed to the audience or the reader in which he analyses these thoughts. Evidently, this manner of expression is fictional. There are many examples of this technique throughout Ulysses. The last chapter, “Penelope” has a lot of examples. One of them is the following extract where can be found a monologue of the character: “ a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose they’re just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus they’ve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office of the alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze of 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get up early..” (1922, rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986, p.642) It is a new way of capturing character’s inner thoughts. By using the interior monologue Joyce wants the reader to pay more attention to these words. It is important to say that Joyce did not only use this resource. He assimilated different styles from the books he read when he was young. The novel is written in many different literary styles so it is easy to recognize some of them in Ulysses as it is going to be shown. In the episode number seven called Aeolus James uses newspaper headlines for the speech-stream. In the episode called Cyclops, he criticizes thirty three writing styles using one character for each one, and resorts the technique of use of the stream of consciousness with monologues for his purpose. In the episode thirteen, Nausicaa is used to satirize about young girls’ love literature. Circe, in the episode number fifteen, is employed to use the play style through surrealist dreamscapes of Bloom and Stephen. Joyce even deals with a review of the evolution of the English language from Latin verse to contemporary Dublin slang. He did it moving from one style to another as can be seen in the episode of Oxen of the Sun, which is the number fourteen. In the case of the episode of Ithaca, he used the technique of catechism. It is said that this episode is one of his favorites. There he employs a set of questions and answers between Bloom and Stephen in order to continue the story and show more information about the character’s thoughts and anxieties. “What you say is absolutely inseparable from how you say it” Thanks to this affirmation it is possible to know that apart from the writing style Joyce uses in his representations, he also uses a different vocabulary depending on the scene or action he is trying to express. When Joyce is not parodying other writing styles, he wants to bring the character’s moment to the audience. An example would be one that appears in “Eumaeus”. In this case the characters that appear are tired so, for this reason, Joyce will do the prose bored and simple. Another example is found in “Nausicaa”. If Bloom is having an orgasm Joyce tries to make the words themselves come to a climax. Bloom wanders about Dublin and is also hungry and tired. As a cloud comes across the sky, he begins to think of the Dead Sea and falls into the depths of depression. His words become despairing, trying to build complete sentences but more and more sparsely and fragmented. The role of Dublin in the book In the book Dublin is presented as a big metropolis full of life. It has a harbor, museums, libraries, university etc; the novel gives a lot of details that allow us to know how the city really is. A lot of these details can be found in the chapters seven and ten. The physical approach that Joyce uses allows us to understand its inhabitant’s life, common activities and also their daily work. This sometimes causes disadvantages in the development of some characters. The progression of some characters is relentless by descriptions and names of streets. The author wanted to transmit the reader which was the real life in the city, not the rural one. Joyce’s representation of the city is kind of contradictory because he defines it as an urban jungle but at the same time as a small town. As nowadays also occurs, this type of town is a place where information and news fly fast, mouth by mouth. Ulysses parallelism with the Odissey As it has already been explained, what Joyce tried to represent when writing the book was the heroism but adapted the new and modern society. He was in love with classic and traditional literature but, at the same time, he as a modern man wanted to represent the society in which he was living. He represented the changes that were happening using a hero which was rather different from the ones until the moment. The old heroes were said to be classic, powerful and conquerors. The action which takes place during a whole day represents Odysseus’ travels made before arriving to Ithaca where his housewife, house and wife were the mother earth, that is to say, the ones that welcome the tired sailor that has travelled all around the world and has suffered a lot before getting his reward. The title’s names given to each episode have a kind of relationship with what is related in them. The truth is that, these names were given with finality. It was to organize the apparent chaos of the book. By means of this, Joyce wanted to give light to the obscurity provoked by the mixture of ideas and feelings. The symbolism and imaginery present in the book It seems that colors in the novel are very important. While some characters are dressed in black clothes like Bloom and Stephen, some others dress brightness ones. Joyce plays with colors in order to represent the false wealthy and bad feelings, that is, Deasy’s anti-semitic feelings and the pride of Boyle. On the contrary, Joyce tries to represent with the dark clothes different associations like Jewishness, anarchy and wanderer sensations. The East is another symbol inside the novel. For Bloom the East represents a better earth, exoticism, the promised paradise and so on where hopes can be realized. Concerning home there is another symbol which is the usurped home. In the same manner as Odysseus found a lot of rivals when he returned home, Bloom will observe Boyle’s action in his house when he was out. Stephen is the one that pays the rent for the Martello tower where together with Buck and Haines stays. Buck’s demand of the house key is thus a usurpation of Stephen’s household rights, and Stephen recognizes this and refuses to return to the tower. Stephen mentally dramatizes this usurpation as a replay of Claudius’ usurpation of Gertrude and the throne in Hamlet. Finally, the Gold Cup Horserace is another symbol in the book. It appears when Bloom bets for the dark horse called Throwaway, and Boylan and Lenehan bet for the horse called Sceptre which is a phallic name. The dark horse is the winner something which represents the victory of Bloom in Molly’s hearts and feelings. Conclusion Ulysses has received a lot of critics from different personalities either because of its audacity for the age in which it was written or because it is too much difficult to understand. If there is something clear is that James Joyce achieved what he wanted. It is a complex story, full of criticism in which no one can remain outside. You can either love it or hate it but never show indifference to it. The author expresses in a sensational way his reflections upon characters although for some readers it is a difficult reading. Nevertheless, this is maybe one of the reasons why this book has not achieved the expected success in the world of literature. The truth is that this problem has made this book even more known. 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