20/11/12 Ulysses: Chapter One

[Mr. Hendrick]

Ulysses Chapter 1. 

Ulysses Full text.

Task: Read through this summary and analysis of chapter 1.   

(Press file then make a copy and use comment to add new words/analytical phrases.)

[Mr. Hendrick]

Task: Pick out three sentences from chapter one and comment on them:

eg. "And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own?" 

I think Joyce asks a profound question here about death and loss. 

[Michael Calvey]

He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. 

This is a crazy statement by joyce, perhaps he is trying to tell us how dedalus is a thinker and uses rational knowledge to solve a problem

[maxwels]

"Buck Mulligan sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near the spur of rock a blowing red face"

two completely random sentences with two completely different stories.

[zoe weingarten]

Looking for something lost in a past life.

I think this means that we're always searching for thinks that we can't have anymore

[Lewis Symonds]

He thinks your not a Gentleman

Look at yourself

Look at the sea. What does it care about offences

[Mr. Hendrick]

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."  

There is a sense of guilt here but also perhaps the sense that he is trapped within the parameters of time.  

[jack ingall]

"A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. "

Everything comes from somewhere, also the idea of young and old.

[Chibi Auerbach]

"...his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos." 

Joyce is alluding to "Chrysostom", the bishop of Constantinople, who's name means "golden mouth" in Greek. He uses "Chrysostomos" as an adjective or a simile even, to describe the persona's physical appearance. 

[Jessica Gadd]

"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

—Introibo ad altare Dei."

 Joyce takes something so minimal and almost turns it into a ritual, rituals are often accompanied by a meaningful phrase which is displayed as he says 'go towards the altar of God' in latin. 

[maxwels]

To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause

every one is linked together

[Jonny Laxton]

"A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in deeper green."

This may signify how things are going to worsen as the day goes on?

[Georgie Hockenhull]

Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart.

- They are trying to display that there are different types of pain to be felt, pain can have nothing to do with love - but then what is this pain about and how does it hurt his heart?

[novisc]

 'Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.'

This sentence is sheer brilliance. Joyce writes about Leopold in an epic and overly exaggerated way, and somehow he is able to make the most simple of things a marvel to read.

[Matthew Bailey]

"You wouldn't kneel down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. " I think that Joyce is trying to convey the meaning of shock and grief for Buck Mulligan because he can't remember anything about his mother dying and when she needed him most, he wasn't there.

[Michael Calvey]

"On the steps of the Paris stock exchange"

Joyce suddenly switches the location to paris describing a flock of geese.

It is a completely odd paragraph, without a reason and seemingly out of context.

[Harry Verden]

Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed

love Joyce's way in which he describes the shadows

[Jonny Laxton]

"Is it French you are talking, sir?"

The women replies to his talking, asking what language he is speaking, which shows how complicated it is.

[Gabriella Farah]

"Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart."

A mother always loves her children no matter what.

[Jessica Gadd]

"The same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same."

Daedalus seems to be searching for wisdom, he seems emotionless as he thinks that in one room, in one hour he has gained nothing, and changed in no way. He is the same as he was before. His lack of emotion implies that he may be dissatisfied with the way he is now.

[Georgie Hockenhull]

woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the serpent's prey.

This sentence has misogynistic tendencies, the Biblical reference to women being weaker than men, and ultimately being the downfall of the human race, Stephen shares these misogynistic tendencies with those of Hamlet and may be the first of many parallels between the two characters. 

[Matthew Bailey]

"Fergus' song: I sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords." - This creates the continuous idea of grief and sadness in this passage.

[Eliza Cudmore]

'Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.'

A contradiction in itself, this is showing a stream of consciousness, how his mind is conflicting, as if there are people arguing inside him.   

[Harry Verden]

Her glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul

i think Joyce is suggesting that this ghost is going to haunt someone but i love the way he indicates this

[Alexandra Russell]

"Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart."

In this phrase, Joyce interrogates the validity and stimuli of human emotion.

"The ghostcandle to light her agony."

Joyce underpins the disguise given to agony - we suppress such an emotion and occurrence in the hope that we may continue with the regular course of our lives.

"Thought is the thought of thought."

Joyce clearly alludes to philosophical questions here: if thought is the though of thought, what is thought in the first place?

[novisc]

One of the most beautiful sentences I've ever read, and it is written about things I find disgusting