The Use of Creative Language in James Joyce's 'Ulysses'

The Creative Use of Language in James Joyce’s Ulysses.

Liam Loftus 9924612

Mary Immaculate College

University of Limerick

Dr. Gerry Dukes

External Examiner: Prof. Kevin Barry

Submitted to Mary Immaculate College: 24th February 2003

The creative use of language in James Joyce’s Ulysses

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Contents

I chose the novel “Ulysses” for my project because I wanted to research something

challenging and engaging. I was interested in the area of language and decided to apply

it to aspects of “Ulysses” focusing on three characters because of their prominence in

the novel and their interior monologues. I was able to do my research during my third

year while studying abroad at college. I gathered books and essays of various criticism

on “Ulysses” and compiled my bibliography with those books I found relevant to my

argument.

In this project I intended to examine the importance of communication and speech

between human beings, both spoken and unspoken. I was interested in the three styles of

interior monologue representing three unique individual characters, and also the

experimentation Joyce tries with modern forms of communication.


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In interior monologue, “every word is directed towards an answer, anticipates words

that have yet to be spoken or uttered, by oneself as well as by others.” (Wales 1992, 81)

The use of language in “Ulysses” anticipates the unknown, because all speech is

directed towards a future answer.

As soon as I open my mouth, I am going on faith, asking you to believe me […] asking

you to believe that I am telling you the truth […] whenever what we say lacks full

transparency – we proceed by faith. Testimony is what I give to the other […] on the

other shore, beyond my knowledge and ken. (Caputo 1997, 167)

The communications of characters with one another is a creative and ongoing

construction of identity. With each speech act, an agreement is made between speaker

and listener, and this agreement is an affirmation, that binds them to the future. The

answer to each question and the response to each communication can only be proven in

the future.

The streams of consciousness in “Ulysses” show the contrasts in the thought

processes of both Stephen and Bloom, as Stephen’s consciousness tends towards the

metaphoric; the language style of poetry, and Bloom’s thoughts tend towards the

metonymic pole. The structure of “Ulysses” is metaphorical, which is based on

similarity and substitution, which results in the deliberate exploitation of metonymy.

The superimposition of these parallels by the characters on their surroundings allows

them to create their own world through language. Leopold Bloom’s consciousness is

rendered through metonymic writing, and although it is more common to prose

literature, it is no less modern than the metaphoric rendering of Stephen’s

consciousness. Both styles of thought demand the participation of the reader to see the

significance of the juxtaposed ideas and causal links, since both styles exist on a pre-

speech level.

The first experience the audience has of Stephen Dedalus’ thoughts in


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“Ulysses” coincides with the physical act of self-scrutiny in the mirror. From the very

beginning the distinction is blurred between the objective narrator and the subjective

thoughts of Stephen, as the narration of the action closely follows the details within

Stephen’s gaze. His physical appearance leads him to the philosophical question of the

nature of his existence, and to how he is physically perceived by others. His first inner

thoughts are shown to the reader at a moment when Stephen is most aware of his

perception to others. In this Lacanian moment of mirror identity;

Stephen bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him cleft by a crooked crack.

Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid

vermin. It asks me too. (Joyce 1992, 5)

Stephen’s thoughts work on a level of visual impressions and similarities, in which he

uses language to define his own identity.

In the ‘Calypso’ episode, the reader immediately enters into the inner thoughts

of Leopold Bloom’s mind.

Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast

things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle

summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish […] another slice of bread

and butter: three, four: right. She didn’t like her plate full. Right. (Joyce 1992, 65)

The use of the words “her” and “the” suggest a subjective perspective of the character

of Bloom who is familiar with his surroundings and the context within which he is

thinking. Bloom’s thoughts run in free indirect thought, which is determined by external

events and actions.

After one. Timeball on the ballast office is down. Dunsink time. Fascinating little book

that is of sir Robert Ball’s. Parallax. I never exactly understood. There’s a priest. Could

ask him. (Joyce 1992, 194)

Each character of “Ulysses” has an individual mental frame of reference

originating from a specific cultural background, through which their thoughts move and

access. Stephen’s thoughts are broad with inter-textual references and foreign


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languages. Like everyone else, his mind is full of borrowed words.

A sombre Y. M. C. A. young man, watchful among the warms sweet fumes of Graham

Lemon’s, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr. Bloom […] Elijah is coming […] Elijah

thirtytwo feet per sec is com. (Joyce 1992, 190-2)

Bloom speaks in the advertising language of modern Dublin, as the clichés and slang of

advertising permeate his thoughts. Bloom realises that you “never know whose thoughts

you’re chewing” (Joyce 1992, 217) but despite this, he shows dexterity, inventiveness,

and mental agility in his application and interpretation of these words.

Bloom’s philosophical speculations are more ‘down to earth’ than Stephen’s, literally,

since they arise from his wonder at the world around him. (Wales 1992, 81)

Throughout the ‘Proteus’ episode, Stephen’s thoughts take an abstract form, as his

meditations return to the concept of father and son, which takes the many forms of man

and language, man and God, thoughts and words, artist and art, Stephen and Bloom.

Father and Son are consubstantial […] contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred

heresiarch. (Joyce 1992, 47)

The concept of ‘creator and creation’ works through the binary oppositions underlying

language. Both are created from the same substance, and therefore become partners in

their own creation. Father and son originate from blood, artist and art derive from

language, and man and god come from the imagination. The son becomes the Word or

the creative tool used by the father to achieve immortality through art

Each character has a mental frame of reference; therefore, in contrast to the

literary vocabulary of Stephen and the advertising language of Bloom, Molly’s

vocabulary is words of ‘appearance’, ‘body parts’, and ‘fashion’. The range of her

sphere determines her vocabulary and therefore determines her thoughts. For example,

in her recollections of Howth Head, her emphasis is on “the grey tweed suit and his

straw hat the day I got him to propose to me”. Her thoughts on the day Bloom proposed


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her to marriage is very different from Bloom’s memories. Molly thinks about the details

of time and place “and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago God after that long

kiss I near lost my breath yes […] he kissed me under the Moorish wall” (Joyce 1992, 931-3)

The measured, pre-directed and educated thoughts of Stephen Dedalus and

Leopold Bloom are contrasted with the smoother, flowing unpunctuated thoughts of the

mind of Molly Bloom. The unbroken monologue makes the reader feel that Molly has

had little formal education. Likewise her vocabulary is realistic to the vocabulary of

women of her time. She prefers however to use simplified sentence structures.

The use of intensifiers by women as part of their fondness for hyperbole; men preferring

litotes […] related to the image of women as being passionate and emotional, men being

more reserved and rational. (Wales 1992, 96)

There is an opposition in language between overstatement and understatement,

passion and restraint; however, Molly does not conform to the traditional stereotypes of

women. She is complex and full of contradictions. Her lexis and vocabulary is limited

because of her confinement to the domestic sphere. Molly thinks with the vocabulary

available to a woman of her time, those of ‘appearance’ and ‘the body’.

the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit

and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of

seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago God after that

long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes we are

flowers all a womans body […] yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I

thought well as well him as another (Joyce 1992, 931-3)

The novel of “Ulysses” opens with the intellectual and cultured frames of reference of

Stephen but ends with the less sophisticated, but maturer, thoughts of Molly. As

Stephen walks along the shore of the sea, his language is the poetic language of shifting

metaphors, whereas Molly’s language is the language of the earth; it is grounded and

life affirming.

and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to

say yes […] and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. (Joyce 1992,


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931-3)

With the word “yes’ punctuating her thoughts Molly appears to answer her own

questions. The “yes” serves to affirm her questions. Bloom recalls Howth in the

‘Lestrygonians’ episode when he is reminded of the memory by the taste of wine. His

memory of the day dwells on his remembrance of touch and taste.

Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered.

Hidden under wild ferns on Howth […] Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me,

caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips open,

kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and

chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweet and sour with spittle. Joy: I ate

it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm, sticky gumjelly lips.

Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat. Noone.

(Joyce 1992, 223-4)

Bloom’s sentences are more completely formed and grounded in the senses than Molly.

Molly’s sentences are long and flowing, dwelling on the excitement and emotion of the

moment, actively involved with the memories, transcending space and time.

Molly’s long, unpunctuated sentences quicken the reading pace, creating the

effect of rapid, flowing, thoughts. Short sentences and punctuation makes the reader

pause while they read, and suggests the characters’ premeditated or awkward thought.

Short sentences can also imply to the reader, the ‘mind-style’ of Blooms thoughts,

which are rational, direct, and conscious. In the ‘Hades’ episode his sentences are short

and abrupt, and the other characters constantly interrupt him. Bloom is alienated from

the other characters of Dublin; however, there is an absence of anger, as he gives no

voice to his thoughts on the men’s actions. He represses these feelings into his general

insecurity with his sexuality, which results in an apparent lack of reaction, voiced within

his direct consciousness. Throughout the day Bloom allows himself to think the

unthinkable, as his thoughts allude to a threat that is never overtly named; Blazes

Boylan.


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POST NO BILLS. POST 110 PILLS. Some chap with a dose burning him. If he … O! Eh?

No … No.

No, no. I don’t believe it. He wouldn’t surely?

No, no.

Mr. Bloom moved forward raising his troubled eyes. Think no more about it.

After one. (Joyce 1992, 194)

His thoughts are left unfinished as the words fail him. Bloom attempts to repress his

unspeakable fears. He is very distraught by the sudden realisation, that Blazes Boylan

might infect Molly. He desires to repress these thoughts into ‘inconceivable’ words,

which are highlighted by the ellipses.

As a narrative mode for “Ulysses”, the interior monologue is often difficult to

distinguish because of the omission of quotation marks. The use of the term “I” suggests

the direct thoughts of the character as a first-person narrator, however, Joyce exploits

the natural redundancy of first person pronoun-subject to create a flow of thought in a

‘shorthand’ effect.

The narrative style in Ulysses is “the ‘imitative’ or ‘symbolic’ style, which attempts to

suggest inchoate thought-processes, the flow of thoughts, abrupt topic shifts, random

associations […] since thought is not only verbal but non-verbal, such a style must

inevitably be ‘symbolic’ in its attempt to suggest the chains of visual images and

memories, as well as other mental stimuli such as sensations, feeling. (Wales 1992, 72-3)

The character’s thoughts must be verbalized and the physical and temporal actions that

occur around the character must be realistic to their thoughts. The sudden change from

action to thought disrupts the flow of the text for the reader, and challenges them to

decipher the inferred meaning for themselves. They become active in the creation of

meaning and are engaged in the text.

The ‘Proteus’ episode of “Ulysses” takes place along the shore and is concerned

with the nature of language. The action is given form through Stephen’s stream of

consciousness, which reflects the fluid flow of his thoughts. Stephen begins the process

of composing his poem through his interior monologue, therefore, he is thinking in


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poetic metaphors. His thoughts work in a process of free association, and his inner flow

parallels the outer flow of the tides and the shifting of the sands. Just as the drowned

man is turned and re-circulated in the vast moving sea, so Stephen’s thoughts are

transformed in the sea of shifting language and metaphors. In this section, deceptive

external appearances parallel the instability, flux, and change of the internal, reinforcing

the ebb and flow of the tide.

Sound-play highlights Stephen’s acute perceptions as he walks along the strand,

‘speaking’ the language of his surroundings. He tries to capture its sounds as well as the

things he sees.

His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets,

globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayawayaway. (Joyce 1993, 60).

The sound of the sea takes form through poetry and is evoked through sound and

symbol. Stephen uses the rhythm, alliteration, and assonance to capture the sounds of

the sea:

Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss,ooos. Vehement breath of

waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops: flop, slop, slap:

bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing,

floating, foampool, flower unfurling. (Joyce 1992, 62).

The characters of “Ulysses” often revert to the expressive function of language to

accurately give a direct expression of their attitudes. At moments of pure emotion, the

characters thoughts create words of interjection that fulfil a syntactic role through their

sound patterns. For example, in the ‘Calypso’ episode, when Bloom attempts to mimic

the sounds of a cat, with “Mrkrgnao!” and “Gurrhr!” Joyce uses “letter-combinations to

suggest the presence of a noise through the absence of lexic sense rather than […]

through onomatopoeic means.” (Burgess 1973, 22)

The syntax of language is important to the development and reinterpretation of


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language throughout “Ulysses”. The order of the words within the sentence is important

to the making of meaning, and shows that meaning resides in form and order as well as

in the differences between the words themselves. Sentences can be interpreted

differently according to their forms and structure as well as the words, which they

contain.

“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.” (Joyce 1993, 65)

By reordering sentences, Joyce highlights that despite the syntactical rules of language,

words are interchangeable within the structure of a sentence. The words remain

unchanged, but the order in which they are rearranged changes the meaning of the

sentence.

Grossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince’s stores and bumped

them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled

by grossbooted draymen out of Prince’s stores. (Joyce 1992, 148)

Syntax is also used in internal monologues to create the simulation of the flow of free

thought. “Phosphorous it must be done with.” (Joyce 1992, 190) and “That book I must

change for her.” (Joyce 1992, 113) Bloom has no time to reorder his rapid thoughts into a

more coherent syntax.

Like Stephen, Bloom can also give speech to the inanimate. It is not always

easy to determine if the noises ascribed to the objects are direct recordings in

onomatopoeic forms, or if these noises are transformed through the subjective

consciousness of the characters. For example the mechanical noises of the machines in

the journalism offices in ‘Aeolus’:

Sllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forwards […] almost human the

way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak. That door too sllt creaking,

asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt. (Joyce 1992, 154)

In ‘Lestrygonians’, Bloom’s thoughts show his ability to experiment with sound, but in

an entirely different but no less effective way from Stephen. Bloom is hungry. The


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alliteration, assonance and apophony suggest both the noise of the eaters as it impinges

on Bloom’s consciousness, and also his own disgust at the sight before him.

Perched on high barstools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more

bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping

wetted moustaches […] shovelling gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back

on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: no teeth to chewchewchew it […] scoffing up

stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread […] Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff. (Joyce 1992, 216)

Throughout “Ulysses”, Bloom’s interior monologue appears to present more

premeditated thoughts, represented by the short phrases and his thoughts appear to be

more interactive and responsive to the action that takes place around him.

The entire activity is filtered through Bloom’s consciousness […] he doesn’t glimpse it

[…] he takes it all in and puts words on it […] Bloom sniffs with his mind. (Kennelly

1994, 228)

Unlike Stephen and Bloom whose rambling thoughts accompany their own

physical wanderings, Molly’s monologue in the ‘Penelope’ episode of “Ulysses” is

uninterrupted by external action. Her monologue is distinctly different from the male

inner voices that preceded her.

yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as

another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would

I yes to say yes […] and his heart was going like mad (Joyce 1992, 933)

The form of her thoughts is unpunctuated, joined together by the words “yes” and

“because”. These words maintain an appearance of logic, repetition, and causality

through the sentences, which are long and well formed. The lack of punctuation also

implies to the reader a realistic mind of Molly at a time when education was not

emphasised for women. Despite her limited dexterity with words, she displays sharp

perceptions and a mental agility that is equal to any man in thought.

Throughout “Ulysses”, Joyce is interested in the modern forms of

communication, as there is a keen interest in the working of modern urban

communication. In ‘Aeolus’ Bloom is surrounded by the publishing world of the


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journalist offices. Through advances in modern technology, new methods of

communication allow for formal changes in the creation of meaning, and new ways of

assimilating and consuming these forms. For example, Bloom thinks about the

potentials presented by the gramophone:

Besides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk voice. Well, the voice, yes:

gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house. After dinner on

a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather Kraahraark! Hellohellohello

amawfaullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeragain hellohello amarawf kopthsth. Remind

you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face. (Joyce 1992, 144)

However, Bloom also realises the possibility that the gramophone could become

nothing more than a mechanical repetition of language. The gramophone mimics the

speech in mechanical double and “perfectly reproduces the living voice on the surface

of a phonograph record […] in the absence of any living intentional presence.” (Caputo

1997, 188) We can no longer tell whether the body in the grave is living or dead because

what they say never changes. By listening only to the words of the past, there is the

danger that language will create a paralysis, in which we prefer to look only to the

words of the dead, without reinterpreting something new. Speech becomes a mimetic

repetition in which the ingenuity and authenticity of what is being said, loses its

meaning. The language of “Ulysses” is concerned with the constant need to re-

inaugurate language; for acts of speech to be moments, that do not come from any

received or known order of knowledge, but from something utterly new. For this reason,

all speech is the sole responsibility of the creative speaker.

Stephen is concerned with the shifting and changing of identity through a

language, which is dynamic and creative. ‘Proteus’ opens with Stephen, thinking about

the various different forms of language. There is “thought through the eyes”, in which

seeing becomes knowing and in which all that is visible bears signatures to signify their


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meaning. “Shut you eyes and see. Stephen closed his eyes to hear his boots crush

crackling wrack and shells.”(Joyce 1992, 45) The repeated use of “see” and “eyes” draw

the readers’ attentions to the fact that we are “here to read” the language of our

surroundings.

Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through the eyes.

Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that

rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he

adds: in bodies. (Joyce 1992, 45)

Stephen sees all language as a medium through which readers are free to interpret.

In ‘Proteus’ he attempts to solidify the flux of his subconscious impressions

through the form of words and the systems of language. Stephen’s interior monologue

begins with the philosophy lying behind his meditations. He is aware that philosophy

and art are both needed for the complete expression of his thought, and he meditates on

the idea of a manifested reality, which is seen in the “form of forms”. The idea that

reality consists of temporary forms, and that these forms are both visible and audible.

Language is an ever-changing, shared system of communication through which

identity can be created and reformed. Joyce intended Stephen to be “a shape which

cannot be changed”, whereas Bloom is an ever-changing man. He is a complete man,

but he is also a Jewish ‘outsider’ in Dublin city. “They have no mercy on that here.”

(Joyce 1992, 120) He is eager to be accepted by the community and is willing to change

his identity. In ‘Hades’ Bloom tells a joke about a Jewish moneylender to narrate

himself into the group.

– We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly. His eyes met Mr Bloom’s

eyes. He caressed his beard, adding: – Well, nearly all of us. Mr Bloom began to speak

with sudden eagerness to his companions’ faces. – That’s an awfully good one that’s

going the rounds about Reuben J. and the son. (Joyce 1992, 117)

Reuben J. is Jewish like Bloom, but in retelling the joke about the Jew, Bloom hopes to

ease the tension of being the ‘other’ within the group and to be accepted. The others are


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unwilling to accept Bloom and constantly interrupt him and stop him mid-sentence.

However, Bloom does not appear to express anger at the dominance of the other men.

His thoughts do not linger on the problem of his difference and passivity within the

group.

The absence of powerful emotive expression can actually be taken as a ‘presence’ for

the reader: a symbol of meaningful silence. In Freudian terms, absence is a symbol of

the ‘censor’ of the unconscious working to repress the painful or undesireable, the

literally ‘unthinkable’ and ‘unspeakable’. (Wales 1992, 83)

The language that Bloom speaks aloud is nervous and short, echoing his

outsider status and his lack of freedom in his language. He realises that he must speak

the language of Dublin. There is a tension and growth between his individual

conscience and the public language. Language is a shared system within a community

through which a shared identity can exist. There is a struggle for form and individual

consciousness and a demand of public languages.

Throughout ‘Proteus’ section Stephen speaks many different languages which

foregrounds the nature of the medium of literature and shows his shifting identity as he

walks along the sea of unconsciousness.

il est irlandais. Hollandais? Non fromage. Deux irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous savez? Ah

oui! She thought you wanted a cheese hollandais. (Joyce 1992, 53)

‘Proteus’ is also filled with inter-textual allusions, as Stephen refers to the great

literature that has gone before him. Stephen has not yet developed his identity and shifts

through the voices of others to express his own voice. Throughout his thoughts he

alludes to works of literature, such as, “Gulliver’s Travels” and “Hamlet”:

Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled […] I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered,

hearing Elsinore’s tempting flood. (Joyce 1992, 49+55)

Stephen also refers to Verdis Opera and the poetry of W.B. Yeats, which is part of his

individual frame of reference:


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All’erta! He drones bars of Ferrando’s aria de sortita. The grandest number, Stephen, in

the whole opera […] No more turn aside and brood. (Joyce 1992, 48+62)

Through fragments of literature, Stephen is given a deeper insight into his

thoughts but he is also able to see his own fragmented nature. From the moment he

looked in the mirror in ‘Telemachus’, Stephen is very aware of how he relates himself

to others. His complex search through the languages of previous generations, for his

own language, echoes his search for identity. Tradition is something that has to be

created and maintained; therefore, you need to work to find connections with yourself

and others. Stephen speaks many languages and constantly shifts through the classical

texts that have gone before him. He is alienated as he walks along the shore alone, and

he fails to realise that he needs to connect with other people in order to form an identity

through language.

Stephen fears to drown at sea before he has left his mark. He is unwilling to join

the generations that went before him, and to be incorporated into the waters of language,

without first defining his own name. “They are coming, waves. The whitemaned

seahorses, clamping, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan.” (Joyce 1992, 47) The

landscape of the shore along which he walks is given new significance and meaning

when it is mediated through his mind. Through his descriptive language, it becomes a

historical wasteland, in which he must journey alone.

A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the gunwhale of a

boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensable, Louis Veuillot called Gautier’s prose. These heavy

sands are language tide and wind have silted here. And there, the stoneheaps of dead

builders. (Joyce 1992, 55)

Stephen’s thoughts on art and language in the ‘Proteus’ section, lead him to

meditate through language on the meaning of words themselves. Stephen walks alone

along the shore, “emptying his heart and mind and soul of the warm friendliness and


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support of family” and seeking instead “the loneliness and mystery and rich potential of

language itself, in the beginning was the Word.” (Kennelly 1994, 221) Through language

the chaotic is ordered, structured and given a beginning. Stephen realises that he exists

first, and only later, through language, does he begin to define himself. Therefore, his

existence precedes his essence. Unlike the unchanging Word however, words are as

shifting as the protean reality they must compose.

In ‘Proteus’, Stephen attempts to speak the lingo of gypsies, and a multitude of

terms to describe the same thing illustrate the variety of words and their inability to be

simple and exact. “Language no whit worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on

their girdles: rogue words.” (Joyce 1992, 59) Words are as inconsistent as Shakespeare’s

“seachange”, or the moon, or woman. “These heavy sands are language tide and wind

have silted here.” (Joyce 1992, 55)

Stephen’s final act of writing the poem is a wordless act, even though

physically, it is his most creative act. The verses that Stephen writes are later recited in

“Ulysses”, but are an inadequate expression of his philosophical thoughts and his flow

of conscious. Protean things, which are disguised in appearances, “clutched at, gone, not

here,” are foremost in Stephen’s meditations.

The poet’s problem is more formidable than God’s; for God is the unmoved mover and

is static like art itself, while the poet is as kinetic and fluid as the flux he tries to make

static with fluid tools. (Tindall 1963, 146)

Throughout the episode he is confronted with pretenders and tricksters. Likewise, he is

unable to seize his own fluid identity, as he identifies with Jesus, Lucifer, Hamlet,

Shakespeare, and Swift, and his own father as well. What proves him really protean is

his words and his external nature.

Language is an inadequate expression of the artist’s inner self, therefore, it can


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only function as an index for the individual, through which, they attempt imbue their

surroundings with meaning, and to give voice to the silent speech. Language brings

together the individual’s thoughts and emotions, mirroring them perfectly through the

form of poetic prose. It is not individual consciousness that shapes our view of reality,

but an inherited system of language. However it is not a fixed and unchanging system of

words, but a fluid and protean means of expression. Language has existed long before

we were born and each human being uses language to create their individual identity.

When Stephen sees the midwife Mrs. McCabe in the ‘Proteus’ episode, he

begins to think about the concept of “creation from nothing”, as his internal monologue

begins to work through metaphoric associations, like “cable of all flesh”, whereas his

interior monologue proceeds by perceiving similarities and by making substitutions.

The analogy between a telephone cable and the umbilical cord leads Stephen’s thoughts

from midwife to Genesis, from his particular birth to the universal birth of mankind. He

sees other similarities to the umbilical cord, such as the cords around the habits of

monks as symbols of their chastity and refusal to procreate and the identity of

individuals read by oriental mystics through their navels. He is lead to think about the

origins of language, and that language is a means through which human beings can

define ourselves. His identity is received through his navel:

Creation from nothing […] the cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh.

That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos. Hello. Kinch

here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one. (Joyce 1992, 46)

The need of expression comes before the concept, and that language divides both the

planes of thought and sound, which limits our thinking. He imagines that the birth of

language came with the creation of man.

Whereas Stephen thinks in free association in the midwife scene in ‘Proteus’,


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there is another form of the stream of consciousness in the ‘Calypso’ episode of

“Ulysses”, in which Bloom sees the girl in the butchers.

Her hand. Chapped: washing soda […] his eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his

name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish. New blood. No followers allowed.

Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack it, by

George. The way her crooked skirt swings at each whack […] The crooked skirt

swinging whack by whack by whack. (Joyce 1992, 70-1)

Bloom’s thoughts of the girl are synecdochic in nature, as he defines her in language

through her hands, arms, hips, and skirt: parts standing for the whole – metonymic. His

thought proceeds by associating items that are contiguous rather than similar: the girl is

linked with her master, master to mistress, mistress age to girl’s youth, and so on.

The ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with blotchy fingers,

sausagepink. Sound meat there like a stallfed heifer. (Joyce 1992, 70).

The metaphor Bloom makes between the “ferreteyed” butcher and the sausages he

handles is weak “sausagepink” because it depends on the physical context and

contiguity. The two terms of comparison are not widely separated and therefore

Bloom’s use of metaphor is weak. Likewise, when Bloom compares the girl’s thighs to

“moving hams” his subconscious is still impacted by the butchers, as he thinks through

simple word association.

Through fore grounding the subconscious, Joyce pushes the omniscient narrator

into the background, and presents the reader with a language that is mediated through

the characters’ subjectivity. In “Ulysses” the reader’s interest is centred on “the inner

thought-processes of a character, through whose eyes and thoughts external reality is

largely mediated, and within the time-span of a single day.” (Wales 1992, 72) The

‘stream of consciousness’ is seen in the flow of Molly’s thoughts at the end of

“Ulysses”, whereas for Stephen in ‘Proteus’, his thoughts and the language he uses are

far more poetical than that of Bloom as he is closer to a traditional narrator or poet-


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speaker in his style. The modernist text deliberately highlighted the mediation of

language through the writer. The readers become the makers of meaning through their

interpretations.

Self-reflexivity allows Joyce to foreground the novel as a mediation of language

and not a passive reflection of reality but an active shifting ever-changing creator of the

flux surrounding it.

Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I? He stood suddenly, his feet

beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil. Turn back. Turning, he scanned the shore

south, his feet sinking again slowly in new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower

waits. Through the barbicans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet

are sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor […] he lifted his feet up from the suck

and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take all, keep all. My soul walks with me,

form of forms. (Joyce 1992, 55)

Throughout the ‘Proteus’ episode, Stephen attempts to recreate a subjective impression

of the world around him, by emphasising the mediation of the language, through his

verbal, eloquent, and poetical style. The episode concludes with an omniscient narrator,

reporting the simple, external, details of the picture in a plain and apparently

unmediated style. The readers are aware that they have left the inner thoughts of

Stephen’s mind, and are now merely the observers of a silent ship, and of surroundings

that ‘speak without voice’.

The “silent ship”, and the action of picking his nose, are external actions seen

by an omniscient narrator but not given voice through Stephen’s internal thoughts. The

silent image of the ship has limitless interpretations in its ambiguity.

Moving through the air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the

crosstrees, homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship. (Joyce 1992, 64)

The silent ship is crossing without words. Stephen fears drowning, and it is important

that this episode, which concentrates on the nature of language and words, ends without

any speech and outside the thoughts of Stephen. The narrator ends with a description of


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a silent action. “We must speak by the card or equivocation will undo us.” (Hamlet Act5

Scene 1 Ln133) In silent seas, if we speak we drown. Language is empty and never exact.

We can never say just what we mean – language defines us as human. If we try and

speak we fragment our identity.

and then he asked me would I yes to say yes […] and his heart was going like mad and

yes I said yes I will Yes. (Joyce 1992, 931-3)

In the ‘Penelope’ episode of “Ulysses” Molly recalls the day at Howth. She

recollects the promise she made of her fidelity to Bloom. She remembers her agreement

of “Yes” and renews her promise with a new recreation of “Yes”. The final “Yes” of

“Ulysses” is capitalised as if it is the signature of the book itself. To say “Yes” is to

accept another person’s interference to your own life. In interior monologue, we can

answer “Yes” to our own questions. “Yes”, taking the form of pure promise becomes

absolutely inaugural. It becomes a starting point, in which:

Nothing precedes the ‘yes’ […] you have to confirm the ‘yes’ by a second ‘yes’ […]

commit myself to confirm my commitment in the next second and then tomorrow, and

then the day after tomorrow […] immediately duplicates itself, doubles itself. (Caputo

1997, 27).

“Yes” keeps in advance the memory of its own beginning. The future determines the

interpretation of the past. “Yes” is an affirmation to the question of another, which can

only be defined and interpreted by the future action that it commits itself to. To lie, to

tell the truth is determined by the future. To say “Yes”, is to allow or acknowledge an

interference of another person to your life your fate and your freewill.

The very notion of ‘divine revelation’ is inscribed in a communications system and

involves the ability to read and translate […] messages, transferences, transportings and

translations, embodied in the elementary technologies (telephones, telegraphs,

gramophones, newspapers) found in “Ulysses” […] embody difference in a way that

today has become determinative of every structure of our world. (Caputo 1997, 187)

Just as Penelope weaves by day und unravels by night, and Molly interweaves her day

in her streams of thought at night.


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It is through the language in “Ulysses” that Joyce succeeds in having meaning

woven into the word “Yes”. “Yes” is organic and repeatable in its ability to reinterpret

and recreate itself as something wholly new and original, as something that embraces

the future and reinterprets the past. The signature of “Ulysses” lies in the language

through which it re-inaugurates itself. Faith is needed by all the characters of “Ulysses”,

to believe the testimony of others, and to communicate with the ‘unknown’ speaker, on

the ‘other’ shore.

“Ulysses” ends with a geographical setting symbolic of the speaker and listener

necessary for communication. With Molly’s recollection of Howth Head, she gazes

across at the other shore, where the novel begins with Stephen’s first thoughts.

Language exists as an agreed system through which belief must be sustained, therefore,

with both characters on either shore, divided by water, each speaker relies on the faith

of the other to believe and trust their testimony. The gap between the two characters is

the gap of meaning in language. That gap through which words travel and meaning is

transferred. To answer “Yes” to the question is to open the present to future

possibilities.

__________________________


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List of References

Bradley, M., (ed.) 1978. Modernism. ‘The language of Modernist Fiction: Metaphor and

Metonymy’. Lodge, D. Sussex: The Harvester Press.

Burgess, A., 1973. Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce. Great

Britain: William Clowes & Sons Ltd.

Joyce, J., 1992. Ulysses. London: Penguin Books.

Kennelly, B., 1994. Journey Into Joy. Dublin: Bloodaxe Books Ltd.

Shakespeare, W., 1994. Hamlet. London: Penguin Books.

Tindall, W., 1963. A reader’s Guide to James Joyce. London: Thames and Hudson.

Wales, K., 1992. The Language of James Joyce. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.

Caputo, J., 1997. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida.

New York: Fordham University Press.


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Bibliography

Barrow, C., 1980. Montage in James Joyce’s Ulysses. U.S.A.: Studia Humanitatis.

Burgess, A., 1973. Joysprick: An Introduction to the Language of James Joyce. Great

Britain: William Clowes & Sons Ltd.

Bradley, M., (ed.) 1978. Modernism. Sussex: The Harvester Press.

Caputo, J., 1997. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida.

New York: Fordham University Press.

Culleton, C., 1994. Names and Naming in Joyce. U.S.A.: The University of Wisconsin

Press.

DeAlmeida, H., 1981. Byron and Joyce through Homer. New York: Colombia

University Press.

Ehrlich, H., (ed.) 1984. Light Rays: James Joyce and Modernism. New York: New

Horizons Press Publishers.

Ellmann, R., 1972. Ulysses on the Liffey. New York: Oxford University Press.

Garvin, J., 1977. James Joyce’s Disunited Kingdom: and the Irish Dimension. Dublin:

Gill and Macmillan.

Kennelly, B., 1994. Journey Into Joy. Dublin: Bloodaxe Books Ltd.

Kenner, H., 1978. Joyce’s Voices. London: Faber and Faber.

Ronsley, J., (ed.) 1977. Myth and Reality in Irish Literature. Canada: Wilfrid Laurier

University Press.

Shakespeare, W., 1994. Hamlet. London: Penguin Books.

Tindall, W., 1963. A reader’s Guide to James Joyce. London: Thames and Hudson.

Wales, K., 1992. The Language of James Joyce. London: Macmillan Press Ltd.

The Use of Creative Language in James Joyce's 'Ulysses'

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