Ulysses episodes 1-3

James Joyce's Ulysses, episodes 1-3

From Hugh Kenner's Ulysses, London and Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1980:

"Joyce is all trivia . . ." (76).

"Joyce's strange book has no stranger aspect than this, that no one comprehensive reading is thinkable. . . . Its universe is Einsteinian, non-simultaneous, internally consistent but never to be grasped in one apprehension; not only because the details are so numerous but also because their pertinent interconnections are more numerous still" (80-81).

**Episode 1: Telemachus**
Thumbnail summary: Introduces Stephen Dedalus in his home, Martello Tower, with housemates Buck Mulligan, a medical student, and Haines, a Brit. They dress, prepare for the day, have breakfast, and walk to the beach for a quick swim (Stephen doesn't get in the water). There is tension between Buck and Stephen, over money matters and particularly over Stephen's refusing to pray at his mother's deathbed request. Stephen vows not to return to the tower that night.
*In Homer's Odyssey:* The epic opens with Telemachus and his mother Penelope, tired of being overrun by dozens of suitors vying for her hand and abusing their hospitality by eating and living lavishly on Odysseus's wealth. Odysseus has been absent for nearly twenty years, fighting the Trojan War and then having great difficulties finding his way back home to Ithaca.
Joyce's Schema, the Telemachus episode, pp. 1-23
Scene	Time	Organ	Art (Sense)	Color	Symbol	Technic	Correspondences
The tower	8:00-9:00 a.m.	[Telemachus does not yet bear a body]	Theology [The dispossessed son in struggle]	White, gold	Heir [Hamlet, Ireland, and Stephen]	Narrative (young); [3- and 4-person dialogue, Narration, Soliloquy]	Telemachus, Stephen—Hamlet Antinous—Mulligan Mentor—milkwoman [Pallus, the Suitors, Penelope]
A few basics to consider: Different ways Stephen is dispossessed (as Telemachus is in the Odyssey). Tension between Stephen and Buck, on several fronts. Tension between Stephen and Haines (Irish vs. British). Stephen as brooding, haunted son, a la Hamlet.

**Episode 2: Nestor**
Thumbnail summary: Shows us Stephen at work teaching history: he appears not to be a master teacher, and his method is mainly drilling students on facts, dates, etc. When the students leave the classroom to play field hockey, Stephen tutors one of them, Sargent, in math. When Stephen receives his pay from the headmaster, Mr. Deasy, the two discuss Irish history, and history more generally, until Stephen departs with an essay Deasy wants him to help get published in the newspaper.
*In Homer's Odyssey:* Telemachus leaves Ithaca to seek news of his father and visits elderly Nestor, King of Pylos, who fought alongside Odysseus in the Trojan War. Nestor shows Telemachus great hospitality but can give him no information about his father's whereabouts. Telemachus travels farther but returns to Pylos on his way homeward, though he avoids seeing Nestor this time through Pylos, saying that the loquacious old man offers too much hospitality for one in any kind of a hurry.
Joyce's Schema, the Nestor episode, pp. 24-36
Scene	Time	Organ	Art (Sense)	Color	Symbol	Technic	Correspondences
The school	9:00-10:00 a.m.	[Telemachus does not yet bear a body]	History [The wisdom of the world]	Brown [Chestnut]	Horse[Ulster, Woman, Common Sense]	Catechism (personal) [2-person dialogue, Narration, Soliloquy]	Nestor—Deasy Pisistratus—Sargent Helen—Kitty O’Shea [Telemachus]
From E. L. Epstein, in James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays, eds. Clive Hart and David Hayman. Berkeley: U of California P, 1974, 17-28: "[T]he Nestor-figure stands for history in its most trivial aspects, as an academic subject based upon the falsifying memory of the past, an avaricious gathering in of trifles, entirely missing the essence of the life of man through purblind probing into non-essential" (22).
A few basics to consider: Realistic portrayal of bi-play between Stephen's thoughts and his conversation with Sargent. Stream of consciousness, e.g. flowing from Stephen's thoughts about Sargent's mother to thoughts of his own; flowing from Deasy's pictures of horses to thoughts of gambling on horses; etc. Deasy's and Stephen's differing views of history (D: linear movement towards manifestation of God; S: a "nightmare from which [he is] trying to awake"). Ways history may indeed be a nightmare, for Stephen, for the Irish, and for the Jews.

**Episode 3: Proteus**
Thumbnail summary: Stephen wanders along the beach (Sandymount Strand), deep in solitary philosophical thought. He ponders stopping by his Aunt Sally's house nearby and imagines a conversation he might have there with his uncle, but he continues walking the beach, thinking of his time in Paris, from whence he was called home during his mother's final illness. He sees two midwives, and then later a couple of shell-hunters with a dog, who sniffs the carcass of a dead dog on the beach. Stephen composes lines of a poem, which he jots down on the envelope containing Deasy's essay for the newspaper; then he urinates and picks his nose, checking to see that no one has seen.
*In Homer's Odyssey:* In ancient Greek mythology, Proteus, son of Poseidon, was a god of the sea whom Homer calls the "old man of the sea." He was an oracle who could tell the future, but he changed shapes to avoid capture when he felt threatened. Homer has Menelaus, the second old comrade of Odysseus, tell Telemachus of his visit to Proteus's island home of Pharos during his own travels, where he succeeded in clasping Proteus in his arms even though he shifted shapes to become a lion, a leopard, a serpent, a pig, even a tree. The word "protean," meaning constantly changing shape or form, elusively variable, takes its origin from Proteus.
Joyce's Schema, the Proteus episode, pp. 37-51
Scene	Time	Organ	Art (Sense)	Color	Symbol	Technic	Correspondences
The strand {i.e. beach}	10:00- 11:00 a.m.	[Telemachus does not yet bear a body]	Philology[Prima material]	Green[Blue]	Tide [Word, Signature, Moon, Evolution, Metamorphosis]	Monologue (male)[Soliloquy]	Proteus—primal matter Menelaus—Kevin Egan Megapenthus—cocklepicker [Helen, Telemachus]
From J. Mitchell Morse's essay on Proteus in James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays, eds. Clive Hart and David Hayman. Berkeley: U of California P, 1974, 29-49: "[I]n the 'Proteus' chapter of Ulysses Joyce shows us Stephen Dedalus beginning to realize that if he is ever to be a serious artist rather than an arty dilettante he must experience the beast [i.e. life itself]. Hitherto he has been trying to avoid the experience" (30).
A few basics to consider: The protean, shape-shifting stream of Stephen's thoughts, sometimes making sudden leaps, sometimes following logical chains of association, as from his imagining the midwives carrying an aborted fetus, then an umbilical cord, then a telephone cord (wire) reaching back to the first mother in Eden at telephone number "AA001." Kevin Egan, the expatriate Irish nationalist in Paris, as a father-figure to Stephen, perhaps prefiguring Leopold Bloom, the Odysseus-figure we will meet in the next episode. More protean shiftings in Stephen's wandering mind, as in the dog he sees becoming in his mind's eye a leopard, a panther, and a vulture; then his recalling Haines's nightmare about a panther. Stephen's being critical of himself for not having produced any art yet, but then after seeing the two cocklepickers actually composing lines of poetry.