A famous Irish proverb states that the believer is happy, but the doubter is wise. Irish men are typically associated with Catholicism, as many famous prayers and saints have come from Ireland. However, the religious aspect is not universal, and obviously there are non-believers here and there throughout Ireland. These people are often logical thinkers, men and women who don't challenge religion simply because of their dislike of its tenets, but rather because of a lack of understanding of the basis of religion itself. In many non-believers who were previously faithful, an element of introspection and questioning emerges in their everyday lives. Musicians have expressed this in their music, artists in their paintings, and writers in their works. James Joyce, a nationalistic Irishman, attempted to explore not only religion but his own person in his work. According to the proverb, Joyce was a wise man, albeit a conflicted one. James Joyce was an enigma of thoughts and perspectives, and he illustrated his mental processes in his many works.
Joyce's thoughts expressed in his work have created an overarching theme of his internal conflict. Joyce’s characters effectively “split [his] personality” so that the works become more introspective than they seem (Praz, Silanpoa 90).Because Joyce focused on employing a stream of consciousness in his writing, many structural aspects from one work are seemingly absent in another, yet the one constant is that Joyce's characters mirror his own internal conflict. For instance, inn Ulysses, Bloom represents the defects and imperfections of his character and Stephen, on the other hand, represents the intellectual aspect of Joyce. Further, Molly's sensuality further reveals Joyce's own imperfections and lust. Throughout Ulysses, Joyce's stream of consciousness is quite prevalent. However, the reader notices slight differences when Joyce characterizes Bloom and Stephen. When Joyce characterizes Bloom, his stream is turbulent, rapid, and somewhat broken. On the flip side, when characterizing Stephen, Joyce's stream is concentrated, swift, and somewhat intellectual. This switch up of characterization further highlights how his characters are an extension of his own frantic personality. Themes are often revealed through certain characters in Ulysses, and based on the characterization of each, it is clear how much their themes will differ. The themes that readers interpret from Bloom, who represents the wilder, less conservative side of Joyce, are the "essence of tragedy," while the themes that the reader interprets from Stephen delve into the spiritual aspect and listlessness of James Joyce (Powell, 169). James Joyce wrote A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to “turn his life into fiction” through the use of stream of consciousness and time (Amerian, 1036). Although Stephen is boy in Joyce's work, Joyce digs into his own personality to create the character that is Stephen, and then he employs stream of consciousness to explore himself. At the same time, the analysis of the temptation on the beach and what happens thereafter with Bloom and Getty MacDowel is an example of how not only was Joyce's personality split, but so too was his opinion on morality. When he first presents Gerty, he characterizes her as a stereotypical romantic who craves sentiment but falls into the temptations of sordid thoughts and actions. His third person narrations present her almost sympathetically. However, he completely changes direction with Bloom's comments and thoughts, shifting from sympathy and romanticism to condemnation and realism. Bloom's comments disillusion the reader, and show that Joyce's thoughts on Gerty and lustily romantic women like her are that they are misguided and their actions of lust are wrong. One of the most controversial events in Ulysses is the Black Mass, which Joyce creates so that his message of the need for the end of human violence is conveyed. Joyce goes back to his roots, analyzing the state of Ireland and its conflicts, depicting the internal conflict of Ireland as trivial and an issue that troubles him. He identifies the conflict as somewhat absurd, as "the individual splits to fight against himself" (Mason 200). Joyce yearns for his country to be at peace, but is conflicted because does not know how to solve this problem. All in all, Joyce's characters represented his internal conflicts about his being as well as his morality.
Yet Joyce's conflict did not only result from introspection about his persona, but it also arose because of his desire to create a unique and ultimate style. To start, Joyce's main struggle in "The Dead" was to find a style that was both fully Irish and not at all restricted to the mainland of Ireland itself. Through his images, metaphors, and styles, Joyce goes to war against his previous identities, with hope to find this ultimate style. The images of the battles depicted in "The Dead" are more than they seem; these images represent Joyce's mind clashing between his past and his self-enforced exile from Ireland. The reader can understand Joyce's struggle to "overcome the past without giving it up" (Munich 174). On page 173, Munich states that "[r]adical revision of style can be experienced as killing off a past identity." Joyce wrote Dubliners and then added "The Dead" in a different style to end his work. The addition of this section was no mistake, and Joyce wrote it to show not only the characters' fixation with past events, but also to show this new style. The title is symbolic of Joyce destroying his old style, which, as Munich states, is like destroying an older version of himself. He replaces it with the new one, symbolic of Joyce's past state's death and this new rebirth, and the change of style directly reflects Joyce's internal conflicts and emotions. Similarly, Joyce's loss of belief in Catholicism is intimately linked with his internal conflict between exile and his Irish roots. As a result of his willed exile from his nation, he willing chose to drop Catholicism, even though it was the religion of his homeland. Initially a man of faith whose works mirrored his faith, Joyce became adverse to Catholic doctrine. In Dubliners, Joyce intentionally has his characters converse about faith with incorrect statements about the Church. Joyce manipulates his characters in such a way to illustrate the flaws in the people who claim to be devout and religious and mock the "limited knowledge of theology among the faithful" (Hibbert 201). In conclusion, Joyce's conflict stretches far beyond his desire to find his true identity; Joyce wanted to create the ultimate style of writing that stayed true to his past but did not rely on it.
A crucial style that James Joyce used in his works is the stream of consciousness. Joyce's works try to merge objectivity and subjectivity through repetition of key words and phrases. Through these repetitions, he exported his own rational and fantastical thought into his writing. This made his works more about the relationship between him and what he is writing about, rather than the reader and the work. Despite his separation from Catholicism, Joyce's new style mirrored his catholic roots. His establishment of the relationship between writer and object rather than writer and reader hints at transubstantiation; just as God intervenes to make the bread and wine the body and blood of Jesus Christ, Joyce writes to establish deeper meaning in the objects he writes about. Joyce's mixing of styles into the grand scheme of the stream of consciousness is a reflection of his catholic roots, regardless of his loss of faith when he wrote Ulysses. Joyce wrote the omniscient statements into the stream of consciousness passages because he believed that "the artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent" (Erwin 53). Catholicism was not the only influence on Joyce's development of this style, however. Dante had a significant influence on "The Dead" beyond the hellish setting. Joyce establishes a relationship between himself and his protagonist, Gabriel Conroy, by inserting events from his life into his description of Gabriel. It is imperative to note that the events Joyce uses to describe Gabriel were from the older version of himself. As the story closes in "The Dead", this new Joyce detaches from Gabriel. Dante's take on relationships between new and past identities involved distancing and exile, so, as a result, Joyce separated from Gabriel, who paralleled his old self.
As one could expect, with several factors contributing to the development of Joyce's most prominent style, the stream of consciousness has many complex effects in his works. Because of this style, his writing style frequently switches pace depending on the material, adding depth to each of his characters as Joyce’s ideas flow into their persona. All of this culminates in further development of the plot, character qualities, and his expression of his internal conflict. Especially in Ulysses, Joyce mixes up the style of his writing quite dramatically, changing styles with each progression through the work. As previously mentioned, his writing about Stephen is often more tame and intellectual, while his writing about Bloom tends to be wilder and more abstract. Joyce employed the clearest and strongest use of stream of consciousness in his time. This new and complex style was put to use so well by Joyce because of his ability to mix the style in with the story, setting the scene before a character elaborates on it. In stream of consciousness passages, peppered in between true stream of consciousness sentences are soliloquies and omniscient statements, which are usually summaries or stage directions. These omniscient statements are made using the same language as in the character's stream of consciousness, so the style is maintained throughout the passage. The reader is prepared for the long passages of stream of consciousness because of Joyce's description of various images and ideas which are referenced in these passages. Without this prior knowledge, they may seem abstract or unrelated, but Joyce ensures that the reader does not have trouble understanding a character's thoughts by providing these prior descriptions. To start, Proteus in Ulysses is a character that is written about in almost completely a stream of consciousness style. However, the reader is prepared to divulge the meaning of his statements because Joyce explains images, phrases, and ideas that Proteus talks about before he begins to speak. Another great example of Joyce's intermingling of styles is Stephen's refusal of his mother's dying wish in Ulysses. The passage throws the reader into Stephen's mind as he muses about his mother's death. Joyce integrates soliloquy in the passage, as Stephen reflects on certain instances with his mother. Joyce sets the scene overlooking the sea with an omniscient statement, and describes the sea in the poetic stream of consciousness style that Stephen's character embodies. A final example of how Joyce mixes styles yet still conveys the stream of consciousness is the dialogue in the opening two chapters of Ulysses. The reader is under the impression that he is being thrown into Stephen's mind as he speaks about what he is thinking, yet Joyce employs relatively few lines that are truly stream of consciousness. By using this method, the reader is not overrun by information that he does not understand and can comprehend Stephen's thoughts. In short, understanding the effects and usage of the stream of consciousness is essential to fully comprehending the works of James Joyce.
Joyce had an uncanny ability to put the reader into his work because of the extensively detailed sensory imagery he created. Because of his poor vision, Joyce has been compared to Milton for his extensive auditory imagination rather than visual; “Ulysses describes a world of sound” (Ryf 30). However, visual and tactile imagery was not completely absent from his works as he used these images to both set the scene and convey some of his most important messages. Joyce even employs images in his works to illustrate his own consciousness. In Finnegans Wake, the voices represent the many voices that Joyce hears coursing through his head, full of both complementing and contradictory thoughts. Visually, Joyce blends images together, the first affecting the second, the second affecting the third, and so on. Joyce also makes use of perspective, highlighting images in the foreground that interact with that of the background. He achieves this sometimes though emphasis of light and darkness. Joyce combines images to create a whole new image, with the initial image still emphasized. This communicates a much broader message. A good example of this is Proteus' monologue in Ulysses. Stephen is the central image, but Joyce throws in images of the sea, stars, rocks, and night in order to add mood to the thoughts coursing through Proteus. However, the central image of Stephen persists. The senses are almost overwhelmed in Finnegans Wake as images are heavily blended together. As a result, an element of synæsthesia emerges, the combination of senses when sensing an image. Joyce plays heavily on he senses of the reader, and the images in his works illustrate some of the most important ideas in his works.
Regardless, Joyce’s visual imagery can be misleading. Most notably, the images in Ulysses are focused on too literally while the message behind the image is missed. The language that Joyce uses to describe sensuality and sexual relations in Ulysses is indeed important, but should not be misconstrued to the point where it is viewed as pornographic writing. Rather, the reader must interpret the images as Joyce's ideas about morality. By the same token, Joyce's imagery appears "gentle and nostalgic" (Munich 176) in "The Dead", but further analysis of the imagery shows the reader that this is not the true message. Joyce employed devices of irony and his own masochistic beliefs to illustrate the flaws of Gabriel in this final section of Dubliners. On the more extreme side, Joyce's imagery almost always requires in depth analysis because the images presented in the text sometimes do not appear to make sense. For example, Joyce describes a the table of a Christmas meal as a battlefield. When reading the text without analytic thinking, one would suppose that Joyce was insane because dinner on a holy night and the brutality of war directly contrast each other. To comprehend the message, the reader must remove any restrictions of thought about "what is sensible or nonsensible" and focus on understanding the meaning of the text (Munich 181). The depiction of the Christmas dinner as a battlefield serves to illustrate the beginnings of Gabriel's fall. Gabriel serves his own food to the people seated at the table as a priest would conduct a mass. This action shows us that Gabriel is preparing himself and those around him for his ultimate end and sacrifice. When Gabriel is done serving and speaking, Freddy Marlins raises up his fork while chanting, which is symbolic of the devil's pitchfork and charging into battle. As can be seen, interpreting and analyzing the imagery is essential to understanding the works of James Joyce, while literally interpreting the images will lead the reader to be confused about the work.
Interpretation is so crucial especially because of Joyce's use of recurring images throughout a novel. Recurring images in Joyce's works do not maintain the same meaning for the entirety of Joyce's works, Rather, these images both gain and change meaning as the work progresses. Joyce often twists images to his likeness, removing standard connotations and associations and replacing them with that of the work. As a matter of fact, the color white in any sort of imagery presented to the reader is viewed in a bad light by Stephen in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen associates white with negative feelings. One night as Stephen is trying to sleep, he envisions a white, murderous, cloaked ghost. Joyce twists the commonplace connotations of the color white, a symbol of the Catholic Church, the beauty of religion, and innocence, by associating it with things that are directly in contrast with these connotations. These different associations and the repetitive use of white in the work also show Stephen's choice to distance himself from the Church. Stephen's main move away from the Catholic Church dealing with the color white was when he wears a badge with a white rose. The rose is commonly associated with the Virgin Mary. He reduces the perfection and divinity of the Virgin Mary by referring to the rose simply as a "cold white thing" (Centola 97). This shows that Stephen is rejecting tenets of the Church, further removing himself from it. To conclude, interpretation of the imagery Joyce presents to the reader is paramount because of the underlying meaning and Joyce's twisting of common associations in his writing.
Another technique that Joyce utilizes in his writing is interpretation of past groundbreaking works. One major artist that influenced him was Dante. "The Dead" was formulated by Joyce under the influence of Dante. It mirrors Dante's Inferno. Joyce's interpretation of Dante's Inferno is applied to his Dublin, which he describes as hellish and fallen. The characters and citizens of Dublin are locked into their own particular hellish cycles of living with no avail. In addition, Joyce believes that history and the events we experience are cyclic, so he studied the classics. Through his interpretation of Homer's Odyssey into his modern work Ulysses, Joyce illustrates that both problems and revelations repeat in different people throughout the grand scheme of time. Joyce transforms Homer’s Odyssey into his own work, reversing some character traits but mirroring Homer's characters. Bloom is viewed as a modern Ulysses because of his tendency to wander both spiritually and physically throughout the setting in Dublin. On the other hand, Molly, viewed as a modern Penelope, is twisted into infidelity and lust rather than Homer's description of Penelope as faithful. Joyce's interpretation of Homer's masterpiece does not end with somewhat similar characters; Joyce's plot structure resembles that of Homer's Odyssey. The most clear example of this mirrored plot structure is the end of Ulysses. Joyce ends his masterpiece just as Homer ends his; Bloom returns home just as Ulysses returns to his homeland. Just as he does with commonplace associations, Joyce twists some of Homer's characters to his liking as well. Joyce compares Homer's Nausica to Artemis, the Greek virgin goddess, but Gerty is portrayed in the exact opposite light as she is in stark contrast with the Virgin Mary. Joyce's interpretation of Homer's Odyssey does not only serve as a basis for plot and characterization, but also as a base for the morality standpoint that Joyce takes in Ulysses. Clearly, Joyce's genius was not a product of solely his own thoughts, but his thoughts under the influence of world renowned authors.
One can see how James Joyce attempted to display his thoughts, emotions, perspectives, and internal conflicts in his work through the use of stream of consciousness, sensory imagery, and interpretation. Joyce's genius was not only found in his writing, but in his very being. He was happy as a believer in his early years, and then came to question the world, becoming more and more wise as he continued his quest to find his true identity. This is a rather difficult quest which results in his writing being rather complex. As a consequence, critics have regarded his work as useless, pointless, and utter jargon. They fail to analyze his text properly, and thus fail to see his true genius. Keeping the enigma of James Joyce's works in mind, literary critics should do more research or delve deeper into texts before simply throwing them away because it does not appear to make sense at first. Literary critics who cannot understand Joyce's complexity believe that it is useless and are happy, but those who doubt the uselessness of the complex works analyze them and become wise.