The Importance of "Ulysses" by James Joyce

Published in Paris on the 2nd of February, 1922, James Joyce's giant novel 'Ulysess' would go on to receive public acclaim as one of the most difficult novels ever written and yet, also simultaneously one of the greatest of all time. The importance of this work is immessurable and honestly, I have only ever read it once. When I first read it I must have been around eighteen years' old and it took me an entire month to read because:

1. It was so difficult
2. I was in the middle of examinations for university
3. I had to refer to notes and dictionaries when reading it to keep up with the style, language and references

Well, let us go on to discuss what is so important about this book and why people still read it to this day.

The Importance of "Ulysses" by James Joyce

What is the book about?

The first section of the book is about a character called Stephen - his mother has just passed away and he teaches a history class on a guy called Pyrrhus. He speaks to a man after class about how the Jews have never been persecuted in Ireland - which stands out to be one of the most famous passages from the whole book.

As Stephen goes somewhere else, he thinks upon his mother's death and there are a bunch of philosophical realisations and contemplations which can seem really difficult to get through (just keep pushing on, you can do this!). It is no wonder as to why that particular section is noted as one of the most difficult parts of the whole book - and trust me, it is.

The next section is about a man called Leopold Bloom reading a letter from his daughter after bringing the mail to his wife. I only realised later that him being part-Jewish is actually something important. This is where it gets a little complex - he has another name which is Henry and receives letters from another woman under this assumed name. He goes to a church and then to a chemist - musing on various pieces of philosophy and theology. I believe that it is the very next chapter where he attends a funeral, but don't quote me on that. He then goes to the office of something called "The Freeman's Journal" to place an advertisement. The next chapter is about the museum which is one I don't really want to talk about because the musings of philosophy are just plain weird.

The next part was probably my favourite chapter because it is where Bloom explains his reasonings on Shakespeare at the National Library. He does this biographical analysis of his life and explanation of "Hamlet" which I really quite enjoyed (even though the rest of the book is a push). This is also the chapter where Leopold Bloom and Stephen are in the same physical space without knowing it.

The very next chapter is difficult and proved difficult when I was reading it because at first, I could not understand how it fit into the story. It is nineteen short stories about people in Dublin, characters that fill the streets etc. It is a very strange chapter and to this day, I just really don't like where it is in the book because it cuts up the novel in a way that I think is annoying. The next chapter is about music I think and a dinner Bloom has with Stephen's uncle whilst the chapter following is the one where a narrator called "Citizen" insults Bloom in a pub.

I think everyone knows about the women looking after children on the rocks in the next chapter whilst it seems like Bloom is almost stalking them. This chapter too, seems misplaced to me - as if it should be at the end in a way. But there is also something else that makes reading it very uncomfortable. I will leave it to your imagination. Honestly, though, this book would've got itself banned if it were any clearer about it.

I believe the next chapter is the one where Bloom meets Stephen in the hospital where Mina is giving birth. This is the one where Joyce parodies other writers such as Charles Dickens and Edward Gibbon as well as writing his satirical notions on the King James' Bible. The very next chapter though is part of the main function of the storyline, I believe so all I am going to say is that Bloom has a hallucination that changes a lot of his beliefs at the end of the chapter. Again, another strangely placed event.

The last three chapters are dedicated to turning Bloom's marriage to Molly into something symbolic, almost an odd thing to do given the fact that she was never really a major character but this is James Joyce we are talking about.

Why is it important?

Carl Jung stated in 1953 about this book that:

What is so staggering about Ulysses is the fact that behind a thousand veils nothing lies hidden; that it turns neither toward the mind nor toward the world, but, as cold as the moon looking on from cosmic space, allows the drama of growth, being, and decay to pursue its course.

Personally, it took me a long time to understand what he was talking about because it also took me many years to appreciate the novel for being confusing in the best of ways. I feel like this quotation about the book sums up the entire career of James Joyce and if you read my favourite Joyce novel "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" not only will you meet some of the characters again, you will also gain more insight into his writing.

As part of the argument of the 'everyman' the Routledge book on the history of Literature in English has often commended "Ulysses" as being one of the greatest novels written in English in our modern times:

"[He uses]metaphors, symbols, ambiguities, and overtones which gradually link themselves together so as to form a network of connections binding the whole work. This system of connections gives the novel a wide, more universal significance, as "Leopold Bloom becomes a modern Ulysses, an Everyman in a Dublin which becomes a microcosm of the world."

I would say that beyond most, this is an accurate statement because if you were to understand the novel this way before you were to read it then, I would think it would make the novel a lot easier to understand. Everything that can happen in humanity, will happen in this novel.

But I will always appreciate what Virginia Woolf said of the book, being possibly one of the greatest ways in which it has been remembered to this day:

"Ulysses was a memorable catastrophe—immense in daring, terrific in disaster."