Notes about J. Joyce: Mythical Method, Ulysses (23/3/12)

T.S. Eliot defined the mythical method in a review about J. Joyce titled Ulysses, order and myth in the magazine "The Dial". He wrote it because readers considered Ulysses obscure, chaotic and confused because it was a revolutionary experimentary novel. The review explained that mythical method provides Ulysses with a structure and it gives a shape to the immense panorama of futilityof contemporary world. The function of mythical method is to give unity and significance to different episodes.
In the episod 18 of Ulysses, myth is adapted to Mr Joyce's contemporary reality.
The episod is the last part of Molly Bloom's monologue and it deals with her thoughts. She is in the bed in the night, while she is trying to fall asleep. The writer uses here the total stream of consciousness technique, in order to render chaos and non logical flux of thoughts of human mind. Because of this, the reader feels confused and lost and it is asked to him to cooperate with the text and to understand how associations work in the text.
The episode starts with a reference to China: Molly Bloom thinks about Chinese girls who are getting up, while she is trying to sleep; so she thinks to time. It is one of the most important themes of the episode: there is the Modernist concept of simultaneous time. Her thoughts are projected to the future thinking about the young man will arrive at her home the day before, to the triumph of senses, to her look, but also to the past (her youth) and to the present (she can not sleep). It is possible to say the thread of her thoughts is made of associations.
She is the Modernist Penelope because she is not at all a faithful wife who waits her husband, as Homer's Penelope did with Ulysses, but she is a sensual woman who has got many relationships with other men.

The short story The Dead belongs to the last part of J. Joyce's Dubliners regarding public life. He put it in public life because public life is symbolically represented by the party and Gabriel's speech is a metaphor of talking in public.
In the text there are two epiphanies and both happen to Gabriel. The first one happens when Gabriel listens to his aunt who is singing and he thinks about when she will be dead. The second one happens when he is looking at his wife, while she is totally absorbed into listening to the song. In the hotel Gabriel lives the effect of the second epiphany. Gabriel has fallen with epiphany, but he uses it as an occasion to understand what does not work in his life. So Gabriel finds the way and tries to understand something of himself.