Somer, John. “The Self-Reflexive Narrator in the Initial Style of Joyce’s “Ulysses”” James Joyce Quarterly 31.2 (1994): 65-76.

In this article, Somer guides readers through an analysis of three figures central to the narrative structure of Ulysses: the author, the narrator, and “the arranger.” In distinguishing between them, Somer explains that, “while a narrator may appeal to a reader’s mental ear, the arranger frequently appeals to a reader’s physical eye” (69). The arranger is responsible for the physical representation of text on the page, and, specifically in the context of Ulysses, instigates a “self-reflexive” engagement with the text that “forces readers to acknowledge that they are reading” (70). Somer explains that, over the course of Ulysses, the arranger and the narrator are at odds with each other – free indirect discourse, a mimetic narrative form that places readers “in direct contact with reality” (73), is often punctuated by moments where the arranger makes the reader critically aware of the novel’s textuality (when Bloom’s cat utters the orally improbable “Mkgnao” [U 4.16], for example). Somer goes on to cite instances of opaque language in “Calypso” and a divided narrative voice in “Hades” as further evidence of the arranger’s gradually increasing dominance over the more traditional, initial narrative structure of Ulysses. This battle between the narrator and the arranger persists for the duration of the novel until ultimately, Somer argues, the arranger reins victorious in “Sirens” and demonstrates the epitome of what has been a “growing mastery of style” (76).