In tracking various instances of storytelling and narration in episodes seven and eight, I was particularly drawn to instances where Bloom tells us stories about his relationship with Molly and gives us insight into the nature of their past together. Specifically in episode eight, such stories come about via Bloom’s vivid flashbacks to his past, and as he walks around Dublin a sort of “then vs. now” dichotomy develops between Bloom as he sees himself now and Bloom as he existed during the peak happiness of his relationship with Molly.

Over the course of episode eight it has become evident that Bloom is still somewhat infatuated with Molly – she constantly appears in his internal narration, and most interactions he has with people in real life remind him of Molly. Bloom thinks, “Lucky Molly got over hers lightly” (132) when thinking about Mrs. Purefoy’s pregnancies, he remembers that “Molly had the elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs” (127) that she wore to the races that happened “six years. Ten years ago” (127), he plans ahead for her birthday (138), and plans to buy her “silk petticoats” (147) to match her new garters. He says, “remember her laughing at the wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of Harcourt road remember that gust. Brrfoo! Blew up her skirts and her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin …” (128), and we come to understand Bloom’s relationship with Molly as one that makes him inclined to fantasize about his own past.

These subtle references to Molly climax as Bloom sits and relives a love scene between himself and Molly in his mind and he explicitly defines “Me. And me now” (144), his “downcast eyes” at present contrasting with his “ravished” “wild” state in his memory with Molly. The love scene that he describes between himself and Molly is an extremely detailed sensory experience, and his retelling makes it evident to us as readers that the two of them once shared a very real connection that seems to have disintegrated over time. Passages such as these that embody Bloom’s longing for his past relationship make earlier passages, such as Bloom’s paused presence outside of Molly’s door, even more poignant.

Joyce manifests Bloom’s description of “me now” in moments where other individuals ask him how his wife is doing and Bloom gives only surface level responses. When Nosey Flynn asks him, “Wife well?” he only responds “quite well, thanks … “ (141) and then changes the subject to his sandwich – these guarded replies contrast starkly with the sensory experiences that Bloom relays to us in his own consciousness, the “me” he seems to feel represents his true self. But of course no narration can ever be straightforward, so Bloom posits, “I was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I?” (137) and ultimately questioning whether or not the person he was during the peak of his relationship with Molly can actually be defined as “himself”.

Regardless, though, Molly’s constant presence in Bloom’s internal narration helps us track him as a character and better understand his various thought processes. Just like Joyce continually references “trams passing one another” (134) to give us a narrative constant and help us keep track of reality, he plants Molly in Bloom’s internal narrative to remind us of one fundamental aspect of Bloom’s personal narrative.

Given that both Stephen and Bloom grapple with loss in the first two sections of Ulysses (Stephen the death of his mother, Bloom the suicide of his father and the death of his infant son), I am proposing “mourning” as a new lexicon entry along with its homophone “morning.”

After a quick search of the online text of Ulysses, I see that “mourning” appears 26 times, and alternative derivatives (“mourn,” “mourned,” etc.) appear 44 times. The word gains prominence beginning in episode six with the narration of Patty Dignam’s funeral, and I notice that the word is subsequently used to describe individuals “in mourning” as well as objects typically associated with mourning, like a “mourning carriage” and a “mourning hat.” Given the pervasive presence of loss that we’ve already seen in Ulysses, and the contrast that exists between appearing mournful and actually mourning (Bloom dresses in black to give the appearance of mourning Dignam’s death, but we speculated in class that his thoughts during the funeral indicate that he may not actually be grieving), I think it would be useful to track this term’s presence for the rest of the novel and see how it helps clarify Bloom and Stephen’s relationships with loss.

Since my obsession is narration and storytelling, I have also been keeping track of how time is marked throughout the novel. “Morning,” a classic indicator of a new day, appears much more frequently than “mourning,” at 121 times. The novel begins in the “morning,” with Buck Mulligan standing in the “mild morning air.” While I’m not sure yet if there is a clear correlation between “mourning” and “morning,” it certainly seems that a lot of Ulysses’ action takes place in the morning, and I am curious if there is any connection between the two.

Before settling on “mourning” and “morning,” I was also interested in “body” because it has so many potential meanings (human body, body of water, body of Christ). I’m hoping to be able to look more into this word later on as we read more about religion and Bloom’s perceptions of his own body.

In reading Vicki Mahaffey’s piece on the publication of the Gabler edition of Ulysses, I was interested in her discussion of the “several typos that the Gabler edition has restored” (244). When we read episodes 1-3 for Tuesday’s class, I remember noticing that the telegram from Stephen’s father read “Nother” instead of “Mother,” and I wondered whether or not this was intentional on Joyce’s part. In special collections, I’m looking forward to locating that passage and seeing if it, in fact, contains this specific typo that Gabler restored into his edition.

Over the course of the three episodes we read for today, the narrative structure becomes increasingly more difficult to follow with each new section of text. By the time we reach Proteus, the relatively straightforward narrative structure established in the first two episodes (I say straightforward only in relation to the third episode) breaks down and we begin to learn about Stephen’s past through a fluid narrative that jumps between third-person “real-time” narration and a more introspective “stream of consciousness” narrative as Stephen walks along the beach and lets his mind wander to his past.

Each time Stephen’s conscience seems to almost entirely consume the narration, we are brought back to reality by a harsh transition to “real-time” with a more classic, third-person narration such as, “he had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots” (37), “the dog’s bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back” (38), or “he lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks” (41). The sensory details of these third-person passages (sandy feet, a dog’s bark, sharp rocks) remind us as readers of the physical realities Stephen is experiencing separately from what he is experiencing in his mind.

These sort of jarring descriptions that take us as readers back to reality make it easier to follow the smaller chunks of Stephen’s “stream of consciousness” narration that come in-between. For example, a third-person “real-time” narration informs us that Stephen’s “feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows” (35), only to be followed by a much less straightforward, internal narration of Stephen’s own past in “Paris rawly waking” (35). The fluid movements between third-person “real-time” narration into more internal, personal narration from Stephen create a sort of interplay between memory and present day in which Stephen’s past informs the present and vice versa. It is because we have the physical image of Stephen walking solitarily along the shore that we as readers understand the poignancy of his introspective reflection that, “you were going to do wonders” (35) – the loss of potential he has experienced in his past is embodied in his present-day solitude.

Even these transitions between “real-time” and “stream of consciousness” are not entirely straightforward, however, as there are moments where Stephen begins to question his own reality and confuses us as readers in the process. He asks, “Am I going to aunt Sara’s or not?” (32), and then tells us a story where he “pulls the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage” and engaging in dialogue with his aunt and uncle. It is only after Stephen says, “I have passed the way to aunt Sara’s. Am I not going there? Seems not” (34) that we become certain that Stephen’s narration of his visit with his relatives has taken place in his mind instead of “real-time.” The narrative patterns of Ulysses are predictable yet also unpredictable, and it almost feels like it’s impossible to be certain that any one interpretation can be considered correct.

In reading “Dead Again” by Norris and Pecora, I became interested in the validity of using Joyce’s biography as grounds for interpreting his writing. In class on Tuesday we briefly discussed how scholars often base interpretations of Ulysses off of relationships they find between the text and Joyce’s own life, and Professor Simpson explained that this isn’t necessarily the best way to go about interpreting literature.

“Dead Again” spends a lot of time discussing this idea, particularly in relation to the role of the reader vs. authorial intention in finding meaning in a text, and Pecora cites Walter Benn Michaels as a scholar who holds almost the exact opposite opinion as we discussed in class: “that is, if you don’t believe that authorial intention is the same thing as textual meaning, then you don’t believe that people are defined by what they say and by their beliefs, and you must believe that people (not just readers) are defined by what they are, by a cultural essence (that is, something independent of rational beliefs), which effectively makes you a racist” (350).

While Pecora certainly expresses his own skepticism regarding Michaels’ claim, I’m wondering if there is any validity in the idea that authorial intention plays at least somewhat of a role in determining a text’s meaning. While it does seem extreme to call any interpretations other than those based on authorial intent “racism,” does Pecora’s change of heart regarding his interpretation of “The Dead”’s ending lose validity because it is expressed as extremely personal in nature? What significance or weight does his personal emotions regarding the story’s ending bear on us as readers?