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.
