Ulysses by James Joyce is a challenge and is fascinating. One of the most interesting questions related to this book is: what is it about? I think there are many answers to that, but my answer, in a word, is that it is about belonging. Everything relates back to that in one way or another. Among the other unusual aspects of this book is that it parallels an epic story of adventure but the physical journey was from home to a funeral to work to a pub and back home again. It was so interesting to see the parallels to The Odyssey. I haven’t read The Odyssey in ages, so used an online guide to follow that aspect of the book – it was all there, albeit expressed somewhat differently. Another key element of the book is that it takes place in one day – this is important to remember because the temporal relationships between events and actions are important. There is not a lot of time between events for the characters (or the reader) to process everything that happens. The real journeys in the book are emotional for the characters and intellectual for the reader. Finally, the reader is challened as each episode/chapter/section is a unique reading experience so the book keeps you on your toes.

Leopold Bloom is a middle aged, Jewish man living in a very Catholic country. He has a wife who is cheating on him, lost his son at his birth 11 years prior to the book’s timeline, and is “losing” his daughter as she grows up and moves on with her life. Stephen Dedalus is a student in his early 20s who is trying to figure out what he wants to do and who he is. These two main characters are drawn to each other – a father who lost a son and a son seeking a father – at a challenging point in their lives. They are both grappling with people who are, at best, semi-likable and semi-supportive.

In the early chapters of the book, we generally follow either Stephen or Bloom and see them and their interactions with others through their own eyes or through the eyes of another narrator. Both of these characters are introverted and introspective; both are more intelligent than pretty much anyone else, though there are some people who are smart in different ways. Both Bloom and Stephen consider how they fit in with their families – Bloom prompted by his wife’s affair and the loss of his children and Stephen by his critical father and the fact that he feels he contributed to his mother’s death (by not praying for her). In some ways, they both feel uncertain of who they are and where they go from here. There are so many components in this story that it’s hard to pull out the key elements.

This book switches narrators and structure with each chapter, so the style is sometimes relatively straightforward and other times is maddeningly abstract or convoluted. This is the only book I’ve read with SparkNotes – I reviewed each chapter summary to see if I missed anything. The chapters I enjoyed the most were those that followed Bloom and were a flow of both conscious and subconscious thoughts or perceptions. It’s like being in someone else’s head and that is, to me, fascinating. I feel like I’m being let in on a secret that even Bloom doesn’t realize he is sharing. A number of chapters – particularly those in community settings, such as a pub – had an anonymous narrator and focused more on the broader issues related to “belonging”. These sections often posed question, such as who comprises a nation? Bloom’s father was Hungarian and Jewish and his mother Irish Catholic. He had lived in Ireland all his life, yet his “Irishness” was called into question because of his “Jewishness” – leading him to think about how/where he fits in. In addition, there is a sense that both Bloom and Stephen don’t fit in with the average person because they are quiet and intellectual and, in Stephen’s case, artistic – and that their superiority sort of makes them inferior.

I only disliked chapter 14 – SparkNotes says: “The narrative technique of Episode Fourteen is meant to represent the gestation of the English language. The prose styles of many different time periods, along with the styles of their most famous authors, are replicated and at times parodied in chronological order.” YIKES! It started off essentially in Middle English and moved forward to the 20th century, including slang. Chapter 15 was excessively long and detailed – it was structured as a play but covered a joint dream or hallucination shared by Bloom and Stephen, who had been heavily drinking. The beginning and the ending of the dream were sort of interesting, as both characters faced their guilty consciences over their lifetimes of perceived crimes. The middle went a bit astray for me, as Bloom envisioned himself as a woman who is humiliated (sexually and otherwise) in a brothel by both male and female characters. It’s a bit much and I think it disrupts the story line. Chapter 16 had Bloom and Stephen in a pub and talking about a range of topics. It was interesting, as they had started thinking of each other as replacements for their son and father, respectively, but this chapter raised some challenges to that. They started to note the differences between them, irritate each other and demonstrate that they don’t understand each other the way they thought they did. This chapter also had some of the broader issues of religion and nationality that flow throughout the book. Chapter 17 was in the form of Q&A – part interview and part examination that is more formally a Socratic dialogue. There were about 300 questions and answers that range from very personal thoughts to a discussion of broad goals and “what if” questions. Parts of this chapter were really funny, particularly the “in other words” sections that describe something simple in a convoluted and complicated way. Some of the Q&A was insightful, some informative and some over-the-top. As with a couple of the earlier chapters, some of this goes a little too far for me – too many details.

In the last chapter, we hear from Bloom’s wife Molly. She is a beautiful and “sexual” woman but has only recently started cheating on Bloom, with whom she has not had sex since their son died 11 years ago. Throughout the book Molly Bloom was portrayed as a loose woman who was used by the men in the pub as a way to attack Bloom. This chapter is a true flow of consciousness that did not include punctuation – there were technically 8 sentences that were separated by spacing. It was interesting to finally hear from Molly, as we had met her through other characters, mostly men. When she compared other men in her life (father, uncle, first love, current lover, etc.) to Bloom, they are all left wanting – her husband was the one she trusted and loved. She doesn’t want to leave him and recalled his proposal of marriage and her saying “yes”. I wanted to knock their heads together; I hoped that maybe they would get back together and would be a true couple again.

I enjoyed the chapters that were more about internal dialogues and internal processing of information, particularly with the main character Leopold Bloom. The multiple narrators and perspectives made it possible to see the characters internally and externally. The emotional journey of the characters was portrayed as part of an arc – we saw snippets and had to deduce what they meant in the person’s life; we heard broad statements and had to induce what they meant for the characters. Since we only visited them for a day, it was important to remember that we only see a small piece of their emotional arc.

With Bloom, we saw a good man who knows his wife will be sleeping with someone else that afternoon, in his own bed. He aches with that thought and yet is paralyzed to stop it. He attends a friend’s funeral and sees life passing him by. He visits with Stephen Dadelus and misses his son, who died as an infant. He is an outsider in society, in his community and in his own home. Stephen is a young man trying to make his way in the world, who doesn’t want to be tied to his father or his siblings, who are very poor. He pulls away from them and toward Bloom, but he feels guilty, which triggers his feelings of guilt about his mother’s death.

The book is very long – a little too long here and there – but engages intellectually in a way that I have not read since The Canterbury Tales back in college. This is the only book since then for which I actually needed a reading guide to make sure I was understanding what was being said and how it compared to other literature, particularly The Odyssey. With most books, I rely on my own interpretation, but not this one. It is bold and provocative, yet incredibly frustrating at times. It’s a book that needs multiple readings to understand all of what is there – if you have the energy for it!