Ulysses (1922) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

show spoilers

Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

• Stephen: Stephen Dedalus , artist and thinker crosses parts with Leopold Bloom's earthy desire on a circuitous ramble in Dublin city and environs real and imagined on 16th June 1904.
• Mr Bloom: My poor little Poldy
• Joe: Hey Joe!
• Stephen Dedalus: The main character of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses begins with this character. Dedalus is cerebral, brooding, and unwashed (he's hydrophobic). Having not prayed at his mother's death-bed, he is alienated from his family. He remains aloof from those around him in Dublin. He is the Telemachus figure in this book, but certainly is not simply the "son", as the Odyssey connection is purposely problematic.
• Leopold Bloom: Leopold Bloom is the main character of Ulysses, and person of many things. He is both a Jew (not really, as his mother was not Jewish, and he has not adopted Judaism personally, though he is constantly perceived as a Jew by others around him) and a Christian (a Protestant by birth, though a Catholic convert in marriage). He is anti-heroic, not conquering, but rather unconquered, in contrast with Boylan. He is a cuckold and feels a scorned man, though also a cheat himself. We follow him through his day, entering his thoughts at times, accessing him through the perceptions of other characters at other times, and at other times still accessing him through nameless narrators and impersonal forms. He loves his wife and longs for bygone times, he grieves for his son, he misses his daughter, he considers and entertains other women, he is a voyeur, a father-figure, a thinker, an outcast, and a man who triumphs the small, daily journey.
• Molly Bloom: Yes, Yes, Yes
• Simon Dedalus: Simple Simon
• Alf: Add a description of this character.
• Buck Mulligan
• Haines
• Blazes Boylan
• Mr Deasy
• Mr Power
• Millie Bloom
• Mary
• Boylan
• Dignam
• Molly
• Leopold
• Myles Crawford
• Mr. Joyce
• Richie
• Hynes
• Kinch
• Douce
• Terry
• Davy Byrne
• Kennedy
• Tommy
• Martha
• Bob Doran
• Mr Kernan
• Martin Cunningham
• Ned Lambert
• Lenehan
• Mr O’madden Burke
• Garrett Deasy
• Mrs Breen
• Harry
• Jack
• Malachi
• Jack Power
• Ben Dollard
• J. J. O'Molloy
• John Eglinton
• Lynch
• A.E.
• Gerty MacDowell
• Edy Boardman
• Tommy Caffrey
• Cissy Caffrey
• Jacky Caffrey
• Bella Cohen
• The Citizen
• Joe Hynes
• Richard Best
• Richie Goulding
• Walter Goulding
• Martha Clifford
• John Henry Menton
• Sara (Sally) Goulding
• Joe Hynes
• Episode Twelve's Nameless Narrator
• Mina Kennedy
• Lydia Douce
• Zoe Higgins
• Mrs. Dignam
• Paddy Dignam
• Kitty Ricketts
• Josie (Powell) Breen
• Denis Breen
• Dilly, Katey, Boody, and Maggy Dedalus
• Corny Kelleher
• Thomas W. Lyster
• City Councillor Nannetti
• Florry Talbot

Quotes edit see section history

• “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.”

  Opening words

• “History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

  Ulysses

• “I fear those big words, Stephen said, which make us so unhappy.”

  Ulysses

• “We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame.”

  Haines

• “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.”

  Stephen Dedalus

• “Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.”

  Stephen Dedalus

• “Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.”

  Leopold Bloom

• “A nation is the same people living in the same place.”

  Leopold Bloom

• “The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.”

  Ulysses

• “Love loves to love love.”

• “I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

  Molly Bloom

• “Her who is in her pure radiance a beacon ever to the storm-tossed heart of man, Mary”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• —History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

  Highlighted by 17 Kindle customers

• Ineluctable modality of the visible:

  Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers

• a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.

  Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers

• When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once...

  Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers

• Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.

  Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers

• In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be.

  Highlighted by 6 Kindle customers

• —The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Dedalus,

  Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers

• Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.

  Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers

• Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.

  Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers

• Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.

  Highlighted by 4 Kindle customers

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Dublin
• Ireland
• London
• Paris: in memories
• Gibraltar: in memories
• England
• Spain
• Egypt
• Europe
• Mullingar: in correspondence
• Holles
• Rome
• City Arms
• Belfast
• America
• Gumley
• Castile
• Galway
• Sandymount
• Stratford
• Jerusalem
• Kingstown
• Glasnevin
• Connemara
• China
• Kilkenny
• Canada
• Killarney
• Pembroke
• Wales
• Hungary
• Greece
• Israel
• Szombathely
• Merrion
• Vienna

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Followed by The Great Gatsby.

Preceded by 1984, and followed by Lolita.

Preceded by Fear, and followed by Catch-22.

Preceded by The Woman in White, and followed by Bleak House.

Preceded by Animal Farm, and followed by The Catcher in the Rye.

Preceded by Notes from a Small Island, and followed by The Bell Jar.

Preceded by War and Peace, and followed by Remembrance of Things Past.

Preceded by Main Street, and followed by The Fox.

Preceded by Lolita, and followed by Animal Farm.

Preceded by White Noise, and followed by Blood Meridian.

Preceded by Lolita, and followed by The Tartar Steppe.

Preceded by Pale Fire, and followed by Gravity's Rainbow.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. James Joyce (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• BBC's Big Read (April 2003, #78)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PR6019.O9
• Dewey: 823.912

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Authors, A-Z › ( J ) › Joyce, James
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Classics

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Ulysses by James Joyce: Link to the book in fulltext provided by Project Gutenberg.

Movie Connections edit see section history

• Ulysses (IMDb): 1967 release.

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history