Ana Sofa Gonzlez Saravia Pea

Going into Hades: The dead amongst the living in James Joyces Ulysses.

In Hades, the sixth episode of James Joyces Ulysses, the parallel between the novel and Homers Odyssey is perhaps the one which is best established in the book. However, this parallel is portrayed as a parody, turning the heroic descent of Ulysses into the Underworld, as well as his encounters with the souls of the perished heroes into a cotidian event: the attending of a funeral. By modernizing Ulysses epic

encounter with death, Joyce takes on iconic images from Greek mythology and sets them in early twentieth Century Dublin to portray the different ways death is present in everyday life, as well as the impossibility we have of bringing the dead back to our lives through our memory. The first iconic image the Joyce transforms from Homers Odyssey is the journey of the hero to the realm of the dead. In order to find Teresias and come up with a solution to his misfortunes, Ulysses goes to the underworld in a ship with his seamen. The same way, at the beginning of the episode, Leopold Bloom and his acquaintances enter a carriage

following the casket of a dead man that will take them to the modern-day cemetery. Hades, There, a place inhabited by the dead: take the

Paddy

Dignams

funeral

will

place.

However, as custom has it, the carriage must first pay its respects to the dead man by riding through the center of the city. Thus, Ulysses procession to the underworld is

transported to Dublin, where the Irish seamen bring the dead to the world of the living before going to land

inhabited by the dead. This incursion of the dead in the world of the living is not limited to the presence of Dignam in the journey, but is expanded throughout the episode by the constant memories Bloom has of his dead son and father, as well as the numerous stories regarding death told by his companions. The journey Bloom and his Dubliner seamen must take is, then, paralleled to the journey Ulysses makes in order to cross the Lethe and reach the underworld. However, this trip is parodied and vulgarized because the carriage that takes the procession into the cemetery is, unlike Ulysses ship, old and tattered. makes At first, the the one movement made by a and sound the

carriage

imitates

ship:

Their

carriage began to move, creaking and swaying, (78) but as the episode progresses, that effect becomes distorted. By the moment they reach Watery lane, the ship no longer sways,

but rattles, a sound which is accentuated by the alliteration of Joyces prose: The wheels rattled rolling over the

cobbled causeway and the crazy windows shook rattling in the doorframes. (78) The same way, instead of sailing on the mythical waters of the Lethe, the carriage passes on the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway. (78)Before it reaches the cemetery, Blooms ship comes across the grand canal (79) a river which, much like the Lethe, the heroes must cross in order to the reach the realm of the dead. The same way, once theyve crossed the river, the sky turns

cloudy just like in the Odyssey, when Apollo hides the sun from the people in the Underworld. The second parallel in the novel is established through the relationship both heroes have with the dead. When Ulysses goes further down to the underworld, the spirits of his dead friends visit him. The same way when Bloom goes to the

cemetery, the spirits of his dead son and father hover over his mind. When he first notices the attention Dignams body attracts, the image of the preparation of his sons wake comes to his mind: Slop about in slipperslappers for fear hed wake. Then getting it ready. Laying it out. Molly and Mrs Fleming making the bed. Pull it more to your side. Our

windingsheet. Never know who will touch your dead. (77) However, the reader is not aware that Bloom is referring to his son until later on, when he witnesses the strained and dissaproving relationship between Stephen Dedalus and his father: If little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. (79) The same thing happens some moments after when the memories of his dead father come into his mind. Thus, through his memory, Bloom acts the same as Ulysses in Hades: he tries to bring the dead in contact with the living. However, the big

difference between Ulysses and Blooms interaction with the dead is that while the former establishes a dialogue with the spirit of the deceased, the latter cannot. As Ulysses brings the dead back to life in his visit to the Underworld, Bloom tries to recreate them through his memory; however this turns out to be unsuccessful because his dead are mute and,

therefore, cannot participate in a dialogue. In the Odyssey, the stories and thoughts of the spirits of the Greek heroes are told by themselves. Ulysses mother tells him of her death, as does Achilles and Ajax. However in Ulysses, the stories of the dead in Dublin are told by the living since in the modern world, the dead do not possess a

voice

of

their

own

or

consciousness.

Yet,

the

dead

are

present all the time, and even though they cannot speak, their presence is a constant in the everyday speech of the living. All through the procession, the men accompanying

Bloom in the carriage share anecdotes, jokes and stories relating to the recently dead. One example of this is the story of the Jewish loaners son, who tried to kill himself in the river. However, he was rescued by a boatman to whom his father paid a florin. This story is relevant to the Homeric imagery portrayed in this episode since we have the three main elements found at the entrance of Hades: the Lethe, the boatman, and the coin one must pay him to cross into the Underworld. That way, by telling stories, the men bring the departed back to the world of the living through narrative and speech. It is implied, then, that the dead are never really gone, but that their spirits roam in the memories of the living. That way, one could think of the human mind and memory as another representation of Hades, apart from the cemetery, since the spiritual form of the dead are constantly coming from there. The presence of the dead in the everyday life is, not limited to oral speech, but is also present in written

language. The obituaries in the newspaper Bloom carries are an example of this and Bloom compares the presence of the

dead to the fading characters of the obituaries as he reads them on the carriage: Inked characters fast fading on the frayed breaking paper (80). The memory of the departed is as blurry and temporary as the ink in the newspaper, whose frayed breaking paper resembles the fragility of the human mind. Another example of the material and written presence of the dead in the world of the living are the inscriptions of the graves Bloom reads when he However, unlike the obituaries, arrives to the they serve not cemetery. only to

preserve the memory of the dead, but to remind the living of their own mortality: How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed. As you are now so once were we. (86) In that that sentence, the dead are given a voice, an action which is repeated shortly after when Bloom thinks about giving them gramophones in order to preserve their memory through their voice: Well, the voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house []. Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn't remember the face after fifteen years, say. (87) However, unlike the dead heroes in the Odyssey, the dead in Dublin are inarticulate since the only thing Bloom

thinks

dead

person

could

say

is:Kraahraark!

Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth. This is because no matter how the dead flood the everyday life with their absent

presence, the will never become the human beings they used to be; they are doomed to exist as a collage of memories and feelings put together by the mind of the living. Thus, despite the constant presence of the dead in everyday life, Bloom will never have the consolation and catharsis because he Ulysses can had when really he visited to the the Underworld dead. Their

never

talk

presence is ephemeral and fading, and is always a reminder of their absence; a reminder that they only live as

ghosts, incomplete recreations of a human being that will never exist again. By parodying Ulysses descent to Hades, Joyce illustrates the impossibility of this heroic feat; he shows the reader that the dead are always with us in their incompleteness and that by trying to pursue them we will always be faced with their eternal absence.

WORKS CITED: Joyce, James. Ulysses. Hertfordshire, Britain: Wordsworth

Classics. 1932.