Family in "Ulysses"

Analytical Essay # 53344

English > Analysis
Literature > European (other)

Family in "Ulysses"

A discussion of the theme of family in James Joyce's "Ulysses".

3,064 words () | 5 sources | MLA | 2004 United Kingdom

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how within "Ulysses" the family, its nature and its complex life are one of the central issues of Joyce's work. It looks at how Joyce demonstrates a vivid awareness of what it entails to be a member of a family, with a deep sense of its roles and commitments, the tensions and emotions generated within family life and how that life is intensely concerned with the past and with the wider society surrounding it. It shows how in order to define his concept of family and present elements of human nature which diminish its bonds, Joyce constructed very detailed scenes involving human activities such as voyeurism, gluttony, dementia and other destructive tendencies and how the deviance of these activities was emphasized by Joyce in order to evaluate why flawed human beings have difficulty maintaining healthy family relationships.

From the Paper:

"In the process of examining the dynamics of family relationships, Joyce delved into explorations of deviance in Ulysses in order to display profound insights into the role deviance plays in human relationships, as well as the negative influence it can have on family cohesiveness. The novel presents the insides of families, private peculiarities underneath conventional form, portraying interior experience at the perceptual level. While the families in Ulysses take conventional outward forms, both families we see close up suffer. Stephen's family is Dickensian, having been wracked by increasing poverty and degradation and demoralised further by the recent death of Stephen's mother. His young sisters struggle to stay together, even to have enough to eat, evoking a deep pathos. Stephen, arrogant, isolated and troubled by his mother's ghost, remains aloof."