Different views on war.
When the first world war broke out many young man volunteered for military
service. At first the war seemed an adventure and the soldiers thought its was
for noble ends. After the slaughter of many British soldiers during the battle of
the Somme in 1916, the sense of pride and exhilaration was replaced by doubt
and disillutionment. Since the beginning, soldiers have improvised verses,
genuine songs about the war, which never reached the rich people living
confortably at home. However, a group of poets who experienced the fighting
managed to represent modern warfare in a realistic and uncovenventional way,
awakening the conscience of the readers back home about the horrors of war.
The most famous war poets were Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen.
Ulysees.
First came out in Paris in 1922. It was turned out by publishing houses because
the book was considered obscene. In England it was banned until 1936.
Joyce used the epic method. He wants to stress the lack of heroism, ideals, love
and trust in the modern world, the epic structure becomes a mirror in which to
reflect the modern waste land. (Working of myth)
To convey the life of an individual in a single day, and the lack of a dramatic
plot Joyce decided to give every single detail of that day and the characters’
process of thinking, so he uses the strem-of-consciousness’ technique. In fact,
some of the best passage of Ulysses are characterised by the uninterrupted
flow of thoughts.
Ulysses is modelled on the Odyssey. The twenty four hours of Bloom’s Day
correspond to the twenty four books of the Odyssey. Joyce with this comparison
wants to highlight the limitation ìs and lack of heroism of the modern novel. For
example, if Ulysses is exalted by Homer a man who has ‘’seen many cities of
men’’, Leopold Bloom only knows Dublin.
Every character of Ulysses corresponds to a character of the Odissey. For
example, Sthepen Dedalus is Thelemacus, and Molly, Bloom’s wife, is
Phenelope but unlike her he isn’t faithful.
The plot
Ulysses tells the story of a day, June 16,1904, in the life of Leopold Bloom, a
Dubliner of Jewish origin who works as an advertising agent. He is the Ulysses
of the title, and wanders about the streets of Dublin just as Homer’s Ulysses
wandered about the Mediterranean. What happens to Bloom is far less heroic,
it is, in fact, quite banal and common. He lives the ordinary life of a common
man, and by the end of the day he ends up in a brothel where at midnight he
meets Stephen Daedalus and takes him home with him.
Stephen is the central character of the first part of Ulysses, he is a sensitive
young man with litirary ambitions who feels frustated by Irish provincial life. He
is in search of a House, but lso of a father figure, which he eventually finds in
Bloom.
