Malaise and Cannibalism: Wells’ Fate of Humanity

The character known as the Time Traveler begins his story by demanding, “Follow me carefully. I shall have to controvert one or two ideas that are almost universally accepted”[1]. His request serves as a catalyst for H.G. Wells to metastasize our contemporary world into the futuristic landscape depicted in The Time Machine (1895). In this novel, Wells provides the reader with a depiction of the pinnacle of the modern city’s evolution. While the city itself evolves into its most efficient form, its citizens degenerate into beings that are barely recognizable as humans.

London circa 802,701 A.D. consists of two separate human subspecies sharing the same urban space. On the surface, the Eloi spend their time “playing gently, bathing in the river, making love in a half-playful fashion, eating fruit, and sleeping”[2]. Conversely, their counterparts, the Morlocks, populate a subterranean industrial realm devoid of any light. London itself is a picturesque urban landscape devoid of any trash, crowds, or industry. Numerous parks and gardens accent the urban space with a slight pastoral serenity. Also, the Eloi live in giant palaces as opposed thousands of individual houses. The vegetation provides a renewable food source while the Thames supplies pristine drinking water. Initially, Wells’ future London appears to be the paradigm of urban living.

After telling the tale of this travels to his dinner guests, the Time Traveler laments, “I grieved to think how brief the dream of human intellect had been. It had committed suicide”[3]. As the Time Traveler explores this immaculate city, he begins to realize that as the city grew, humanity died. Already in 1895, Wells noticed the city pushing the industrial zones to its outskirts in order to maintain a more desirable living space. Soon, as the Time Traveler explains, the city identifies a “tendency to utilize underground space for the less ornamental purposes of civilization” such as subways, sewers, and eventually industry[4]. Just as the city pushed its industry further from society, the factory workers themselves slowly traveled beyond the pale of humanity. The Time Traveler proposes the rhetorical question, “Even now, does not an East-end worker live in such artificial conditions as practically to be cut off from the natural surface of the earth?” as a contemporary allegory to explain how the Morlocks came into existence. These “East-end workers” eventually became so adapted and conditioned to their labor, they paradoxically became “as happy in their own way as the upper-world people were to theirs”[5]. Differently put, the factory workers became so alienated from a socially acceptable form of existence, they elected to embrace a life of oppressive labor and toil as “normal”.

Wells identifies another theme of alienation common to this project: labor having a physical effect on the worker. For the Eloi, their labor is pleasure. They spend their days laying on cushions, eating fruit, and having sex. Accordingly, the Time Traveler declares they “decayed into a mere futility”[6]. The Eloi are illiterate and barely have enough mental capacity to form two word sentences. Without any physical labor, their bodies are soft, androgynous, and frail. In other words, they are cattle. On the other hand, the Morlocks evolve into nimble underground dwellers. Hundreds of thousands of years worth of mindless, mechanized labor transformed the factory worker into a “human rat” who only scurries to the surface to capture and later eat the Eloi.

Contrasting Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway, Wells’ futuristic London runs on no schedule other than that of the moon. Clearly, the Eloi have little need for time, as do the Morlocks. However, the Time Traveler learns that the Eloi dread a new moon as a result of the pitch-black nights creating an ideal circumstance for the Morlocks to hunt. After eons of living in the dark, the Morlocks developed both supreme night vision and an aversion to light. Accordingly, a new moon provides a perfect time for them to prowl the surface in search of Eloi. Although the city became so efficient it no longer needs time to keep its minions on schedule, Wells suggests that nature will take control of time to enable the survival, and further evolution, of earth’s inhabitants.

Another common component of this project absent in The Time Machine is the reliance upon personal collections to abate alienation. Both the Eloi and Morlocks dwell in what the Time Traveler describes as absolute Communism. Not once throughout his adventure does the Time Traveler interact with anything that qualifies as private property. Everything in London is shared from the Eloi’s living space to the cannibalistic haul of a Morlock hunt. Furthermore, there is no form of currency in Wells’ world. For both the Morlock and the Eloi, their labor yields a tangible reward: the Morlock receives food while the Eloi earns pleasure.

Upon further reflection, one can argue there is no alienation in Wells’ London of the future. The Oxford Dictionary’s definition of alienation is “the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved”[7]. Both the Eloi and Morlocks evolved both physically and social beyond our understanding of “humanity”. Thus, we are unable to effectively declare a baseline of normal behavior based upon the Time Traveler’s brief adventure. Therefore, we do not witness the attempts to combat alienation prevalent throughout this project in The Time Machine. There is no sailor showing a bunch of drunks a switchblade he bought in Italy nor does anyone own a photo of a pretty girl named Daisy. In Wells’ world, there are only two types species of beings embracing the only life they will ever know.

The Time Machine illustrates the potential fate for a humanity that continues to chose physical comfort at home and mindless labor in the work place over a life based on the search for intellectual enlightenment and defense of the individual will. While the modern city continues to lull us in a false comfort in exchange for our submission to its grand design, we slowly convert from human to automaton. Wells’ tale serves as a staunch warning to the reader: defend the existence of human intellect.

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[1] H.G. Wells, The Time Machine (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1995), 3.

[2] Ibid., 35.

[3] Ibid., 65.

[4] Ibid., 41.

[5] Ibid., 42.

[6] Ibid., 48.

[7]“Definition for Alienation,” Oxford English Dictionary, accessed 31 August 2012, http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/american_english/alienation?region=us&q=alienation.

A Pocket Knife and a Plate of Bananas: Virginia Woolf's Cure for Common Loneliness

            While talking to Peter Walsh at Clarissa Dalloway’s party, Sally Seton takes a minute to reflect on the party’s guests who represent a cross-section London’s social elite. While she is surrounded by many prominent figures, Sally realizes that despite their positions in government or various London establishments, they are all total strangers. Sally asks herself, “For what can one know even of the people one lives with everyday?”[1]This theme of never fully knowing another person is a prevalent theme throughout Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1925). While other works examined in this project focus on the feeling of isolation and alienation generated by city itself, Woolf feels that other people paradoxically make one feel isolated and lonely. Furthermore, she raises the debate that we are incapable of even knowing ourselves and, as Sally Seton believes, that we are prisoners serving time in a prison with invisible walls.

            Before Woolf begins to portray the alienation between friends and family, she alludes to some familiar themes discussed earlier in this project. Specifically, Big Ben’s thunderous chime snaps characters out of daydreams and forces them to get back on task. When Mrs. Dalloway introduces her daughter, Elizabeth, to Peter Walsh, London’s taskmaster interrupts their conversation. “The sound of Big Ben striking the half-hour,” explains the narrator, “stuck out between them with extraordinary vigor, as if a young man, strong, indifferent, inconsiderate, were swinging dumb bells this way and that”[2]. Throughout the novel, Big Ben serves as the city’s puppet master with his auditory cue manipulating the characters’ actions and ultimately maintains their complicit cooperation in the city’s grand design.

            As the majority of Woolf’s characters entangle themselves into British high society, the reader can not help but detect the loneliness and depression of her characters while they navigate the elite social circles. After Peter Walsh sits down on a bench in Regent’s Park, the narrator makes the nihilist declaration, “Nothing exists outside of us but our state of mind”[3]. Walsh then begins a thought process that yields a concept he coins as “the solitary traveler”, or one who journeys through world knowing only strangers and never socially connecting with another human being. Strangely, Woolf feels being lonely is almost a noble character trait. While Mrs. Dalloway stares at her husband, she thinks to herself, “And there is a dignity in people; a solitude; even between husband and wife a gulf; and that one must respect”[4]. Remarkably, Woolf continues to push her theme of dominating loneliness further by claiming that we are apparitions while our true self needs us to die if it is to come into existence.

            Similar to those of Joyce, Woolf’s characters use collections and personal interior space to abate their misery. The book’s most tragic figure, Septimus Smith, exhibits such behavior. Smith has a severe form of PTSD following seeing his friend, only known as Evans, die on the Italian front of World War I. His hallucinations transform an idyllic scene in Regent’s Park into a hellish landscape of flames, tortured screams, and Evans’ dead body. Septimus is clearly isolated from everything to include reality itself. His wife is forced to commit him to a psychiatric hospital run by a famous psychiatrist named Sir William Bradshaw.

            Before going to the hospital, Septimus awakes from a deep sleep in his apartment and notices his wife making a hat for a friend’s daughter. Suddenly, Septimus began to realize his surroundings are actually real and not some nightmare. Woolf describes his awakening:

“First he looked at the fashion papers on the lower shelf, then, gradually at the gramophone with the green trumpet. Nothing could be more exact. Therefore, gathering courage, he looked at the side board; plate of bananas, the engraving of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort; at the mantelpiece, with the jar of roses. None of these things moved. All were still; all were real”[5].

Instantly, Septimus prepares for the return of his hallucinations. However, after a brief pause, he notices he is still safe in his apartment with his wife. The narrator states, “He was alone with the sideboard and the bananas...As for the visions, the faces, the voices of the dead, where are they?”[6]. One can hardly consider the commonplace items in Septimus’ apartment as a unique collection; however, despite their banal nature, the Smiths placed them in their apartment in accordance with their free will. Sadly, Septimus commits suicide when his physician, Dr. Holmes, arrives to take him to the psychiatric hospital. Before that tragic event, Septimus enjoyed a brief reprieve from his illness because of the effect created by the objects in his apartment.

            Although he does not suffer to the same extent as Septimus, Mrs. Dalloway’s rejected suitor Peter Walsh also relies on his personal belongings to establish a sense of familiarity amidst a sterile sense of social solitude. After his failed marriage proposal to Clarissa Dalloway, Walsh escaped the embarrassing, failed proposal by traveling to India to become a planter. Sadly, he fails at this endeavor as well and returns to England in hopes of reuniting with old friends. However, Mrs. Dalloway, as does the rest of London’s social elite, wants nothing to do with him. When he attends the Dalloway’s party, he instantly knows it is a mistake. “He should have stayed at home and read his book,” thinks Walsh, “Should have gone to a music hall; he should have stayed at home, for he knew no one”[7]. He awkwardly rides out the social tension until he is afforded to opportunity to quietly leave the part later that night.

Unlike Septimus, Walsh does not have a place he calls “home” because of his recent return from India. Instead, he lives in a hotel. While sitting in the hotel’s lobby, Walsh reflects, “Hotels are not consoling places. Far from it. Any number of people had hung up their hats on those pegs. Even the flies, if you think about it, had settled on other people’s noses”[8]. Like Joyce’s mariner, Walsh’s transports his valuables in his pocket as a result of his transient nature. Accordingly, his two most valued possessions are a pocketknife, which he opens and closes whenever he is nervous, and photograph of Daisy- a women twenty years his junior who is going to leave her husband and marry Walsh. Walsh relies on Daisy’s photograph to suppress his undying love for Clarissa. While looking photo of the attractive Daisy sitting on a veranda, Walsh thinks to himself, “Of course, of course, she would give him everything!...Everything he wanted!...Running to meet him whoever might be looking”[9]. One can also say that Walsh relies on Daisy’s picture to help him forget the fact that he has failed at everything he attempted to accomplish in life.

Woolf introduces the paradoxical notion that other people are capable of making us feel just as lonely as if we were stranded on a deserted island. She goes on to claim that since we are incapable of understanding ourselves, it is impossible for us to truly understand another person. In other words, those whom we consider family and friends are really just strangers who we pretend to understand. Of note, the reader notices Woolf’s characters seeking refuge in personal space in the same manner of Joyce’s cast. Clearly, this bond identifies a prevalent human reaction.

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[1] Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1981), 192.

[2] Ibid., 48.

[3] Ibid., 57.

[4] Ibid., 120.

[5] Ibid., 142.

[6] Ibid., 145.

[7] Ibid., 167.

[8] Ibid., 155.

[9]Ibid., 157.

A Dead Owl, Broke Clock, and Bonzai Tree: Collections and Alienation

            In Book III of Ulysses, James Joyce focuses more on the interior of urban space as opposed to the exterior realm comprising of crowded city streets and a portico of shops and restaurants. As Joyce graphically portrays his characters’ interaction with what little space they call their own, the reader notices characters relying on personal collections in an attempt to abate the dominating feelings of alienation common to the city streets. Each item serves as a tangible apparatus for the collector to reconnect with an event or moment in time that was significant and unlike the perpetual monotony of their contemporary existence. Collections empower us to craft an environment that affects us in a manner of our choosing and thus temporarily breaks the city’s control.

            In addition to the forms of alienation mentioned throughout this project, Joyce introduces one last example before he allows his characters to return home: communication. As the world became more connected, cities became much more cosmopolitan as opposed to the culturally homogenous version of their former selves. Accordingly, one slowly became less able to communicate with his neighbors when foreigners looking to take part in a budding economy moved to the city and brought both their languages and culture with them. While walking to a cabmen’s shelter, Bloom and Dedalus overhear Italian men arguing. Bloom remarks, “A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not write your poetry into the language? Bella Peotria! it is so melodious and full”[1]. Dedalus, who speaks several languages including Italian, informs Bloom the men were simply arguing over money. Bloom then ponders the possibility of “there being more languages to start with than were absolutely necessary”[2]. Thus, the loss of a universal language degrades one’s ability to communicate and breeds a form of alienation. Instead of enjoying moving through the city with the confidence of being able to communicate with strangers, one finds himself in a modern Tower of Babel.

            At the cabmen’s shelter, Dedalus and Bloom meet a grizzled mariner. It is worth noting that the sailor has something in common with both men: traveling. However, his travels occur on a global scale and thus expose him to experiences much more diverse and uncommon when compared to the daily interactions of Bloom and Dedalus. In addition, and once again similar to both men, the sailor’s travels afflict him with a sense of boredom and melancholy. “I’m tired of all them rocks in the sea,” the mariner grumbles, “and boats and ships. Salt and junk all the time”[3]. As he recounts his travels, the mariner produces items from his pocket serving as confirmation to the validity of his exotic stories. While most people enjoy the space of and entire domicile, the mariner’s collection is limited to what he can fit in his pockets. Being on a busy ship, his pockets are really the only space he can call his own and maintain absolute control over their contents and the subsequent generated effect. During his tale, the mariner produces a postcard form Peru portraying natives who, according to the mariner, “eats corpses and the livers of horses”[4]. To validate a tale of watching a man kill another man in Trieste, the mariner displays a stiletto knife. He also shows the gathered crowd another part of his collection: his tattoos. Similar to controlling what goes in his pockets, the sailor controls what is etched into his flesh. His crude, blue anchor is his way of connecting with the tradition of his trade. While exhausted from his travels, the mariner uses his collection to connect with the reason why he first sailed out to sea:  to behold the exotic parts of the world he would otherwise never see.

            After hearing the mariner’s tale, the two men return to Bloom’s house for a cup of coffee. Despite Bloom’s offer of a place to spend the night, Dedalus leaves Bloom standing by himself mentally exploring every inch of his living room. His gaze turns to a broken clock stopped at the hour 4:46, an embalmed owl, and dwarfed tree. These three dissimilar objects all have one commonality: they are wedding gifts. Bloom then looks in a mirror and sees an “image of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) man”[5]. These “aliorelative” feelings caused Bloom to realize that “from maturity to senility he would increasingly  resemble his paternal procreator”[6]. Of note, Bloom’s father committed suicide by overdosing on laudanum during Bloom’s adolescence. Before gazing on this collection of wedding gifts, Bloom rummages through a draw and finds what Joyce vaguely describes as a suicide note from his father. Oddly, the suicide note elicits no emotional response from Bloom while these three objects strangely assure him that he is slowly turning into a physical manifestation of his father. Clearly, a broke clock, stuffed owl, and bonsai tree are not common items in most living rooms. Bloom has them displayed for a reason.

            In the final chapter of the book, titled “Penelope”, Molly unleashes a lurid, relentless stream of consciousness upon the reader. As Jeri Johnson identifies, there are only eight sentences in the entire chapter with the first one being 2500 words in length. Unbeknownst to Bloom, Molly had sex with another man before he arrived home. When he crawls into bed, Bloom kisses Molly’s buttocks and goes to sleep. This physical act reminds Molly how much she is disgusted by her husband. As she lies next to him, Molly recalls her previous sexual exploits and how each of her lovers where in some way superior to her husband. However, she ultimately comes to the same conclusion at the end of each memory: all men are flawed. While contemplating men as a whole, Molly reflects, “There is always something wrong with them disease or they have to go under an operation of if its not that its drink and he beats her”[7]. Her thoughts continue to form the same repetitive thought cycle: 1) My husband is awful 2) I have had sex with someone much more attractive or successful 3) However, he was also flawed 4) There is no such thing as a perfect man. Her mental process of recalling scores of very particular details suggests that memories themselves can serve as collections. Molly’s recollections of wild times in Gibraltar or gallant young army officers abate the gloomy fact that she will never be truly happy with any man.

            Collections are a way to create an environment that generates a desired effect. In a world in which we appear to have very control over our daily lives, collections empower us with a degree of absolute control. Collections to place what we want, where we want, and can keep it there for as long as we want. This absolute control helps us deal with the prevailing sense of alienation. However, Benjamin cautioned us that the more “outside” objects we bring into our home, the more our space begins to resemble the city. Luckily, we all are the ones for defining this threshold.

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[1] James Joyce, Ulysses, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 578.

[2] Ibid., 578.

[3] Ibid., 585.

[4] Ibid., 581.

[5] Ibid., 660.

[6] Ibid., 660.

[7] Ibid., 719.

Honking Horns and Gunshots: The City's Siren Lullabye

            As one follows both the journeys of Leopold Bloom and Stephan Dedalus, Joyce’s motif of the city fostering a sense of indifference to what otherwise are discomforting factors confronts the reader. Just as Odysseus must resist the temptation of the “honey-sweet music”[1] of the Sirens, modern urban dwellers must fight against the city’s attempts to lull them into a sense of numbness and apathy. Whether it is alienation in a massive crowd or accepting violence as a part of daily life, Joyce beckons to the reader to become aware of what the city places into our sub-consciousness.

            While Dedalus and his friends chat about Shakespeare and Aristotle in the National Library, Dedalus informs his audience, “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 we are meeting ourselves”[2]. When one applies this claim to the examination of Bloom and Dedalus’ experiences, we understand that each interaction is identical to those previous. This also holds true for each of us. Our interactions with strangers are duplications of our previous interactions. Although meeting someone new may seem like a novel experience, there is an a priori commonality between that encounter and all the others you had during the course of your life. Despite this similarity, meeting new people has the potential to foster a sense of alienation. In other words, if you meet new strangers everyday, you may begin to feel like you are alone and know very few people whom you call “friends”.

            This notion of avoiding to view each interaction as a separate instance and instead viewing life a single, perpetual encounter buttresses Benjamin’s claim that the flanuer’s ability to transcend the crowd stems from him viewing the city as a whole house instead of millions of separate rooms. As stated previously, a single object is much easier to comprehend than a million separate entities.

            In the “Wondering Rocks” chapter, Joyce describes 18 individual Dubliners’ experiences. These narratives range from Father Conmee pondering Dublin’s tram system to Patrick Dingman, son of his deceased namesake, returning home from the butcher’s shop. Joyce transports the reader to random locations throughout Dublin, places him in a character’s head for a few pages, and then yanks him by the collar to another part of town. Naturally, “Wondering Rocks” is a confusing beehive of humanity. However, Joyce reserves the chapter’s last portion for a brilliant move: he combines each separate narrative into a single, concise story that truncates after a mere page and a half. In other words, Joyce forces 18 separate individuals into a single, coherent mass: the crowd. The reader is then able to rapidly grasp an understanding of the “Wondering Rocks” characters’ interaction by viewing them as a single mass of humanity rather than separate individuals.

            Joyce then identifies how the city’s omnipresent cacophony endeavors to lull us into an apathetic state. In the chapter aptly labeled “Sirens”, Joyce bombards the reader with the sounds of the Ormond Hotel’s bar. He initially introduces a few clinks of glass and clanks of silverware; however, he increases the noise until it blends with the chapter’s narrative and ultimately become indistinguishable. Miss Kennedy replies to Miss Douce with a “deep laughter, after bronze in gold, they urged each to peal after peal, ringing in changes, brozegold goldbroze, shrilldeep, to laughter after laugher”[3]. Joyce is suggesting that we forfeit the right to enjoy only sounds we find pleasurable once we enter the urban space. The city’s cacophony eventually blends in the background until we do not even notice it. For example, we all have friends who live next to freeways or airports. When we first arrive at their house, we cannot help but notice the persistent din in the background. However, by the end of dinner, we hardly notice the 747 screaming over the roof of the house of the host.

            In addition to lulling us into a sense of alienation in a crowd of thousands of individuals shouting at each other over the din of speeding cabs and honking horns, Joyce also mentions that the city makes violence and crime much more palatable to us. In the “Cyclops” chapter, Joyce recalls the execution of Richard Rumbold- a Cromwellian soldier who attempted to start a rebellion in Scotland and was subsequently hung, drawn and quartered in 1685. Joyce describes Rumbold’s public execution as a very lively affair. “Every lady in the audience was presented with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion,” narrates Joyce, “in the shape of a skull and crossbones brooch”[4]. He does not describe the executioner as a man; rather, a mechanical monstrosity “concealed in a tengallon pot with two circular perforated apertures through which his eyes glowed furiously”[5]. Finally, Joyce takes the time to praise the high quality of the instruments that would eventually eviscerate Rumbold and hack off his limbs while he was still alive. After all, Rumbold’s death was not a grisly execution; rather, entertainment for the masses.

            Violence and crime are an accepted aspect of urban dwelling. While dwelling in Dublin’s Redlight district, Bloom reminds himself, “Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves dodge. Collide. Then snatch your purse”[6]. The “Cyclops” chapter is perhaps the most violent of the book. In this portion, dogs are kicked, prostitutes rob their sleeping clients, and men are knocked off barstools after angering their neighbor. Oddly enough, Bloom continues to stroll through Dublin unaffected by the prevailing chaos. After all, 16 June 1904 is just another typical day in Dublin. However, the same holds true today. In a small town, a simple mugging has the potential to cause just as much buzz as a murder-suicide in the city. Just as noisy crowds are part of daily life in the modern city, so is violence and crime.

            As Bloom and Dedalus stroll deeper into Dublin, Joyce identifies numerous things that we fail to notice everyday. True, there is little physical or moral danger in failing to notice the honking horns of gridlocked traffic. However, the fact that Joyce is able to make us aware of these three areas proposes the question, “What else are not noticing?”.

           

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[1] James Joyce, Ulysses, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 874.

[2] Ibid., 204.

[3] Ibid., 249.

[4] Ibid., 297.

[5] Ibid., 296.

[6] Ibid., 416.

Typewriters and Funerals: Alienation in Dublin

                In one of the mysterious headlines interrupting the narrative of the chapter entitled “Aeolus”, James Joyce attaches a chaotic description of the unending cacophony of typewriters to the moniker “How a Great Daily Organ is Produced”. Oddly enough, the first four books describing Leopold Bloom’s journey are strangely germane to this obtrusive headline. During his initial travels, the reader notes  Benjamin’s themes of alienation resurfacing on the streets of Dublin. Accordingly, Joyce’s characters seek respite in the same manners of temporal pleasure identified by Benjamin.

                Benjamin references Marx by stating a capitalist system must synchronize if it hopes to maximize its efficiency. Joyce’s Dublin runs on such a system as his city shuffles the characters to where they need to go in order to fulfill their day’s labor. While Bloom takes a moment to enjoy his garden, the bells of George’s church interrupt his idyllic interlude with a cantankerous noise informing him that he must leave his small pastoral paradise if he is to attend the funeral of Patrick Dingman. While walking to the service, Bloom notices a physical manifestation of the subordination of the individual itinerary to the will of commerce: a group of cabbies. “Curious the life of drifting cabbies,” reflects Bloom, “all weathers all places, time, or set down, no will of their own” [1]. Bloom is confused by how a man driving a vehicle has no control of where he travels. The cabby’s passenger dictates every aspect of his life during their tenure together. This process repeats hundreds of times a day thus engraining the notion of subservience in the cabby’s psyche. Eventually, the cabby views himself as a component in the city’s fluid transportation system instead of an individual operating in accordance with his own will.

                Joyce correlates another theme of Benjamin’s alienation by applying the Marxist theory of mechanical reproduction and division of labor to Dublin during its continued evolution into a collective machine. People forfeit a connection with their trade in lieu of increased production. Accordingly, Joyce enforces codes of uniformity to maintain efficiency. During Patrick Dingman’s funeral profession, Bloom explains that there is even a system for assigning the same coffins to certain demographics of the dead. He dictates this coffin distribution system adheres to the following assignment code: “Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun”[2]. The burial of Patrick Dingman continues to define a highly efficient system that divorces its participants from any connection to their labor. During Patrick Dingman’s Last Rites, Bloom notes that the priest must be exhausted by the repetition of the same ritual multiple times day after day. As the priest blesses Patrick Dingman’s remains with holy water, Bloom ponders, “He must be fed up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses  they trot up…Every mortal day a fresh batch: middle aged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with bears, baldheaded business men, consumptive girls with little sparrow’s breasts”[3]. From the hearse driver to the gravediggers, Joyce creates an efficient machine that fills the cemetery’s empty lots in the quickest manner possible.   

                The Freeman Journal is another example of Joyce creating alienation through mechanical reproduction. However, Joyce does not just alienate his characters in the chapter “Aeolus”; he alienates his reader. In her notes to Ulysses, Jeri Johnson states that the random headlines interrupting the narrative of “Aeolus” are the product of a “an editor who has taken to the copy with a pair of scissors and a blue pencil, has cut it up and inserted “Headlines” into the gaps (headlines which often have a flippant disregard for their relevance to what follows)”[4]. This “editor” disregards the reader’s desire for a concise narrative. Irrelevant headlines yield a greater production volume and thus warrant the reader’s confusion. Furthermore, it is inconsequential that the headlines’ mysterious nature confuses us; they make sense to the editor who is producing the narrative. They are a crucial part to his design and thus are included at the expense of our alienation from comprehending a narrative. As the reader navigates the headlines’ intrusion, he quickly discovers a whirling vortex of roaring typewriters, colliding newsboys, editors shouting, and a fury of printed pages hastily assembled into to morning and evening additions. While waiting in one of the paper’s office, Bloom notes of a man typing, “The machines clanked in three-four time. Thump, thump, thump. Now if he got paralyzed there and no one knew how to stop them they’d clank on the same, print I over and over and up and back”[5]. The Freeman’s Journal focuses on maximizing its production as opposed to constructing a smaller, legitimate volume. When placing an advertisement, Bloom minces his words in order to be more palatable to the public. He emphatically demands his add include a specific logo of crossed keys. “’The idea,’ Mr. Bloom said, ‘is the house of keys. You know councilor, the Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule’”[6]. In order to sell more papers, The Freeman’s Journal must avoid appearing as staunch supporters of the independence movement. Once again, production dominates individual will and expression.

                What is most unsettling of Joyce’s Dublin is his portrayal of what awaits all of its inhabitants: a systematic disposal of one who is unable to perform his mandated labor. The city capitalizes on the body's decomposition to maximize the efficiency of the dead. At Patrick Dingman’s funeral, Bloom recalls a story about dead bodies producing methane. “Down in the vaults of Saint Werburgh’s lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. One whiff of that and you’re a goner”[7]. Bloom further reflects that Patrick Dingman’s machines are still “pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting. Working away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in”[8].The notion that the only gratitude for a lifetime of labor one will receive from Dublin is its enabling his decomposition into natural resources and rat food is most unsettling and depressing. When Joyce couples his characters’ present alienation with the promise of an emotionally sterile disposal, the readers beholds them searching for happiness in ways quite familiar to Benjamin.

                Both Bloom and his wife subconsciously enact Benjamin’s notion of finding happiness in the interior space of their home. Here, the Blooms maintain a sense of control, albeit it miniscule and ultimately interrupted by the bells of George’s church. Above Mrs. Bloom, bed hangs a copy of the Bath of a Nymph. This scene of naked Greek nymphs enables the Blooms to fanaticize about metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls. Even though their bodies are confined to Dublin, the hope that one day their souls will travel somewhere else is soothing for the Blooms. Furthermore, Bloom maintains a small garden he fertilizes with kitchen slop. The catharsis of filth into a small sense of pastoral bliss makes Bloom happy and temporally divorces him from the awaiting alienation outside his front gate.

                Bloom also embraces a form of escape identified by Benjamin: flânerie. After Bloom rises from his sleep, he walks to the local butcher shop to buy a kidney for his cat. While strolling through a Dublin already rife with activity, Bloom tells himself:

“Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at dawn, travel round in front of the sun steal a day’s march on him. Keep it up forever never grow a day older technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a city gate, sentry there, old ranker too, old Tweedy’s big moustaches leaning on a long kind of spear. Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by…Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water scented with fennel sherbet. Wander along all day”[9].

By wondering, Bloom feels like he can out-pace time and thus avoid being enslaved by the city’s dominating production schedule. He strolls through an eclectic market place without being consumed by the diverse cultures and peddling strange wares. By viewing them as a panorama instead of an individual collection, Bloom is able to resist the city’s trap of alienation. He, like Dedalus, maintains the status of “the hyperborean” by subordinating the cities appearance to his own understanding. As long as he remains mobile, Bloom is able to view the city in a totality familiar to his spatial understanding.
                The same feelings of alienation noted by Benjamin in Paris resurface in Joyce’s Dublin. As Bloom begins his journey, we behold a system manipulating its population into a highly efficient production model that ignores the will of the individual. Furthermore, the only contract between the city and the individual is the disposal of one’s body upon the conclusion of his life. Naturally, this creates a sense of depression and futility within the city’s population. In hopes to abate this miserable recognition, Joyce’s characters enact Benjamin’s theory of finding happiness in one’s interior life and wandering the streets in an attempt to behold the city as a whole as opposed to an infinite number of separate pieces.

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[1] James Joyce, Ulysses, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 74.

[2] Ibid., 92.

[3] Ibid., 100.

[4] Ibid., 809.

[5] Ibid., 115.

[6] Ibid., 116.

[7] Ibid., 100.

[8] Ibid., 114.

[9] Ibid., 55.

Stephen Dedalus and His Latin-Quater Hat

In the opening section of Ulysses, James Joyce introduces the desire to distance one’s self from both social institutions and technology that perpetuate a feeling of alienation. Despite Steven Dedalus dwelling in the outskirts of Dublin as opposed to its urban center, the reader still notices themes and concepts identified by both Benjamin and Baudelaire influencing the actions and opinions of Joyce’s characters. Clearly, the fact that motifs identified in 19^th-century Paris resurface in 20^th-century Dublin serves as stalwart confirmation to their validity. Even before Joyce takes us into the heart of Dublin, we become behold an environment that is running on a structured timetable to maximize its efficiency and solely focused on the creation of wealth. The effects of capitalism identified by both Marx and Benjamin transform Dedalus’ surroundings into a mosaic of trivial and intangible achievements from which he elects to distance himself.

                At the turn of the century, Dublin was a confluence of British imperialism and Irish nationalism. Joyce allows the 300-year-old conflict to haunt his characters’ thoughts and further complicate their surroundings. On 16 June 1904, Sinn Fein was becoming quite popular while past movements such as Parnalism still lingered in the city’s collective consciousness. Dublin was furiously trying to define a course of action that both enacted a modern and fresh approach to shedding the British yoke while at the same time maintaining traditions sacred to the Irish independence movement. In other words, how does a nation defeat a technologically advanced hegemony while still clinging to archaic belief structures?

                Furthermore, Dublin was subconsciously becoming more efficient. As Benjamin stated in the Arcades Project, an economy will subordinate all individual timelines to that of the most efficient form. Actions operating independent of any external influence suddenly become amalgamated into one collective mechanism solely dedicated to maximizing production. Such is the case in 1906 Dublin. While Dedalus and his friends stand on the beach looking out to sea, Haines, an Englishman, states that authorities searching for a man who drowned nine days ago should find the corpse today based on the local superstition that a drowned corpse takes nine days to resurface. How does a seemingly independent event such as the recovery of a dead body submit to the predictability of a timetable? Both Benjamin and Marx would reply by stating that in capitalism, even the dead must be efficient.

                Joyce embodies another form of Marxist alienation with respect to the conversion of labor into capital. Stephen Dedalus, rumored to be to Joyce’s alter-ego, is a teacher at lavish private school. Being an educator, one would expect that educated and enlightened pupils would serve as a tangible product of one’s labor. However, Dedalus’ attempts fails to yield said result. His students’ demand for an early release to play field hockey truncates his lesson on Pyrrhus. After dismissing his unruly students, a boy by the name of Cyril Sergeant approaches Dedalus with a problem set of arithmetic and requests his help. As soon as he touches the boy’s notebook, a single sensation jolts through Dedalus: futility. Despite Dedalus’ patient instruction and multiple repetitions, Cyril is unable to grasp the concepts. “Waiting always for a word of help,” Dedalus narrates, “his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin”[1]. Instead of the rewarding feeling of helping a student grow intellectually, Dedalus only receives a reminder of how awkward and frail he was during his youth. Since his labor is unable to manifest in the form of successful instruction, Dedalus shamefully makes his way to Mr. Deasy’s office to receive his bi-weekly salary.

While waiting for Mr. Deasy to dispense his salary, Dedalus takes note of the seas shells displayed on the massive desk. Jeri Johnson’s notes to Ulysses explain that these shells are souvenirs from the shrine of St. James in Spain. Pilgrims who make the arduous journey proudly display them as a testament to their endeavor. Dedalus’ “embarrassed hand moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar”[2]  as he beholds a tangible product of labor, in this case the sea shells, in conversation with his pending monetary payment for his services.

Further confirming the alienation from the products of labor, Mr. Deasy uses a machine to dispense Dedalus’ salary. “You must buy one of these machines,” he remarks, “You’ll find them very useful”[3]. Not only is Dedalus receiving a payment that will barely cover his expenses; he receives his coins from a machine as opposed to a human. Caught off guard by the mechanical intrusion into his environment, Dedalus jokes that there is little need to buy such a machine because it would always be empty. While Dedalus further reflects upon the sea shells, Mr. Deasy lectures, “Because you don’t save. You don’t know what money is. Money is power, when you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew”[4]. He goes even further by explaining to Dedalus that the proudest thing an Englishman can say is, “I paid my way”[5]. He demands Dedalus feel his aura of never having borrowed a schilling. As proud of Mr. Deasy is of his life-long labor, Dedalus is unable to feel anything. Mr. Deasy’s aura is an intangible, if not imaginary, accomplishment to everyone but himself.

Strangely enough, Mr. Deasy goes on to criticize the Jews as moneychangers and financial swindlers. While it is admirable for him to base his existence on capital, it become abhorrent when a race thought to be inferior espouses the same values. “Do you know why Ireland has the honor of being the only country not to persecute the Jews?” inquires Mr. Deasy to which he answers, “Because she never let them in!”[6]. As his laughs bubble through a phlegm-packed esophagus, the sun bathes Mr. Deasy in what Dedalus describes as a glimmering coat of “dancing coins”[7]. Differently put, Joyce transforms Mr. Deasy into an obscene laughing pile of money. The irony of his hypocrisy is evident for both Dedalus and the reader.

Following his awkward conversation with Mr. Deasy, Dedalus goes walking alone on the beach and meditates on Mr. Deasy’s asinine worldview. While smelling the sea and feeling the salt wind blow, Dedalus remembers a time in Dublin full of “Famine, plague, and slaughters”[8]. Whether it is the Bruce invasion of the 14^th-century massacring Dublin’s population or its starving masses feasting on dead beached whales, Dedalus cannot help but note the absurdity of Mr. Deasy’s success in a seemingly arbitrary and intangible system. How does a machine that dispenses coin trump defeating the Viking invasion? Is borrowing money worse than feeding your family with rotten whale blubber? Clearly, Dedalus’ dismisses the ideas espoused by the imbecilic Mr. Deasy.

In response to the alienation rendered by the mechanized industrialization dominating Dublin, Dedalus elects to distance himself from what he feels is an obfuscated system that grows more confusing with each passing day. While have morning tea, Dedalus’ friend Buck Mulligan states, “I’m a hyperborean as much as you,”[9]. In this context, hyperborean refers to a term Nietzsche uses to describe one who’s “above the crowd and not enslaved by conformity to the dictates of traditional Christian morality, whereas the moral man who lives for others is a weakling, a degenerate”[10]. Dedalus refuses to embrace the dominating Catholic Church in lieu of a liberating atheist moral code. “Either you believe or you don’t, isn’t it?” states Dedalus, “I could never stomach that idea of a God”[11]. In addition to religion, Dedalus even rejects the contemporary fashion that allows him to blend into a crowd. Instead of wearing the ever-popular derby, he dons what he refers to as a Latin-quarter hat (i.e. a soft, floppy hat popular with the Bohemian movement in Paris). While pondering why he has selected such an abnormal piece of headgear, Dedalus states, “God, we must dress the character”[12]. While a derby would allow him to appear the same as everyone else, he elects to stand out in a mass of people. Dadalus even avoids a connection with his family. Evidently, his aunt perpetuated the notion that he is responsible for his mother’s recent death. His voluntary withdrawal from normal social structures allows him to “not be the master of others or their slave”[13]. In other words, Stephen Dedalus exists for no one but Stephen Dedalus.

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[1] James Joyce, Ulysses, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 28.

[2] Ibid., 30.

[3] Ibid., 30.

[4] Ibid.,30.

[5] Ibid.,31.

[6] Ibid.,36.

[7] Ibid.,36.

[8] Ibid.,45.

[9] Ibid., 5.

[10] Don Gifford and Robert J. Seidman, Ulysses Annotated, (University of California Press: Los Angles, 1988), 15.

[11] James Joyce, Ulysses, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 20.

[12] Ibid., 41.

[13] Ibid., 45.