Ulysses

TRY to trace what Stephen thinks and feels, sees, hears, smells through this. Read first WITHOUT the footnotes.

This is the most intimidating piece of work in the textbook yet. I just wanted to mention that. It’s all for the footnotes, which are necessary and I did my best to avoid them at first. I was too confused by that though, but I tried not to concentrate on them.
The imagery is interesting and it makes things feel sort of strange and dreamlike. It starts off that way at least. He’s walking on a beach, “I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot.” He sees these sights and these colors, “Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs.” He closed his eyes to better take in the sounds there, “his boots crushing crackling wrack and shells.” In doing this his mind wonders if the world might have left him or if he might find himself suddenly over a cliff were he to open his eyes again. He takes in the sounds still, “Crush, crack, crik, crick.” I liked that he didn’t simply take one word and repeat it, instead he expressed the variety of the noises with his words. He imagines others walking on this stretch of sand. The visit to his aunt and uncle is choppy, you can tell he sees it clearly, but he doesn't linger long on what they might be thinking, but then how would he know truly? The imagined version of his uncle doesn't seem very sympathetic at times and is rather flighty to me, but again, this is what Stephen is imagining. You can tell who he sees as the primary person in that house, though later he refers to it as "aunt Sara's."
He gets lost in his own thoughts so easily, thinking about Virgin Mary having no naval, how he’ll never be a saint or how his family thinks so at least (his uncle most likely), books named by letters. He almost entirely misses his aunt’s home altogether. The jumping here throws me off. I can’t follow him easily. I can’t tell what he’s dealing with and what he is just thinking.

On that first remark, you read (or posted on) this AFTER Finnegan's--is this really more intinidating than that?
Not given how much you get of what's happening here--good job!
How does this compare for you to Woolf's stream of consciousnes in "The Mark on the Wall?"
It might help to realize that Stephen is a sholar of languages ad philosophy who teaches in a boys' school and is a lapsed Catholic--all like the young Joyce!
I hope you read the whole novel later on (there are several guides to it)--it's not all like this, and as you see, Joyce's use of language is AMAZING, and often amazingly BEAUTIFUL.

Ulysses

In "Ulysses," the speaker is the Ulysses (or Odysseus) of Homer's The Odyssey. Tennyson imagines what this hero would feel like after having spent some time at home in Ithaca after all his adventures, his 20-year quest to return home, and his triumphant driving out of his faithful wife Penelope's suitors. Again, this is a dramatic monologue, so (I've told you who the speaker is), what is the situation, and whom is he addressing? How does he feel about his wife, his people and his son? What does he intend to do? One tip: the poem is in three verse-paragraphs: consider them separately and together.

Ulysses has been back from his twenty year journey for some time now. He is again ruler of Ithica with his beloved wife and strong son. Here, he is the speaker and is addressing perhaps not just those men who had traveled with him solely, but the whole of his people. He feels useless “an idle king”, just repeating the same actions to a people who don’t know him and so he feels do not care, “I mete and dole//Unequaled laws unto a savage race,//That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know me not.” Perhaps he just feels so disconnected though. Ulysses wants to life live and feels he must leave to do it. “I cannot rest from travel; I will drink//Life to the lees.” He lists of past experiences and says how they are a part of him, “I am part of all I have met” So obviously he is planning on leaving again. The island will be left to his son’s care, who he trusts to handle the job. “This is my son, mine own Telemachus,//To whom I leave the scepter and the isle” Ulysses hopes that Telemachus can change the people, make them more gentle than they had become. “by slow prudence to make mild//A rugged people, and through soft degrees//Subdue them to the useful and the good.” Which shows us that right now, Ulysses doesn’t find his people to be mild and good. The thing I find interesting is that he doesn’t speak much of his wife. Ulysses says at the start that she is “aged” but nothing else. In the final section I thought perhaps he spoke to her when he said “you and I are old” but the more I look at it, the more I feel like he’s talking to the sailors he spent his time with.