Interior Monologue in Ulysses

The similarities between Joyce’s Ulysses and Homer’s Odyssey are unmistakable even from Joyce’s choice of title as Ulysses is the Latin derivative of Odysseus the hero portrayed in Homer’s Odyssey. Adding to the comparisons between the two are the numerous characters portrayed throughout Joyce’s novel as they are a direct modernised parallel to those depicted in Homer’s poem. Joyce’s character Leopold Bloom is a mirror image to Homer’s Odysseus as is Odysseus’s son Telemachus interpreted through the character of Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses. Despite the various parallels and connections between Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses, it is Joyce’s modernisation and arrangement of his novel that sets it apart from Homer’s mythological poem. Dissimilar to Homer’s Odyssey, Ulysses is set in the city of Dublin on the 16th of June 1904. For Joyce, this particular date held a great amount of sentimental value as it was the day of his first date with his future wife thus questioning the idea of Joyce injecting a hint of romanticism by commemorating that particular date into a novel that has been described as vulgar and a work of blasphemy. Ulysses develops over the space of twenty-four hours and despite the novels small time frame the countless events and occurrences that the characters encounter are described in-depth and often quite humorously. Joyce’s main intentions for his novel were to make it, in his opinion, as realistic as possible, to ‘give a picture of Dublin so complete that if the city one day suddenly disappeared from the earth it could be reconstructed out of my book’ (A Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man, pg.10). To emphasise the element of realism Joyce described the characters as visiting authentic Dublin landmarks and establishments such as Davy Byrne’s pub and a Martello Tower in Sandycove, Dublin.
It is through Joyce’s element of realism, the overall structure and the multiple modes of writing of his novel that suggests Ulysses is a significant