James Joyce- Ulysses. Chapter 15, Circe

Metaphors, Themes and Analysis.

Chapter Circe of Ulysses is written in a form of a script. It is quite a confessional piece of reading. The themes introduced to the reader are themes of love, power, masochism, and consciousness. They are presented in a way to help the audience feel the battle between mind and body.

Chemical imbalance is another theme that supports the literary elegance of Circe. Specifically, Circe be might be seen as a metaphor for Schizophrenia. The chapter grows in the same way the disease does. The beginning of the chapter remains similar to the beginning of it, for example there is a strong anxiety and the reader is introduced to the elements of paranoia. There are lots of fantasies and actions throughout the chapter, they all slow and then the reader can feel a general paralysis. The chapter then follows to the part when the characters have systematic delusions.. This progress goes in the exact way as the disease of Schizophrenia.

The parent- child relationship highlights the theme of unique love, which is definitely worth looking at in this chapter. The characters experience it in different ways, mainly because the relationships were overcome with guilt. Stephen grieves at the memories of how he used to treat his mother. Whereas Molly thinks of her dead son Rudy and the sweater she knit for him. Bloom tries to visualise what Rudy might have been like as a young man. Love remains very strong in all these cases. The fact is that the characters try to learn the skill of forgetting the pain. While Molly and Bloom try to get over the death of Rudy, Stephen is trying to forget the pain of how he treated his mother.

There is also a theme of masochism present in the chapter which presents a fall of power in characters’ life. A new character comes in the middle of the chapter, it’s a girl called Zoe who’s affecting Bloom’s fantasy. The speech that Bloom is giving Zoe on her smoking problem takes Bloom into his unconsciousness. The reality fades away and Blooms becomes a famous speaker/ politician in his dream. In the end, his power fails and he is sacrificed. It makes him feel very low of himself; his ego and self esteem go straight down. This has an effect on his failure even in his own fantasies. This shows that we don’t have any control over our unconscious mind but they way we feel about ourselves influences our unconscious mind- and that’s what we can control.

The variety of relationship such as between mind and body or reality and fantasy interact with each other in the way that the end of previous and the beginning of new fantasy fade away. It has a relation with the conscious and unconscious mind.

The relationships between fantasy and reality as well as mind and body reflect on the conscious and unconscious part of Circe. The metaphor for consciousness in the chapter is shown through the characters’ thoughts of resurrecting the dead. Stephen thinks of his dead mother, while Molly and Bloom’s think of their dead son, Rudy.

In conclusion, the chapter is quite confusing to understand but it is definitely significant to understand Joyce’s theory unconscious and conscious mind as well as Freud’s views on psychoanalysis which declares that even if you hide something in your conscious mind, your unconscious mind will always bring it back to you.