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Critical Reading of the Chapter “Proteus” in James Joyce’s ​Ulysses ​(1922):
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Chapter titled “Proteus” in Ulysses is a representation of the overall construction of
the novel
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The episode consists of the thoughts flowing from the mind of Stephen Dedalus, one
of the protagonists in the novel
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The chapter focuses on the characterization of Stephen Dedalus, which Joyce
develops in the later stages of the novel
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This is shown by the quote “​She
trusts me, her hand gentle, the long lashed eyes
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What she​?” (p
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In the episode Scylla and Charybdis, references to Shakespeare’s work and how
they were influenced by love
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Stephen emulates poetry addressed to objects of love and is able to evoke the
female form, yet lacks its embodiment in the physical form of a human
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Readers are exposed to the style in which Joyce constructs the novel in this chapter
as Stephen’s contemplations on philosophy, religion, his family and his past take the
form of an interior monologue carried out through first-person narrative perspective
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Mode of narration shifts from the interior imagination of characters in the novel to
their account of the action currently taking place
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However it is when the third person
narrative comments on Stephen’s physical actions that readers are able to
understand that these scenarios are a product of Stephen’s mind
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In the episode titled “Circe”, the subconscious sexual desires of Harold Bloom are
elevated into the form of stream-of-consciousness through the characters’ fantasies
so that readers understand the underlying psychology of the protagonist beyond his
consciousness
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Narrative focuses on function as stimuli which instigate each transformed form of
thoughts
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The omniscient narrator comments on the change of Stephen’s
surrounding such as the wind and the waves of the sea, which function as settings
for the transformation of his thoughts: ​“Airs mopped around him
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rising, flowing
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49 Oxford World’s Classics)
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Like the mythical Proteus, Stephen’s intellectual deliberations take up many topics
and evoke images of the past through existence in physical forms
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The illusion to Kevin Egan in the third episode, (who embodies Menelaus) implies
the struggles of Irish nationalism against British imperialism and Stephen’s conflict
with the authority of religion
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This was previously demonstrated through the character’s perceptions being shifted
to different focuses through time
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Like the prophetic Proteus in Odyssey, time controls the transformation of events of
both the present and the past
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The action of the novel develops through the movements of Harold Bloom and the
documentation of his consciousness
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This is done through the representation of individuals as conscious intellectual,
emotional and physical beings existing independently from the focus of the material
world
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The exploitation of conventional structures of the novel writing in the book shifts the
focus of external objects as they exist independently into their existence as perceived
through the individual’s senses
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Joyce’s modernization of Homer’s ancient text celebrates the ordinary human, who is
represented as a mythical figure worthy of an epic

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