Ulysses/Wandering Rocks

Wandering Rocks explores the stream of consciousness narrative technique with other characters, following a priest, a shop woman, a bar maid, and other folks on the streets of Dublin.

Chapter 10 The Wandering Rocks

Gilbert Schema

Scene: The Streets

Hour: 3 PM

Organ: Blood

Symbol: Citizens

Art: Mechanics

Technic: Labyrinth

Odyssey Parallels

The Wandering Rocks is not an episode from Homer's Odyssey - it's the path that was not taken. As such, it represents a path not traveled. For a portion of this chapter, Joyce is following characters other than Stephen D and L Bloom, as if to explore various paths not taken for the narrator of Ulysses.

Major Themes

The theme of the chapter - the path not traveled, the wandering rocks, the labyrinth - make a priest an interesting choice of character.

The priest, Father John Conmee, is an interesting contrast with Bloom. Bloom is a Freemason, a Jew, a freethinker, and a science-minded person, while the priest is a Jesuit, a clergyman, and an institutionalist.

And yet, similarities between Father Conmee and Leopold Bloom shine through.

The priest is also an interesting contrast to the other main character, Stephen Dedalus, who is Catholic, and "under the influence of the Church," but is also a freethinker who contrasts with the priest. Father Conmee's stream of consciousness is very grounded, very earthly, and he is preoccupied with thoughts about the people around him, their suffering and salvation, and various theological topics. I imagine this is what a stream of consciousness for Jesus would have been like. Compared to the dense intellectual interior monologue of Stephen in Proteus (Chapter 3), Conmee's narrative more closely resembles Bloom's more sensual, covering-the-entire-map mental wanderings from Chapters 4, 6, and 8).

A veteran sailor, a beggar, walks about Dublin asking for alms. Father Conmee only gives him a blessing. While Conmee's thoughts don't dwell for long on the beggar, the beggar does set off an entire train of thought in Conmee. The beggar also makes appearances with other characters throughout the chapter, and the spoken lines are sometimes echoed out of context. This gives the impression that the reader themselves are being followed around by the beggar as they read the chapter, wandering around Dublin.

Notes

The opening monologue following Father Conmee is notable for a number of reasons - first, it's the first extended stream of consciousness we've seen from a character other than Leopold and Stephen. Second, it repeats the name "Father Conmee" over and over again - like a litany, or an invocation, or a prayer. While it is similar to prior chapters in its narration technique (stream of consciousness), it's also very different in its narration style - it's more objective, descriptive, and grounded than Stephen or Leopold. His thoughts wander down shorter paths - mental culs-de-sac.

Conmee also seems to experience a daydream, or hallucination, while on the tram: "Father Comnee at the altarrails placed the host with difficulty into the mouth of the awkward old man who had the shaky head."

Blazes Boylan also makes an appearance for a scene, another nod to the path not traveled. Bloom was rushing to avoid seeing Boylan on the street at the end of Ulysses/Lestrygonians (Ch. 8). Bloom doesn't consciously think of Boylan by name, he just pretends to be frantically searching his pockets for something - but it's Boylan he's trying to avoid by looking busy. Boylan was also spotted (thanks to his distinct straw hat) on the way to the cemetery in Ulysses/Hades, and of course he sent a letter to Molly that turned up in Ulysses/Lotus Eaters. So far, these types of indirect interactions are the only types of encounters Bloom has had with Boylan, and the reader has only met Boylan from afar.

In Ulysses/The Wandering Rocks, the reader gets their first up-close encounter with Blazes Boylan, as he buys fruits and flowers in a shop.

Heightening the contrast between Boylan and Dedalus, the scene prior to that features Stephen Dedalus's young sisters trying to scrape together enough food scraps for a meal.

Quotes

Part 1: The superior

The superior, the very reverend John Conmee S. J. reset his smooth watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. What was that boy’s name again? Dignam. Yes.

S. J. = Society of Jesuits

He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking leaves: and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P.

Lots of acronyms in this chapter.

Father Conmee walked down Great Charles street and glanced at the shutup free church on his left. The reverend T. R. Greene B.A. will (D.V.) speak.

Father Conmee passed H. J. O’Neill’s funeral establishment where Corny Kelleher totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade of hay.

Part 2: It was a peaceful

Father John Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram on Newcomen bridge.

Corny Kelleher locked his largefooted boots and gazed, his hat downtilted, chewing his blade of hay.

Constable 57C, on his beat, stood to pass the time of day.

—That’s a fine day, Mr Kelleher.

—Ay, Corny Kelleher said.

—It’s very close, the constable said.

Corny Kelleher sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth while a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a coin.

—What’s the best news? he asked.

—I seen that particular party last evening, the constable said with bated breath.

The constable is talking about the beggar. The "chewing his blade of hay" phrase is repeated.

A onelegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell's corner, skirting Rabaiotti's icecream car, and jerked himself up Eccles street. Towards Larry O'Rourke, in shirtsleeves in his doorway, he growled unamiably: - For England... He swung himself forward past Katey and Boody Dedalus, halted and growled: - home and beauty.

The beggar provides quite the contrast to an image on p. 226:

A plump bare generous arm shone, was seen, held forth from a white petticoatbodice and taut shiftstraps. A woman's hand flung forth a coin over the area railings. It fell on the path.

One of the urchins ran up to it, picked it up and dropped it into the minstrel's cap, saying:

- There, sir.

Part 3: Katey and Boody

A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the Customhouse old dock and George’s quay.

he blond girl in Thornton’s bedded the wicker basket with rustling fibre. Blazes Boylan handed her the bottle swathed in pink tissue paper and a small jar.

—Put these in first, will you? he said.

—Yes, sir, the blond girl said. And the fruit on top.

—That’ll do, game ball, Blazes Boylan said.

She bestowed fat pears neatly, head by tail, and among them ripe shamefaced peaches.

Blazes Boylan walked here and there in new tan shoes about the fruitsmelling shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled and plump red tomatoes, sniffing smells.

—Ma! Almidano Artifoni said.

He gazed over Stephen’s shoulder at Goldsmith’s knobby poll.

Two carfuls of tourists passed slowly, their women sitting fore, gripping the handrests. Palefaces. Men’s arms frankly round their stunted forms. They looked from Trinity to the blind columned porch of the bank of Ireland where pigeons roocoocooed.

Part 4: Miss Dunne Hid

Miss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of The Woman in White far back in her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy notepaper into her typewriter.

Too much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that one, Marion? Change it and get another by Mary Cecil Haye.

The disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased and ogled them: six.

Miss Dunne clicked on the keyboard:

—16 June 1904.

—God! he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I’m bloody sorry I did it, says he, but I declare to God I thought the archbishop was inside. He mightn’t like it, though. What? God, I’ll tell him anyhow. That was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor. Hot members they were all of them, the Geraldines.

The horses he passed started nervously under their slack harness. He slapped a piebald haunch quivering near him and cried:

—Woa, sonny!

He turned to J. J. O’Molloy and asked:

—Well, Jack. What is it? What’s the trouble? Wait awhile. Hold hard.

With gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, after an instant, sneezed loudly.

—Chow! he said. Blast you!

—The dust from those sacks, J. J. O’Molloy said politely.

—No, Ned Lambert gasped, I caught a... cold night before... blast your soul... night before last... and there was a hell of a lot of draught...

He held his handkerchief ready for the coming...

—I was... Glasnevin this morning... poor little... what do you call him... Chow!... Mother of Moses!

Part 5: Tom Rochford took

Lawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pass from the consolidated taxing office to Nisi Prius court Richie Goulding carrying the costbag of Goulding, Collis and Ward and heard rustling from the admiralty division of king’s bench to the court of appeal an elderly female with false teeth smiling incredulously and a black silk skirt of great amplitude.

—See? he said. See now the last one I put in is over here: Turns Over. The impact. Leverage, see?

He showed them the rising column of disks on the right.

—Smart idea, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow coming in late can see what turn is on and what turns are over.

—See? Tom Rochford said.

He slid in a disk for himself: and watched it shoot, wobble, ogle, stop: four. Turn Now On.

Part 6: Mr Bloom Turned

Mr Bloom turned over idly pages of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, then of Aristotle’s Masterpiece. Crooked botched print. Plates: infants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of them like that at this moment all over the world. All butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born every minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.

The opening sentence is a callback to a couple of other prior passages:

Mr Bloom turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.

(Chapter 5)

Mr Bloom turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a stately figure entered between the newsboards of the Weekly Freeman and National Press and the Freeman’s Journal and National Press.

(Chapter 7)

Mr Bloom turned at Gray’s confectioner’s window of unbought tarts and passed the reverend Thomas Connellan’s bookstore.

(Chapter 8)

Links

Yale Modernism page: https://modernism.courseresource.yale.edu/2017/07/13/the-wandering-rocks/

Michael Groden page: https://www.michaelgroden.com/notes/open10.html