A Study Of Ghosts In Joyce’s Ulysses

As one of the most influential modernist works in the 20th century literature,Ulysses contains a large proportion of narratives related to ghosts.In this novel,Joyce manages to adopt ghosts and their consequent haunting effects as a certain kind of media to excavate and create hidden narrative possibilities behind the major storyline.As a result,the ghosts are constructed as the momentum of the narratives where different temporalities and memory both private and public are intermingled.Based on theories of psychoanalysis and hauntology,this study explores the psychological origins and social factors that generate ghosts and haunting effects in the text and sociocultural implications behind the ghosts.By picking up three ghost characters who once were the closest families to Stephen and Bloom,chapter one reveals that the author manipulates different narrative techniques to create ghosts with distinctive features.As the discussion shows,the ghost of May is a Gothic image;Rudolph’s reemergence is more life-oriented,and Rudy’s figure is tinted with a stroke of hope.Chapter two tries to elucidate what emotional impacts the ghosts bring to Stephen and Bloom and what may be the possible psychological roots that cause the resurrection of the ghosts.The ghosts are the spectral projection of Stephen’s and Bloom’s inner dilemmas.Stephen is in melancholia due to love,guilt and refusal toward his mother;Bloom is mourning for the unredeemable loss of his father and also living in guilt for the previous negation he showed to Rudolph.For the last ghost,Rudy,Bloom is on the one hand suffering from his unfortunate demise;on the other hand,he is intoxicated with the ecstasy Rudy’s ghost brings to him.Chapter three goes further to consider the implication behind the ghosts,the sociohistorical reasons for the haunting phenomena and Stephen’s and Bloom’s active reaction toward traumatic history.Actually,the ghosts do not only originate from people’s internal projection,but also from external social and cultural ambience.The ghosts,consequently,become metaphors of Ireland’s past,present and even future.From this perspective,May turns into the symbol of the Church and Ireland’s difficult past;Rudolph is an isolated immigrant suffering from the dominating Catholicism;Rudy is a revealer of rigid orthodoxy of Catholic faith.Facing this burdensome history,Bloom chooses to envision a better future embodied in his positive imagination of Rudy;Stephen learns to accept life and to create art that is full of life,and becomes a real artist.In conclusion,in Ulysses,by grasping and reassembling memory traces,Joyce presents three idiosyncratic ghosts with particular narrative techniques.The ghosts’rejuvenation blurs the boundary of past,present and future,and reveals the living’s emotional ambivalence and personal trauma.Moreover,the textual haunting reveals deep sociohistorical messages conveyed by the ghosts.Actually,writing traumatic history aims to transform the past and hence to confront the present and future.Stephen’s and Bloom’s active acceptance of the past and of life signifies a positive voice stemming from the burdensome history,a sparkling hope for Ireland’s future which the author may have been trying to insinuate in Ulysses.