Stephen and The Stringing of The Bow

By Santiago Sanchez Borboa

Stephen Dedalus is a prick - conceited, immature, and annoying. He even spends a large part of a chapter "prov[ing] by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father" (1: 555-7), although he does not believe this grand theory (9: 1065-7). If this were not enough, just as the reader thinks she is getting the hang of things after "Telemachus" and "Nestor," she gets smacked with the stupendously difficult yet surprisingly irrelevant, "Proteus," a chapter of Ulysses inside Stephen's mind that everyone struggles with and that makes a good number of people put down the book forever. Despite this, I think that Stephen has many admirable qualities and that he is an often unappreciated character. I hold that opinion despite the fact that I did not succeed in becoming (or like to think I did not) an intellectual egotist. I should note that I am not trying to establish that Stephen is beyond serious criticism or that he is a full-fledged hero. I only think that we can (and should) deepen our understanding of Stephen, and his importance by focusing on his often-overlooked value.

              There is no doubt that Bloom is our true hero in Ulysses, but we should be very careful to dismiss Stephen if for no other reason than his being Telemachus to Bloom's Odysseus. In The Odyssey, Telemachus, like Stephen, is a laughable character at the beginning of the narrative, since he can only complain about coexisting with Penelope's suitors. Nevertheless, in Book XXI, he shows himself to be perhaps the only other mortal who can string Odysseus's bow (though Odysseus asks him to stop before he does it). This feat is not like those of Odysseus, who not only actually strings his bow with ease, but also uses it to shoot an arrow across the rings of a dozen axes and to slay his wife's suitors. However, it is no small feat. Perhaps  in the same way, Stephen displays the ability to string the bow of reason that Bloom uses to slay the suitors that are his scruples (including Eurymachus-Boylan), though Stephen is not able use it to its full potential and thus is unable to slay Antinous-Buck Mulligan (correspondences from the Linati Schema).

Bloom reasons through his scruples concerning Molly's adultery by conceptualizing it in a quite particular way, thinking (among many other things) of the adultery as "less reprehensible" than a number of actions, ranging from "impersonation" to "corruption of minors and "intelligence with the king's enemies" (17: 2178-94). This use of reason enables him to eliminate what prevents Bloom's true homecoming by turning "antagonistic sentiments" into "Satisfaction" at Molly's ubiquitous ass, which he then kisses as his way of making love to her.
    

          Stephen also characterizes Buck Mulligan in a quite particular way, thinking, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?" (9: 483) at the sound of Buck's "Amen," and even earlier thinks, "Parried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steel pen" (1:152-3) in response to a conversation with Buck. Admittedly, the conceptualizations of the characters are quite different in both complexity and content. Furthermore, even if what I am saying is true, Stephen's so-called stringing of the bow is hardly impressive, being a simple and quite ridiculous notion of his annoying-and-inappropriate-even-if-funny roommate as a mortal enemy with whom he duels.

            I would urge the reader to not be so hasty, however, for the form of Stephen's use of reason turns something into something else, something ordinary and even rather grand. In other words, the form of Stephen's reasoning is on some level the form of Ulysses, which turns the story of one day in the lives of two (or three, depending on whether we want to count Molly's timeless chapter as part of the day) characters, into an affair with multiple and complex interacting layers of meaning and one of the greatest works in all of literature. Perhaps then, Stephen's use of the bow is a very elementary use of part of the art that Joyce uses in Ulysses, an art that shares much with Bloom's multilayered, complex, and scientific reasoning through his scruples (note that this difference between Bloom and Stephen's use of the bow is to be expected given different temperaments (the former's being scientific, the latter's being artistic) (17: 560)).

            This difference between Joyce (and Bloom) and Stephen seems equivalent to the difference between stringing and masterfully using the bow to shoot an arrow through a dozen axe rings and merely potentially stringing it (and thus the difference between being able to kill the suitors and come home and being unable to deal with the suitors). Stephen's skill as Telemachus may not compare to Joyce's or even Bloom's as Ulysses and Odysseus. Yet, just as Telemachus's stringing shows the promise of being able to use the bow, the form of Stephen's skill seems to show the promise of being able to transform everyday experience as Joyce and Bloom do. If this is right, then Stephen should not be dismissed easily by the reader in part because, if Bloom turns his antagonistic sentiments at being cuckolded into satisfaction, then Stephen can perhaps eventually (as Joyce does) turn the night sky into "[t]he heaventree of stars, hung with humid nightblue fruit" (17: 1039). If this is correct, however, then questions remain (as they always seem to in Ulysses), because then it seems important to see how Stephen grows as importantly as Telemachus does throughout the book. However, given that we get so little access to his perspective when we encounter him in "The Wanderings of Ulysses" and "The Homecoming" (chapters 4-18), is there a way in which Joyce indirectly reveals to us Stephen's growth (perhaps in his interactions with Bloom), and what does that which we glean about Stephen's growth, as well as how we glean it, tell us about his positive relevance in Ulysses and the ways it relates to Bloom?

             Santi, a former Williams College student, is a true exponent of classical wisdom. He has been known to reconcile the Stoics and Epicureans in his personal life, as he splits his time between transcendental meditation and life's finer pleasures.