The challenge of compiling a definitive synopsis of Finnegans Wake lies not only in the opacity of the book's language, but also in the radically unique approach to
plot which Joyce employed. The book follows an always shifting dream-narrative with its own arbitrary dream logic, which means that characters, character names, locations and plot details can change abruptly - sometimes resulting in an apparent lack of narrative line. In the words of Patrick A. McCarthy, "throughout much of Finnegans Wake, what appears to be an attempt to tell a story is often diverted, interrupted, or reshaped into something else, for example a commentary on a narrative with conflicting or unverifiable details.".
[9] In other words, while crucial plot points - such as HCE's crime or ALP's letter (see below) - are endlessly discussed, the reader never gets to encounter or experience them directly, and as such they remain unknown and perhaps unknowable. Suzette Henke has accordingly described Finnegans Wake as an
aporia.
[10] Joyce himself tacitly acknowledged this new approach to plot and character in a 1926 letter to Harriet Weaver, outlining his intentions for the book:
One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.
[11]Many Joyce experts - such as Joseph Campbell, John Gordon,
Anthony Burgess and William York Tindall - have attempted to summarise Finnegans Wake's plot. While no two summaries are exactly alike, there are many points upon which these commentators agree. However, a significant number of
Joyce scholars disagree with the very attempt, questioning whether or not the concept of a linear storyline should be pursued at all.
David Hayman, for example, has suggested that "For all the efforts made by critics to establish a plot for the Wake, it makes little sense to force this prose into a narrative mold."
[12] The book's challenges have led some commentators into generalised statements about its content and themes, prompting critic
Bernard Benstock to warn against the danger of "boiling down" Finnegans Wake into "insipid pap, and leaving the lazy reader with a predigested mess of generalizations and catchphrases".
[13] Fritz Senn, another Joyce scholar, has also voiced concerns with some plot synopses:
We have some traditional summaries, also some put in circulation by Joyce himself. I find them most unsatisfactory and unhelpful, they usually leave out the hard parts and recirculate what we already think we know. I simply cannot believe that FW would be as blandly uninteresting as those summaries suggest.
[14]Despite Joyce's many revolutionary techniques, the author repeatedly emphasized that the book was neither random nor meaningless. When the editor of
Vanity Fair asked Joyce if the sketches in Work in Progress were consecutive and interrelated, Joyce replied "It is all consecutive and interrelated."
[15]Book I
"riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."
— The opening line of Finnegans Wake, which continues from the book's unfinished closing line
[16]In general, it is accepted that the episodic introductory chapter (1.1) provides an overview of the book's themes, but little of the book's perceived "plot" - Joyce himself referred to it as a "
prelude", and as "a kind of air photograph of Irish history, a celebration of the dim past of Dublin".
[17][18] The book opens with a sentence fragment that continues from the last line of the book. Joyce himself revealed in a letter during the book's composition that "[i]t ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence".
[19] Glasheen suggests that all first-time readers need know from the book's enigmatic opening is that it establishes the book's setting as "
Howth Castle and Environs" (namely
Dublin) "before
the flood, before
the fall."
[20] The chapter then settles into a more discernible narrative, concerning a Dublin
hod carrier called "Finnegan," who falls to his death from a ladder.
[21][22] Finnegan's corpse becomes a meal spread for the mourners at his
wake, but he vanishes before they can eat him.
[22]We are then presented with a series of
vignettes, loosely related to the absent Finnegan. First "The Willingdone Museyroom" presents a guided tour through a museum in the
Wellington Monument in
Phoenix Park, which commemorates Finnegan's fall, retold as the battle of
"Willingdone" versus the
"Lipoleums" and "Jinnies" at
Waterloo [23][24] "Mutt and Jute" describes a dialogue between near deaf and dumb
aboriginal ancestors who have great difficulty in hearing, seeing and understanding each other.
[25][26][27]Finally "The Prankquean" depicts Finnegan - under the name of "
Jarl van Hoother" - as the victim of a vengeful pirate queen (based on
Grace O'Malley).
[28] The short tale "concerns the Prankquean arriving three times at the Jarl's castle, each time catching the gentleman unaware, each time asking a riddle and - upon the Jarl's inability to answer it - each time kidnapping a child, until the third visit results in a concession from the furious Jarl."
[29]Eventually, in keeping with the comic song "
Finnegan's Wake" that provided Joyce's title, a fight breaks out, whiskey splashes on Finnegan's corpse, and “the dead Finnegan rises from his coffin bawling for whiskey and his mourners put him back to rest”,
[30]. However his mourners persuade him that he is better off where he is as a new version of Finnegan is sailing into Dublin Bay to take over the story: Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker.
[31]Chapter two (1.2), which many critics believe begins the "narrative" proper, opens with an account of how Humphrey Chimpden was given the name "Earwicker" by the King, who encountered him trying to catch
earwigs with an inverted flowerpot on a stick when he was supposed to have been manning a
tollgate. This name helps Earwicker, now known by his initials HCE
[32], to rise to prominence in Dublin society as "Here Comes Everybody." He is then brought low by a rumor which begins to spread across Dublin, apparently concerning a sexual trespass involving two girls in the
Phoenix Park, although details of HCE's transgression change with each retelling of events.
Chapters 1.2 through 1.4 follow the progress of this rumor, starting with HCE's encounter with "a cad with a pipe." The cad asks the time, but HCE misunderstands it as either an accusation or a proposition, and incriminates himself by denying rumors the cad has not yet heard.
[33] These rumors spread across Dublin, increasing as they do, until they finally become a song - penned by the character Hosty - called "
The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly"; a "scurrilous rann against H.C. Earwicker, which recounts the All-Father's fall from grace."
[34] Eventually HCE goes into hiding, where he is besieged and reviled at the closed gate of his pub by a visiting American who is looking for drink after hours.
[35] HCE remains silent, dreams, and is eventually put into a coffin and buried at the bottom of
Lough Neagh [36] As the rumour gathers momentum HCE is accused of more and more crimes, sins and transgressions, and is eventually brought to trial. HCE, under the name Festy King, is eventually freed and goes once more into hiding.
[37] An important piece of evidence during the trial - a letter about HCE written by his wife ALP (signed by "A Laughable Party") - is called for so that it can be examined in closer detail.
ALP's Letter now becomes the focal point as it is analysed in detail in 1.5. This letter was apparently dictated by ALP to her son Shem, a writer, and then entrusted to her other son Shaun, a postman, for delivery. The letter never reaches its intended destination, ending up in a
midden heap where it is unearthed by a hen named Biddy.
[38] The letter is perhaps an indictment of HCE and perhaps an exoneration. Chapter I.6, often known as "the Quiz", consists of a further digression from the narrative in order to present the main and minor characters in more detail, in the form of twelve riddles and answers. According to Henkes and Bindervoet, the chapter is "strategically placed at the end of the two big questions raised in the previous chapters that are by no means resolved: what is Earwicker’s secret sin and what was the letter all about?"
[39] In the final two chapters of Book I we learn more about the letter's writer Shem and its original author ALP; the latter in the book's most celebrated passage, published separately as "Anna Livia Plurabelle." This chapter, which is interwoven with thousands of river names from all over the globe, was described by Joyce in 1924 as "a chattering dialogue across the river by two washerwomen who as night falls become a tree and a stone."
[40][
edit] Book II
While Book I of Finnegans Wake deals mostly with the parents HCE and ALP, Book II shifts that focus onto their children, Shem, Shaun and Issy; we see them at play in 2.1, and studying mathematics in a room above the pub in 2.2. These chapters are murky in themselves - William York Tindall said of them "Than this [...] nothing is denser" - but the succeeding chapters, 2.3 and 2.4, are often acknowledged as the most difficult in the book.
[41]2.1 is most commonly known as "The Mime of Mick, Nick and the Maggies." It opens with a pantomime programme, which outlines, in relatively clear language, the identities and characteristics of the book's main protagonists. Tindall et al. generally summarise the rest of the chapter as concerning a guessing game among the children, in which Shem is the victim of the girls' riddle. Shem is asked three times to guess by "gazework" the colour which the girls have chosen.
[42] Unable to answer due to his poor eyesight, Shem goes into exile in disgrace and Shaun, his twin brother, wins the affection of the girls. Finally HCE emerges from the pub and in a thunder-like voice calls the children inside.
[43] According to Joyce, the piece was based on a children's game called "Angels and Devils" or "Colours," in which one child ("the devil", here played by Shem, or Nick) is supposed to guess a colour that has been chosen by the others ("the angels," here played by the girls.)
[44]Chapter 2.2; the main narrative of which is known critically as "The Triangle" and which Joyce referred to in letters as "Night Lessons", follows Shem, Shaun and their sister Issy studying upstairs in the pub, after having been called inside in the previous chapter.
[45][46] Joyce described the chapter as depicting "[Shem] coaching [Shaun] how to do
Euclid Bk I, 1" and elsewhere he described its structure (which includes observational notes and footnotes surrounding the text) thus: "the technique here is a reproduction of a schoolboys' (and schoolgirls') old classbook complete with
marginalia by the twins, who change sides at half time, and footnotes by the girl (who doesn't), a Euclid diagram, funny drawings, etc.".
[47][48] Once Shem (here called Dolph) has helped Shaun (here called Kev) to draw the Euclid diagram
[1], the latter realises that what he has drawn is a diagram of ALP's genitalia, and, according to Benstock, "Kev finally realises the significance of the triangles during a letter-writing session [and] strikes Dolph." After this "Dolph forgives Kev" and the children are given "[e]ssay assignments on 52 famous men."
[49]Section 1: a radio broadcast of the tale of Pukklesen (a hunchbacked Norwegian Captain), Kersse (a tailor) and McCann (a ship's husband) in which the story is told inter alia of how HCE met and married ALP. Sections 2-3: an interruption in which Kate (the cleaning woman) tells HCE that he is wanted upstairs, the door is closed and the tale of Buckley is introduced. Sections 4-5: the tale, recounted by Butt and Taff (Shem and Shaun) and beamed over the television, of how Buckley shot the Russian General (HCE)
— Danis Rose's overview of the extremely complex chapter 2.3, which he believes to take place in the bar of Earwicker's hotel
[50]2.3 is generally interpreted as dealing with the situation in the pub below where the children are studying, as it relates the episodes of "The Norwegian Captain and the Tailor's Daughter" and "How Buckley Shot the Russian General." According to Bishop it shows an aged HCE worrying about work in his pub, and offers narratives about him succumbing to domestication, old age and decline as he is ultimately overthrown by his sons (through the symbolic shooting of The Russian General by Buckley.)
[51] Tindall also agrees that the two stories represent Earwicker's marriage and replacement by his son, but exact details and consensus remain elusive.
[52] Joyce himself called the Norwegian Captain's story a "wordspiderweb" and referred to it as "perhaps the most complacently absurd thing that I ever did until now [...] It is the story of a Captain [...] and a Dublin tailor which my god-father told me forty years ago, trying to explain the arrival of my Viking in Dublin, his marriage, and a lot of things I don't care to mention here."
[53][54] After Buckley has shot the Russian General, Earwicker returns from upstairs and all of his customers revile him, which forces him to deliver a general confession of his crimes, including an incestuous desire for young girls.
[55][56][57][58] Finally Sigurdsen - cast as a policeman - arrives to send the drunken customers home, the pub is closed up ("Shatten up ship" 376.30 - 371.5), and the customers disappear singing into the night as a drunken Earwicker, clearing up the bar, swallows the dregs of the glasses left behind, mysteriously morphs into ancient Irish high king Rory O'Connor, and passes out.
[59][60]2.4 is a composite of two shorter pieces called "Mamalujo" and "Tristan and Isolde", which Joyce had written as early as 1923.
[61] The chapter chronicles the spying of four old men (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) on
Tristan and Iseult's journey. Bishop describes it as evoking "an old man like
King Mark being rejected and abandoned by young lovers who sail off into a future without him", while Tindall sees it as focusing more on the four old men who observe Tristan and Isolde, and their four commentaries on the lovers and themselves which are "always repeating themselves".
[62][63]Book III
Book III concerns itself almost exclusively with Shaun, and his task of having to deliver the letter (which was referred to in Book 1, but never seen) in his role as postman. Joyce referred to its four chapters as "The Four Watches of Shaun", and characterised it in one of his letters as "a description of a postman traveling backwards in the night through the events already narrated. It is narrated in the form of a via crucis of 14 stations but in reality is only a barrel rolling down the river
Liffey".
[64]III.1 opens with the Four Masters' ass narrating how he thought, as he was "dropping asleep"
[65], he heard and saw an apparition of Shaun the Post, "who was after having a great time [...] in a porterhouse."
[66] This leads to Shaun's reapperance, waking up and yawning "Does she lag soft fall means rest down?"
[67] The narrators then ask the postman 14 questions, mostly concerning the significance of the letter he is carrying, but Shaun, "apprehensive about being slighted, is on his guard, and the placating narrators never get a straight answer out of him"
[68] Indeed, instead of getting to the heart of the letter's contents, the focus is mostly on Shaun's own boastful personality and his admonishment of his artist brother Shem, who wrote the letter. Shaun's sudden and somewhat unexpected promotion to the book's central character is explained by Tindall with the assertion that "having disposed of old HCE, Shaun is becoming the new HCE."
[69]After the inquisition Shaun loses his balance and the barrel in which he has been floating careens over and he rolls backwards out of the narrator's earshot, before disappearing completely from view.
[70]In III.2, despite his disappearance in the previous chapter, Shaun re-appears, this time referred to as "Jaunty Jaun," and delivers a lengthy sermon to his sister Issy, and her 28 schoolmates from St. Brigid's School. Throughout this book Shaun is continually regressing, changing from an old man to an overgrown babbling baby lying on his back, and eventually, in III.3, into a vessel through which the voice of HCE speaks again by means of a spiritual
medium (in 3.3). This leads to HCE's defence of his life in the celebrated passage "Haveth Childers Everywhere". Book 3 ends in the bedroom of Mr. and Mrs. Porter; while their children are sleeping down the hall and the dawn is rising outside, they attempt to copulate.
Book IV
1: The waking and resurrection of [HCE]; 2: the sunrise; 3:the conflict of night and day; 4: the attempt to ascertain the correct time; 5: the terminal point of the regressive time and the [Shaun] figure of Book III; 6: the victory of day over night; 7: the letter and monologue of [ALP]
— Roland McHugh's summary of the events of Book IV
[71]Book IV consists of only one chapter, which, like the book's opening chapter, is mostly composed of a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes. Book IV opens with a call for dawn to break and indeed Tindall refers to it as "a chapter of resurrection and waking up."
[72][73] The chapter goes on to provide some of the strongest evidence that the book has been representing the nocturnal state of sleep and dreaming; such as when the narrator asks “You mean to see we have been hadding a sound night’s sleep?” and later concludes that what has gone before has been “a long, very long, a dark, very dark [...] scarce endurable [...] night.”
[74][75] As such, McHugh finds that the chapter contains "particular awareness of events going on offstage, connected with the arrival of dawn and the waking process which terminates the sleeping process of [Finnegans Wake]."
[76] The remainder of the chapter consists of a series of vignettes, which are known critically as "Saint Kevin", "Berkely and Patrick" and "The Revered Letter".
[77] Joyce gave some hint of the intention behind the three separate episodes in conversation with
Frank Budgen:
In Part IV there is in fact a
triptych – though the central window is scarcely illuminated. Namely the supposed windows of the village church gradually lit up by the dawn, the windows, i.e., representing on one side the meeting of
St Patrick (Japanese) & the (Chinese) Archdruid Bulkely (this by the way is all about colour) & the legend of the progressive isolation of
St Kevin, the third being
St Lawrence O’Toole, patron saint of Dublin; buried in Eu in Normandy.
[78]In an echo of Joyce's earlier work Ulysses the female protagonist has the final word; the book closes on a version of ALP’s Letter (critics disagree on whether this is the definitive version of The Letter which has been discussed throughout, or merely another variation of it) and her final long monologue.
[79][80] At the close of her monologue, ALP - as the river Liffey - disappears at dawn into the vast possibilities of the ocean. The book's last words are a fragment, but they can be turned into a complete sentence by attaching them to the words that start the book:
A way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.
Characters in "Finnegans Wake"
Critics disagree on whether or not discernible characters exist in Finnegans Wake. For example, Grace Eckley - in her Children's Lore in Finnegans Wake - emphasises the non-blurring distinctiveness of Wakean characters, while Marot Norris - in her Decentred Universe - argues for the concept of indeterminacy of character.
[81] As such, many find that the "characters" in Finnegans Wake are rather "archetypes or character amalgams, taking different shapes."
[82]. By extension Norris argues that in Finnegans Wake "Characters are fluid and interchangeable".
[83] However the fact remains that while characters are in a constant state of flux; constantly changing names, occupations, and physical attributes; a recurring set of core characters or character types (what Norris dubs "
ciphers") are discernible. During the composition of Finnegans Wake, Joyce used signs or so-called “sigla” to designate these character amalgams or types. In a letter to his Maecenas, Harriet Shaw Weaver (March 1924), Joyce made a list of these sigla
[82]. For those who argue for the existence of distinguishable characters, the book focuses on the Earwicker family, which consists of father, mother, twin sons and a daughter.
The Earwicker family
Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker – (or HCE) an Irish publican, possibly a reincarnation of Finnegan, the
hod carrier of the street ballad who falls at the start of the book.
Anna Livia Plurabelle – (or ALP) HCE's wife
Shem & Shaun (or Jerry and Kevin, also known by many other names) – the twin sons of HCE and ALP
Issy, Iseult (or Isolde), Isabel, – daughter of HCE and ALP
HCE is referred to by literally thousands of names throughout the book: he is at first referred to as "Harold or Humphrey Chimpden";
[84] a conflation of these names as "Haromphreyld",
[85] and as a consequence of his initials "Here Comes Everybody";
[86] but as the work progresses the names by which he may be referred to become more and more abstract (such as "
Finn MacCool",
[87] "Mr. Makeall Gone",
[88] or "Mr. Porter"
[89]). Bishop argues that while the constant flux of HCE's character and attributes may lead us to consider him as an "anyman," he also argues that "the sheer density of certain repeated details and concerns allows us to know that he is a particular, real Dubliner." The common critical consensus of HCE's fixed character is summarised by Bishop as being "an older
Protestant male, of
Scandinavian lineage, connected with the pubkeeping business somewhere in the neighbourhood of
Chapelizod, who has a wife, a daughter, and two sons."
[90] HCE personifies the city of Dublin (which was founded by
Vikings), and his wife ALP personifies the
river Liffey, on whose banks the city was built. In the popular eighth chapter, hundreds of names of rivers are woven into the tale of ALP's life, and similarly hundreds of city names are woven into "Haveth Childers Everywhere," the passage at the end of III.3 which focuses on HCE. Joyce universalizes his tale by making HCE and ALP stand, as well, for every city-river pair in the world. And they are, like
Adam and Eve, the primeval parents of all the Irish and all humanity.
ALP and HCE have a daughter, Issy, whose personality is often split (represented by her mirror-twin), and two sons, Shem and Shaun, eternal rivals for replacing their father and for Issy's affection. Like their father, Shem and Shaun are known by many different names throughout the book, such as "Caddy and Primas",
[91] "Mercius"
[92] and "Justius",
[93] "Dolph and Kevin" (in chapter II.2) and "Jerry and Kevin" (in chapter III.4). Shem and Shaun are contrasted in the book by allusions to many sets of opposing twins and enemies in literature, mythology and history, such as
Set and
Horus of the
Osiris story, the biblical pairs
Jacob &
Esau and
Cain &
Abel, as well as
Romulus & Remus and
St. Michael & the
Devil (with the book's equation of Shaun with "Mick" and Shem with "
Nick").
Shaun is portrayed as a dull
postman, conforming to society's expectations, while Shem is a bright artist and sinister experimenter. Hugh Staples finds that Shaun "wants to be thought of as a man-about-town, a snappy dresser, a glutton and a gourmet... He is possessed of a musical voice and is a braggart. He is not happy in his work, which is that of a messenger or a postman; he would rather be a priest."
[94] These twins are sometimes accompanied by a third personality; in whom their opposite poles are reconciled; called Tristan or Tristram. A common belief among critics is that, by synthesizing their strengths, Tristan is able to win Issy and defeat/replace HCE, like
Tristan in the
triangle with Iseult (Issy) and King Mark (HCE).
Minor characters
The book is also populated by many mysterious minor characters, such as Kate, "McGrath", the bell-ringer "Fox Goodman", and the
Four Masters. The character of "Mr Browne the Jesuit" was based on
Francis Browne, a classmate of Joyce's at
Royal University. Browne later distinguished himself as an important photographer (best known for taking the last known photographs of
RMS Titanic) and Jesuit preacher.
The most commonly recurring characters outside of the Earwicker family are the four old men known collectively as "Mamalujo" (a conflation of their names:
Matt Gregory,
Marcus Lyons,
Luke Tarpey and
Johnny Mac Dougall). These four most commonly serve as narrators, but they also play a number of active roles in the text, such as when they serve as the judges in the court case of I.4, or as the inquisitors who question Yawn in III.4. Tindall summarises the roles that these old men play as those of
the Four Masters, the
Four Evangelists, and the four
Provinces of Ireland ( "Matthew, from the north, is
Ulster; Mark, from the south, is
Munster; Luke, from the east, is
Leinster; and John, from the west, is
Connaught")
[95]The Earwicker household includes two cleaning staff: Kate, the maid, and Joe, who is by turns handyman and barman in Earwicker's pub. These characters are seen by most critics as older versions of ALP and HCE
[96]. Kate often plays the role of museum curator, as in the "Willingdone Museyroom" episode of 1.1
[97], and is recognisable by her repeated motif "Tip! Tip!"
A reconstruction of nocturnal life
Throughout the book's seventeen year gestation, Joyce alluded many times to the fact that with Finnegans Wake he was attempting to "reconstruct the nocturnal life".
[98] While tackling the question of why his peers and public at large were having such problems dealing with the book and its peculiar language, Joyce said in conversation with William Bird:
I can't understand some of my critics, like
Pound or Miss Weaver, for instance. They say it's obscure. They compare it, of course, with Ulysses. But the action of Ulysses was chiefly during the daytime, and the action of my new work takes place chiefly at night. It's natural things should not be so clear at night, isn't it now?
[99]According to Richard Ellman, Joyce once informed a friend that "he conceived of his book as the dream of old Finn, lying in death beside the river Liffey and watching the history of Ireland and the world – past and future – flow through his mind like flotsam on the river of life."
[100]Various critics have accepted Joyce's claims to be representing the night and dreams either at face value or with a dose of skepticism, and while most agree there is at least some element in which the book can be said to be a "dream," few agree on who the possible dreamer of such a dream might be - is it a character by the name of Mr. Porter (a theory popular in early Wakean criticism which has since gone out of fashion), Joyce's dream, or the universal dream of everybody?
Edmund Wilson's early analysis of the book, The Dream of H. C. Earwicker, made the assumption that Earwicker himself is the Dreamer of the dream; an assumption which continued to carry much weight with Wakean scholars such as Harry Levin, Hugh Kenner, and William Troy. Joseph Campbell, co-author of The Skeleton Key, the first full-length study of Joyce's final work, also believed Earwicker to be the Dreamer, but considered the narrative to be the observances of, and a running commentary by, an anonymous pedant on Earwicker's dream in progress, who would interrupt the flow with his own digressions.
Ruth von Phul was the first to argue that Earwicker was not the dreamer, an argument which has triggered a number of similarly-minded views on the matter; although her assertion that Shem was the dreamer has found less support
[101]The assertion that the dream was that of Mr.Porter, whose dream personality personified iteself as HCE, came from the critical idea that the Dreamer partially wakes during chapter III.4, in which he and his family are referred to by the name Porter. Anthony Burgess, representative of this type of thinking on the matter, summarized the "dream" with which the book concerns itself thus: "Mr. Porter and his family are asleep for the greater part of the book [...] Mr. Porter dreams hard, and we are permitted to share his dream [...] Sleeping, he becomes a remarkable mixture of guilty man, beast, and crawling thing, and he even takes on a new and dreamily appropriate name - Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker.
[102] Burgess sees Mr. Porter through his dream trying "to make the whole of history swallow up his guilt for him" and to this end "HCE has, so deep in his sleep, sunk to a level of dreaming in which he has become a collective being rehearsing the collective guilt of man."
[103]Harriet Weaver was among the first to suggest that the dream was not that of any one dreamer, but was rather an analysis of the process of dreaming itself. In a letter to J.S. Atherton she wrote:
In particular their ascription of the whole thing to a dream of HCE seems to me nonsensical. My view is that Mr. Joyce did not intend the book to be looked upon as the dream of any one character, but that he regarded the dream form with its shiftings and changes and chances as a convenient device, allowing the freest scope to introduce any material he wished—and suited to a night-piece.
[104]Bernard Benstock also argued that "The Dreamer in the Wake is more than just a single individual, even if one assumes that on the literal level we are viewing the dream of publican H.C. Earwicker."
[105] Other critics have been more skeptical of the concept of identifying the Dreamer of the book's narrative. Clive Hart summarized this point in 1962 thus:
Whatever our conclusions about the identity of the Dreamer, and no matter how many varied caricatures of him we may find projected into the dream, it is clear that he must always be considered as essentially external to the book, and should be left there. Speculation about the 'real person' behind the guises of the dream-surrogates or about the function of the dream in relation to the unresolved stresses of this hypothetical mind is fruitless, for the tensions and psychological problems in Finnegans Wake concern the dream-figures living within the book itself.
Most recently John Bishop has been the most vocal supporter of exactly the opposite argument - that is, treating Finnegans Wake absolutely, in every sense, as a description of a dream, the dreamer, and of the night itself; arguing that the book not only represents a dream in a superficial or abstract way, but is a literary representation of what it means to be "dead to the world" or asleep. On the subject Bishop writes:
The greatest obstacle to our comprehension of Finnegans Wake [...has been...] the failure on the part of readers to believe that Joyce really meant what he said when he spoke of the book as a "reconstruction of the nocturnal life" and an "imitation of the dream-state"; and as a consequence readers have perhaps too easily exercised on the text an unyielding literalism bent on finding a kind of meaning in every way antithetical to the kind of meaning purveyed in dreams
[106]Bishop has also somewhat brought back into fashion the theory that the Wake is about a single sleeper; arguing that it is not "the 'universal dream' of some disembodied global everyman, but a reconstruction of the night - and a single night - as experienced by 'one stable somebody' whose 'earwitness' on the real world is coherently chronological."
[107] Bishop has laid the path for critics such as Eric Rosenbloom, who has proposed that the book "elaborates the fragmentation and reunification of identity during sleep. The masculine [...] mind of the day has been overtaken by the feminine night mind. [...] The characters live in the transformation and flux of a dream, embodying the sleeper’s mind."
[108]
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