Major Weaknesses in Ulysses

Together with the reference of ancient Greece depicted in Homer's Odyssey Joyce writes Ulysses to underscore the ironic contrast between the exhausted modern world and glories epoch of ancient Greece structuring his masterpiece by corresponding each of the characters of that epic.

But while doing this Joyce is not safe from some of his weaknesses in Ulysses, which has reduced the value, and effects of his achievement in the text. As a result Joyce has become one of the most controversial writers among the 20th century critics. One of the most prominent critics of Joyce's period T. S. Eliot has said that Joyce’s Ulysses is a novel to end all other novels. It has been charged that Joyce's Ulysses on the one hand blocks the traditional way of writing novels and on the other hand it also closes the door for other further coming possibilities of novels. It is one of the weaknesses of Ulysses.

In the same way what has been presented in the position of Stephen is also with some flaw in the novel. Stephen's impression and conflict play a greatly reduced role in determining the narrative style and structure of Ulysses. Which are other aspects of weaknesses in Joyce's novel Ulysses while characterization the characters from the modernist point of view. At this point too Joyce's achievement after writing this novel has been less affected according to some critics. After the holistic formation of the novel, there is difference of dimension and substance as well as of the characters. Stephen is a self portrait and therefore one sided character. But Bloom is seen from all angles as no self portrait character. One of the defects that Joyce shows here is on the one hand, he only writes about himself and on the other hand it also becomes for only himself. Though his target is directed towards the thousands of modern readers his achievement centers for only himself while characterizing the character like Stephen and Bloom in the novel. This is another weakness of Joyce in his novel.

Being one of the major narrators, Bloom Struggles with his own memories, including those associated with the deaths of his father and his son, he goes about the ordinary process of living and the business of making his living as a canvasser for advertisements he also encounters some extraordinary, or at least non-so ordinary situation and characters. In another level Joyce used technique in the novel also has highly been commented. He uses one of the most complicated techniques in different layers. For example, his technique of narration is also not so simple. The selection of words, sentence and characters are also in very complicated form. Even the use of narrative technique; the stream of consciousness technique is charged by different critics that Joyce has not been able to fulfill the motto of stream of consciousness technique properly in his novel Ulysses. It is another weakness of Joyce in the novel.

Similarly the language employed by Joyce throughout the novel is not his language, but the language of his characters. He tries to attribute an appropriate language to each character. The difference in language between characters is not one of tone. Joyce's this sort of aspect is also very complicated to grasp the holistic spirit of the novel. It has also questioned the higher degree of Joyce's achievement in the entire novel. Instead of the narrative method mythical method of Joyce's writing novel has been kept in the central role. No doubt it might be one of the steps of making modern people possible for art, but if we turned towards the single text Ulysses, Joyce creates a kind of vagueness inside the holistic formation of the book.

In this way, being very critical text of modern era Ulysses possesses different layers of weakness in the views of different critics. One of the very common truth about Ulysses is that it possesses the nature of complexity in its different position, whether we see the structural formation, or we see the narrative technique or we look towards the characterization everywhere we can see the nature of complexity behind the holistic formation of the novel from a different point of view. Neither the traditional technique dominated reader can really catch the actual spirit of Joyce's Ulysses, nor any modernist writer or critics can claim the holistic meaning behind the text. So it might be taken one of the weaknesses of Joyce's Ulysses. But blaming Joyce by standing in some sort of limited literary trend, technique and other limited method may be one of the biggest mistakes. Because Joyce's one of the intentions is to depict the vision of the complex modern world by representing his characters, techniques and other aspects in complex form.