Suicide in Ulysses by James Joyce

Abstract

In the episode “Sirens”, Leopold Bloom pulls a string while fights against his thoughts. He doesn’t want to think about Molly and ends thinking about death. When the question “Are you not happy in your?” arises, the string snaps. As a representation of himself, the protagonist of James Joyce’s novel is on the edge – but it is the string that snaps, not Bloom. To discuss Ulysses’ incommunicability, its homeric parallel or grieve influences is not a new. In this way, we propose to add the suicide as an affluent theme of these questions, an aspect of the protagonist and narrative (de)construction. To what extent the grief for the father doesn’t stands beside the possibility of suicide that presents after the voluntary death in family? How many times does the theme cross the character’s restless mind during this single day? To think of Shakespeare’s father-son relationship is also not to recall that Hamlet questioned his existence and Ophelia threw herself into the river? Based on such questions, we intend to discuss different proposals for reading the theme in joyceans classic. Therefore, we are mainly guided by James Joyce’s researchers, such as Ames (2009), Durão (2013), Galindo (2016), Bennett (2017), among others.