Freud believed that the brain was split into 3 parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. During reading of the chapter and knowledge from our lecture the week before, I made a point in the seminar that there is the possibility Joyce used these three parts of the brain in the chapter using the three key functions in the chapter.
I felt that the drunken actions, the subconscious and the hallucinations were similar to that of the three parts of the brain, and that Joyce used Freud's philosophy of the brain and interpreted that into his main chapter 15 characters: Bloom and Stephen.
I firmly believe the id is the drunkenness, the ego is the subconscious and the superego is the hallucinations. I will explain my point. The id a human's 'wild' brain feature, the inability to control themselves, now when drunk, most people look control over the simplest bodily functions and in 'Circe', both Bloom and Stephen are obsessive over sex without thinking about their actions, for example the idea of Mary Driscoll claiming Bloom approached her for sex suggest Blooms lacks morality and has let his drunken nature overcome his morals. The subconscious is the ego. The idea that morals are one thing that stop reckless actions and that it will be the saviour of Stephen and bloom doing something they could regret. As for the superego, this is the authority of the brain. So in a normal society, the authority would be a policeman for example, so in 'Circe', Joyce uses the hallucinations as the authority. An example of this in the book would be when Stephen sees a vision of his dead mother. In this case, Stephen's mother would be the authority of Stephen and despite being dead, just by seeing her 'ghost', Stephen becomes intimidated by the presence of his authority figure and this henceforth makes him question his drunken actions, or in Freudian terms, the actions of the id.
The idea of modernism is key in this book. It is a huge contrast to romanticism and The Enlightenment which was a movement linked highly to Greek civilisation. The fact that James Joyce uses the movement to compare modern life in 'Circe' to Greek civilisation is an attack on the Enlightenment.
The chapter shows Stephen heading toward a brothel. Bloom is following him but slowly loses his way and in a hallucination, his comes across his family who take him for several offences. Following this, Bloom awakens whilst feeding a dog, and this act leads onto another hallucination where Bloom sees himself on trial for a number of offences and crimes. Other characters in the book give evidence against Bloom. Bloom sees further hallucinations where his grandfather lectures him on sexual mis-constraints as well as being informed Stephen is in a brothel in which a prostitute Bloom encounters works at.
Stephen's hallucinations consist mainly of his dead mother. He attempts to overcome his mis-doings by becoming an independent person, rejecting the ideas of the Church and nationalism, something which Joyce himself embraced but later rejected during his lifetime. When Stephen is knocked out at the end of the chapter, it is Bloom who is there to look after him in his time of need - acting as a father figure, a father figure Stephen never had when his father and mother abandoned him in his younger days. The irony of this though, is Bloom's final hallucination comes in the form of his dead son, Rudy, highlighting the need for Bloom to become a father-type character, and Stephen to become a character in need of someone to act like the father he never had.
Relevant Sources
- http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guide/literature/Ulysses-Summary-Analysis-and-Original-Text-Chapter-15-Circe.id-153,pageNum-279.html
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce
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