Finnegans Wake
Summary
Finnegans Wake is James Joyce's final and most ambitious novel, published in 1939. It follows the Earwicker family in a cyclical narrative that blends dream and reality. Renowned for its experimental style and complex language, incorporating puns and allusions from dozens of languages, this unconventional work is now considered a masterpiece of modernist literature.
Plot
The plot of Finnegans Wake is notoriously difficult to summarize, as the novel does not follow a conventional narrative structure. However, the book broadly follows the nighttime dreams of the character Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE), a Dublin pub owner. In his dreams, HCE relives events from his past and imagines scenarios involving his family members, including his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle (ALP) and their three children.
The novel opens with Tim Finnegan, a hod carrier who dies after falling from a ladder then returns to the living at his wake when whiskey is splashed on his corpse. This mirrors the fall and potential redemption of HCE, who is troubled by an unspecified transgression he committed in Phoenix Park involving two young women. Rumors of this incident spread throughout Dublin, damaging HCE's reputation. The middle sections of the book focus on HCE and ALP's twin sons, Shem and Shaun, who represent opposing personality types, and their young daughter, Issy, who is the object of both brothers' affection.
In the final chapter, ALP delivers a soliloquy as she flows into the ocean at dawn, bringing the cycle of the novel back to its beginning. The book ends mid-sentence, which can be completed by turning back to the first line of the novel, emphasizing its cyclical structure. Throughout, Joyce employs an idiosyncratic, multilingual style filled with puns and literary allusions to explore themes of guilt, sexuality, history, and the cyclical nature of time.
Themes
• Cyclical nature of history and time
• Fall and redemption
• Family dynamics and relationships
• Language and wordplay
• Irish identity and mythology
• Dream logic and the unconscious mind
• Universality of human experience
Setting
The setting of Finnegans Wake is nebulous and constantly shifting, reflecting the novel’s dreamlike nature. While the story is generally understood to take place in and around Dublin, Ireland, the geography is fluid and encompasses a vast symbolic landscape that spans history and mythology. The central location appears to be the area of Howth Castle and its environs on the outskirts of Dublin, but the setting expands to include the entire city and beyond.
Rather than follow a linear chronology, Finnegans Wake cycles through various historical periods and mythological ages, from ancient Ireland to the modern day. The novel's structure is based on Giambattista Vico's theory of cyclical history, with four parts corresponding to his four stages of history: the divine, heroic, human, and ricorso (return). As a result, its setting encompasses all of human history compressed into a single night.
Within this expansive spatiotemporal framework, much of the action revolves around a pub owned by the protagonist HCE and his family's home above it. Other key locations include Phoenix Park, where HCE's mysterious transgression may have occurred, and the River Liffey, which is personified as HCE's wife ALP. The setting constantly shifts between the physical world and the landscape of dreams and myth, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy throughout the novel.
Characters
• Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE): The central male character, a pub owner in Dublin who is haunted by a mysterious sin or transgression. He represents fallen man and cycles through various historical and mythological identities.
• Anna Livia Plurabelle (ALP): HCE's wife, who is closely associated with the River Liffey. She tries to defend her husband and writes a letter that becomes a central mystery of the novel.
• Shem the Penman: One of HCE and ALP's twin sons. He is a writer and artist figure, often interpreted as a stand-in for Joyce himself.
• Shaun the Postman: Shem's twin brother and rival. He is more conventional and socially accepted than Shem.
• Issy: The young daughter of HCE and ALP. She has a split personality and is an object of desire for multiple characters.
• Kate: The Earwickers' cleaning woman, who also serves as a museum curator figure in parts of the novel.
• Joe: The Earwickers' handyman and barman.
• The Four Old Men: Also known as “Mamalujo," these figures act as narrators and judges throughout the novel. They represent the Four Evangelists and the four provinces of Ireland.
• The Twelve Customers: A group of pub patrons who gossip about HCE and act as jurors in his imagined trial.
Quick facts
• James Joyce devoted 17 years, from 1922 to 1939, to writing Finnegans Wake.
• The book's title comes from an Irish ballad called “Finnegan's Wake” about a man who rises from the dead.
• Finnegans Wake contains words from more than 60 different languages.
• The book is written in a unique stream-of-consciousness style meant to mimic the language of dreams and the unconscious mind.
• Joyce was nearly blind while writing much of the novel and dictated portions to assistants.
• Finnegans Wake contains ten 100-letter words, known as “thunderwords,” spread throughout the text.
• Finnegans Wake begins mid-sentence and ends mid-sentence, forming a complete cyclical narrative.
Joyce claimed he could justify every word choice in the highly complex text.
• The book was initially published in fragments under the title “Work in Progress” before its full release in 1939.
The novel has inspired notable musical interpretations, including John Cage's 1979 composition, “Roaratorio.”
• Scholars and critics have called Finnegans Wake both a modern literary masterpiece and the most difficult work of fiction ever written in English.
About the author
James Joyce
James Joyce (1882-1941) was an influential Irish novelist and poet. His most famous works include the short story collection Dubliners (1914), the semi-autobiographical novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), his landmark novel Ulysses (1922), which chronicles a single day in Dublin through stream-of-consciousness narrative and literary allusions, and his final novel Finnegans Wake (1939), which pushed experimental prose to new extremes with its complex wordplay and dream-like structure. Credited with innovative literary techniques such as stream of consciousness, interior monologue, and dense allusions, he is considered a trailblazer in modernist literature.
Born and raised in Dublin, Joyce left Ireland as a young man and spent most of his life abroad in cities such as Trieste, Paris, and Zurich. Despite his self-imposed exile, Dublin remained the setting and inspiration for much of his work. His writing often focused on the details of everyday Dublin life while exploring themes of Irish identity, Catholicism, and the human psyche. Though some of his works faced censorship for their sexual content, Joyce gained critical acclaim in his lifetime.
Joyce suffered from recurrent eye problems throughout his life that left him nearly blind by his later years. He died in Zurich at the age of 58. His life and works continue to be the subject of extensive scholarly analysis and popular interest.