The Wandering Rocks

The themes of unity, metempsychosis and "all in all in all" in Scylla and Charybdis explode into multiplicity in The Wandering Rocks. We are presented with nineteen fragments in which we see a multitude of people going about their day in Dublin. The primary characters within those fragments are:

1. Reverend John Conmee, S.J., first seen in The Lotus Eaters
2. Corny Kelleher, the undertaker from Hades
3. a onelegged mendicant sailor
4. Katey, Boody and Maggy Dedalus, sisters of Stephen
5. Blazes Boylan
6. Almidano Artifoni and Stephen Dedalus
7. Miss Dunne, Blazes Boylan's secretary
8. Ned Lambert, J.J. O'Molloy and the Reverend Hugh C. Love
9. Tom Rochford, Nosey Flynn, M'Coy and Lenehan
10. Bloom
11. Dilly and Simon Dedalus
12. Tom Kernan
13. Stephen and Dilly Dedalus
14. Simon Dedalus, Father Cowley and Ben Dollard, a trio who will also appear in the following episode
15. Martin Cunningham, John Power, first seen in Hades, John Wyse Nolan, Jimmy Henry and Long John Fanning
16. Buck Mulligan and Haines, first seen in Telemachus
17. Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, previously seen in The Lotus Eaters
18. Patrick Aloysius Dignam, the son of Paddy Dignam, buried in Hades.
19. William Humble Ward, Earl of Dudley, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, with entourage

In addition there are a number of other individuals and objects that appear and reappear, for example the blind stripling that Bloom helped across the street, an old woman who entertains herself at the courts of law, and the crumpled-up piece of paper that Bloom threw off a bridge in The Lestrygonians.

The fragments are bookended by the travels of the Jesuit Conmee and the British governor of Ireland; both of these fragments stand out from the others in that they have a more formal, blow-by-blow reportage-type style to them. These two are also the most formal of the wanderers; the Lord Lieutenant parades through the city in his viceregal carriage, and Conmee carries himself with good-natured dignity and "cheerful decorum." By contrast the other Dubliners seem small, flawed, and preoccupied with worries and conceits.

The formality of both Conmee and the carriage are juxtaposed with that of another wanderer, a certain Denis J. Maginni, dancing instructor of grave deportment and gay apparrel. There is something in this, I think, some sly comment about their characters. Father Conmee also seems to be concerned with appearances; we are shown his silk hat and kid gloves, and we are informed that he has cleaned his teeth. Meanwhile his imagination betrays a perhaps excessively romantic view of the past:

Don John Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was humane and honoured there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and he smiled at smiling noble faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit clusters. And the hands of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble, were impalmed by don John Conmee.

The carriage of the Lord Lieutenant is also noted for its old-fashioned grandeur, with its frock-coated outriders and cream sunshades. It's hard not to imagine that there is not some kind of meaning in all this.

Maginni is also seen in Bloom's fragment—not surprisingly, the central fragment, 10 of 19—but this time in a stark contrast, for Bloom is still in grave apparel from the funeral.

James Joyce famously plotted out these various peregrinations and connections with exacting care and precise timing; they intersect like the gears of a giant clock, and a reader inclined to puzzle-solving could plot out all the routes and minute-by-minute whereabouts of the multitude of Dubliners. In fact, the episode begins with the setting of a watch.

What does it all mean, though? Scylla and Charybdis and The Wandering Rocks are episodes nine and ten of eighteen, and so the two central chapters of the novel. If we view them as a pair, we see a contrast: the idea of the spiritual unity of all men is replaced by division and multiplicity, the holy trinity is replaced by the "ten thousand things" of the Tao Te Ching, symbolic of the material world. One could also consider the two episodes to correspond to the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, specifically the idea of the Platonic forms versus Aristotle's examination of real-world examples.

We also get to see many of the incidental characters in a bit more detail, in particular Simon Dedalus, Stephen's father. Throughout the novel he is shown as an intelligent and witty man, if a somewhat acerbic one, but in The Wandering Rocks we also see him as a man in decline, sending his children out to the pawnbrokers and borrowing money from friends. We also get our first direct view of Blazes Boylan; previously in the novel he is only glimpsed from afar.

The political tone is not absent here, either. One fragment takes place at the site of St. Mary's Abbey and makes reference to the rebellion of Thomas Fitzgerald against the English crown in 1534.