Finnegans Wake

:For the street ballad, see Finnegan's Wake.

Synopsis

Because Joyce's sentences are packed with obscure allusions and puns in dozens of different languages, it's still impossible to offer a definite synopsis, but this first approximation is widely accepted.

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The book begins with an introductory chapter giving an overview of the themes. First we hear of the fall of a central character, here called Finnegan and identified as a hod carrier in Dublin (or more generally, all builders of all kinds throughout world history), falling to his death from a scaffold or tower or wall. At his wake, in keeping with the comic song "Finnegan's Wake" that provided Joyce's title, a fight breaks out, whiskey splashes on Finnegan's corpse, and he rises up again alive (Finnegan awakes).

Related Topics:
Hod carrier - Scaffold - Finnegan's Wake

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This Finnegan is all men, and his fall is all men's fall. Subsequent vignettes in the first chapter show him as a warrior (in particular, as Wellington at Waterloo), as an explorer invading a land occupied by his aboriginal ancestors, and as the victim of a vengeful pirate queen (Grace O'Malley).

Related Topics:
Vignettes - Wellington - Waterloo - Aboriginal - Grace O'Malley

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At the end of chapter one, Joyce puts Finnegan back down again ("Now be aisy, good Mr Finnimore, sir. And take your laysure like a god on pension and don't be walking abroad"). A new version of Finnegan-Everyman is sailing into Dublin Bay to take over the story: Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, whose initials HCE ("Here Comes Everybody") lend themselves to phrase after phrase throughout the book.

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Chapters two opens with an account of how HCE was given the name "Earwicker" by the king, who catches HCE "earwigging" when he's supposed to be manning a tollgate. Although the name begins as an insult, it helps HCE rise to prominence in Dublin society, but then he's brought down by a rumor about a sexual trespass involving two girls in Phoenix Park (close by Chapelizod).

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Most of chapters two through four follow the progress of this rumor, starting with HCE's encounter with "a cad with a pipe." The cad asks the time, but HCE misunderstands it as either an accusation or a sexual proposition, and incriminates himself by denying rumors the cad hadn't yet heard (Joyce expresses HCE's confusion by spelling the cad's Gaelic phonetically, making it look like a suggestive English phrase). Eventually, HCE becomes so paranoid he goes into hiding, where he'll write a book that resembles "Ulysses".

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HCE is (at one level) a Scandinavian who has taken a native Irish wife, Anna Livia Plurabelle (whose initials ALP are also found in phrase after phrase), and at some point they've settled down to run a public house in Chapelizod, a suburb of Dublin named for the Irish princess Isolde. HCE personifies the city of Dublin (which was founded by Vikings), and ALP personifies the river Liffey, on whose banks the city was built. In the popular eighth chapter, hundreds of names of rivers are woven into the tale of ALP's life. Joyce universalizes his tale by making HCE and ALP stand as well for every city-river pair in the world. And they are, like Adam and Eve, the primeval parents of all the Irish and all humanity.

Related Topics:
Public house - Chapelizod - Dublin - Isolde - Vikings - River Liffey - Adam and Eve

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ALP and HCE have a daughter, Issy, whose personality is often schizophrenically split, and two sons, Shem and Shaun, eternal rivals for replacing their father and for Issy's affection (among other things). Shem and Shaun are akin to Set and Horus of the Osiris story, as well as the biblical pairs Jacob & Esau and Cain & Abel, as well as Romulus & Remus and St. Michael & the Devil (Mick & Nick).

Related Topics:
Jacob & Esau - Cain - Abel - Romulus & Remus - St. Michael - Devil

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Shaun is portrayed as a dull postman, conforming to society's expectations, while Shem is a bright artist and sinister experimenter. (As HCE retreats before the rumors, he seems to transform into Shem, the artist who writes the book.) They're sometimes accompanied by a third personality in whom their twin poles are reconciled, called Tristan or Tristram. Presumably, by synthesizing their strengths Tristan is able to win Issy and defeat/replace HCE, like Tristan in the triangle with Iseult (Issy) and King Mark (HCE). The book also draws heavily on Irish mythology with HCE sometimes corresponding to Finn MacCool, Issy and ALP to Grania, and Shem/Shaun to Dermot (Diarmaid). This is just a small hint of the many roles that each of the main characters finds him- and herself playing, often several at the same time.

Related Topics:
Tristan - Triangle with Iseult - Irish mythology - Finn MacCool - Grania

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The book is transformed into a letter, dictated to Shem by ALP, entrusted to Shaun for delivery, but somehow ending up in a midden heap, where it's dug up by a hen named Biddy (the diminutive form of Brighid, the goddess on whose new-year feast day Joyce was born). The letter is perhaps an indictment, perhaps an exoneration of HCE, just as Finnegans Wake is a vast "comedy" that seeks to indict and simultaneously redeem human history. It is highly relevant that if HCE can be identified with Charles Stewart Parnell, Shem's attack mirrors the attempt of forger Richard Piggott to incriminate Parnell in the Phoenix Park Murders of 1882 by means of false letters. But Piggott is also HCE, for just as HCE betrays himself to the cad, Piggott betrayed himself at the enquiry into admitting the forgery by his spelling of the word "hesitancy" as "hesitency", which spelling is used throughout Joyce's book.

Related Topics:
Brighid - Charles Stewart Parnell - Phoenix Park Murders

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The progress of the book is far from simple as it draws in mythologies, theologies, mysteries, philosophies, histories, sociologies, astrologies, other fictions, alchemy, music, colour, nature, sexuality, human development, and dozens of languages to create the world drama in whose cycles we live.

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The book ends with the river Liffey disappearing at dawn into the vast possibilities of the ocean. The last sentence is incomplete. As well as leaving the reader to complete it with his or her own life, it can be closed by the sentence that starts the book – another cycle. Thus, reading the final sentence of the book, on page 628, and continuing on to the first sentence of the book, on page 1: "A way a lone a last a loved a long the / riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs."

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