The Cyclops chapter was exciting. The collage effect of Joyce’s writing becomes more and more apparent in this chapter (especially because in juxtaposition with the Sirens chapter.) Joyce exercises a technique of writing, which stresses not only the moral perspective of a character, but also a mental perspective. The beginning of this chapter is written in a way that describes a myopic perspective of the world (the discussion between the narrator and Joe) and then concludes with an equally narrow minded perspective of the Cyclops (a.k.a the citizen). In other words, Joyce is keen on assigning a writing style and rhetoric to the perspective of the character. Here, more than just dislocating his fingerprints from the story, Joyce upholds the idea of perspective in the most modern way. As Conrad says in his heart of darkness (I use this quote to much but it is so usefull!!!) “we live as we dream, alone.” That is- the world of words is false. And to the same degree the world in our own eyes is false because it may not be true to another.

This idea is important to modernism, but is an echo of the poet Ovid, who dealt with issue very much in his Metamorphoses. In stories such as (I don’t know the exact title) Agamemnon and Odysseus argue over Achilles’ armor and Nestor’s omission of Hercules, the reader is confronted with the art of rhetoric and its inherent deception. For example, in the argument between Agamemnon and Odysseus, Odysseus has no use for the armor but he wins the argument because although he is not a warrior, he is a mightier rhetoratician. More on this point, in the Nestor story he completely omits Hercules’s role and when asked why he says its because he doesn’t like Hercules. Its funny, but its true. The part of the brain where language is formed is the same part of the brain where lies are formed.