Still one confusing book, this Finnegan’s Wake, but as one reads the story it slowly bits itself together, as his sing-songy manner of poetry like writing drags you, somewhat unwillingly from word to word. His mannerisms remind me highly of the character Tom Bombadil (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Bombadil) from the works of J.R.R Tolkien because he does the whole make up words, and rhyme them to others, meme that Joyce employs.
The story so far is about a man, fallen from his grace by a crime committed in his past, but the fact that his servants say “master Finn shall soon be master Finnagain” a reference to the fact that he repents for what he has done, and will soon be absolved of this unmentioned crime. And like any good man, he celebrates this with a good strong drink, however, he overdoes as he usually does and gets drunk; this often makes him “heavy Howded” is how I believe he says it. Although he feels ill and everything is unnaturally loud from his drinking the night previous, he heads off to his job as a roofer. What does he do, he falls, from his ladder and “smashes open his head”, making noises which were randomly thrown in to the story much to my immediate confusion and later amusement. His friends then take him home, his corpse to wake, they lay him upon a table, and ironically put whiskey at his feet, and beer or porter at his head. The porter should be paid special attention as it comes into the story later. The most of the story then appears to be him dreaming, while his family and friends wake his corpse.
In this dream world, he sees practically the entire town in attendance, with his house being a museum they are looking through. The ethereal museum is full of all his worldly possessions and other things that are purely ludicrous like the hat of a sorcerer. He then dreams of a man talking to a dog, both of them being “mutts” remark at the other guests, Finnegan then returns to a more normal dream about his wake, ‘till he has a face to face conversation with a powerful deity, possibly one of the trinity.
Still rather confusing book, the whole “point” of it seems to be escaping me for now, but his use of language makes up for that, like his random burst of latin, or his purposefully printed sideways E. Because I prefer music to reading this song actually explains the basics, as un-basic as those are, in song form. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qstUxos2cBs&feature=related
