PROTEUS:

ULYSSES EPISODE 3: 'Ineluctable modality of the visible...'

The “Proteus” episode is the third Episode of Ulysses and serves as the grand finale of the “Telemachiad“ (the first three Episodes, which are focused on Stephen Dedalus). If the previous Episodes were about Stephen’s social and academic stifling, “Proteus” is an invitation into the raw, churning machinery of his mind.

This is one of the most challenging Episodes in the Book.

If you are a first-time reader of Ulysses, and you have found reading it difficult, you are not alone. It is a stumbling block upon which many readers before you have fallen

Set at 11:00 AM on Sandymount Strand, the Episode is a masterclass in the stream-of-consciousness technique, where the external world (the sea, the sand, a dog) constantly collides with Stephen’s encyclopaedic internal knowledge. It is full of obscure references and stylistic shifts, as well as foreign languages and Georgian ‘underclass’ slang (known as ‘cant), which can either drive readers to distraction or to looking up all the annotations in various learned guidebooks. You may be thinking, ‘No wonder people say ULYSSES is unreadable, but it also includes passages of superb description and poetry, and, once you have got to grips with it, I think you will understand why it is well worth your while to persevere.

For those of you reading it for the first time, I hope the guidance I have provided here will help you do so.

---

1. The Theme of Flux (The Protean Nature)

The title refers to the Greek sea god Proteus, a shape-shifter who would only answer questions if captured.

Stephen is at the stage in his life when he has many questions to answer. He feels ‘stuck’ because his past life has led to a series of disappointments and perceived failures. Where is he going? Joyce masterfully recreates the confusion in his mind, its twists and turns as he tries to make sense of things.

In this Episode, everything is in a state of “becoming.”

• The Landscape: The tide is moving, the sand is shifting, and the debris on the beach (seaweed, shells, a dead dog) represents the constant cycle of decay and rebirth.

• The Language: Joyce’s prose shifts styles rapidly—from Aristotelian philosophy to ribald humour, from Latin liturgical phrases to “patter” in Italian or Old English.

• Stream of Consciousness repeatedly shifts to Narrative, then back to Stream of Consciousness

• The Dog: A crucial moment occurs when Stephen watches a dog on the beach. To his poetic eyes, the dog becomes a wolf, a hare, a buck, and a “vulture.” This is the “Protean“ element in action—identity is not fixed; it is dictated by the observer’s perception.

2. “Ineluctable Modality of the Visible”

Stephen begins the episode with one of the most famous opening lines in literature: “Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes.”

This is Stephen’s attempt to grapple with epistemology (the study of how we know what we know). He is testing the limits of reality:

• The Experiment: He closes his eyes while walking to see if the world disappears when he stops perceiving it.

• The Result: He realises that even without sight, the “ineluctable modality of the audible” remains. He hears his boots “crush, crack, crick, crick” on the shells.

• The Takeaway: Stephen is a prisoner of his own senses and his own intellect. He cannot escape the “signatures of all things”—the idea that objects are signs that must be read.

While Stephen is ostensibly looking at the sea, he is actually drowning in his own history. His thoughts are “beaded” with his failures and anxieties:

• The “Agenbite of Inwit”: This Middle English phrase for “remorse of conscience” haunts him. He is plagued by guilt over his mother’s death and his refusal to pray at her bedside.

• Family and Poverty: He imagines visiting his uncle Richie Goulding, capturing the decay and “back-slapping” false bravado of his father’s side of the family. ‘Houses of decay’ refers to the failures and poverty not only of his own immediate family and all his relatives, but to all of the Irish under British rule.

• Exile: He reminisces about his time in Paris, realising he was not the “great artist” he pretended to be, but a lonely student eating “crusts” and avoiding his debts. The man he met there, Kevin Egan, was an Irish Nationalist ‘Patriot’ who had fled to Paris after escaping from Prison, and who tried to recruit Stephen to the Nationalist cause. Stephen rejects him, viewing Irish resistance as a series of defeats and failures.

Key Symbolic Elements

The Tide:

The relentless passage of time and the “Great Mother” (the sea).

The Midwife:

Stephen sees a woman with a bag and imagines her carrying a “misbirth,” symbolising his own struggling creativity.

The Urinating Dog

A “low” biological reality that grounds Stephen’s high-flying philosophical musings.

The Ashplant

Stephen’s walking stick, which he treats as a wizard’s staff or a protective totem.

4. Linguistic Alchemy

In “Proteus,” Joyce isn’t just writing about change; he is changing the language itself. He uses portmanteaus and complex allusions to show that language is as fluid as water. When Stephen thinks of the sea as a “mighty mother,” he uses the phrase “dies irae” (Day of Wrath) and links it to the “swollen” belly of the ocean.

The episode ends with Stephen urinating behind a rock and picking his nose, a quintessentially Joycean move to remind the reader that, for all of Stephen’s intellectual soaring, he is still a biological animal bound to the physical world.

Summary: “Proteus“ is the moment Stephen Dedalus tries to “read” the universe. He fails to find a definitive answer, but in the process, he creates a rich, sensory tapestry that bridges the gap between the ancient world and the modern psyche.