Helios: A Journey To The Land Of The Whispering Winds.

have therefore a kind of kinship within a typological tradition. Bloom shares certain virtues of Christ, Elijah, and Odysseus; Stephen shares certain virtues of Satan, Swift, Hamlet, and Shakespeare. The citizen is a metempychosed Achilles Lenehan a modern version of Chaucer's Franklin---both much debassed. Molly is Helen, Calypso, and Penelope. But at the same time, all are unique beings, part of their time and culture, and with unmistakable personal attributes. Their individuality is set off against their participation in a world-mind, a collective conscious. It is as though they move in and out of focus: generally they are clear, shot in close-up, but sometimes they blur into a background of figures whose field they share. The difference is not between seeing them better or worse, but between seeing two different configurations." (4)

and French also ties this winding meandering search towards a higher ideal of recognition.

"One could spin a web, as Joyceans love to do, and point to the relation of Hely's to helios, to the debasement of light in Dublin and so on, but in fact that does not add much to comprehension of the novel; such spinnings weavings of wind, useless if entertaining excersises in ingenuity" (5)

This wind of Helios that circles around the characters in Ulysses enduring pulls them inward towards the abyss, the ever-penetrating mystery that Joyce was attempting to answer. Stephen's quest into the land of shadows carries the reader along with himself on their sailing adventure into the realms of allegory, myth, and legend.

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