What the Thunder Said

I will strike these men’s fast ship midway on the open

wine-blue sea with a shining bolt and dash it to pieces.

Book XII, The Odyssey of Homer

            The fourteenth section of Ulysses, frequently referred to as “Oxen of the Sun,” is one of the most ambitious literary experiments ever attempted. A comprehensive recreation of English prose styles through chronological history. Joyce himself described the episode as, “the most difficult episode in an odyssey, both to interpret and execute.” (475) The section is a metaphor for gestation, with the English language the embryo that is developing. Interpretation of the thunderstorm of this section lends a unique creative challenge that lends insight into some autobiographical details of the author, the history of Dublin, and a higher understanding of Ulysses. Thor’s thunder serves as a multilayered narrative device that foreshadows the arrival of Buck Mulligan, the departure of Stephen Dedalus, as well as establishing Bloom’s parental role towards Stephen.

As the thunderstorm appears in the fourteenth section of Ulysses at the National Maternity Hospital in Dublin, “A black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled, back. Loud on left Thor thundered : in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm that hist his heart.” (376) The use of the Nordic god of thunder invokes the Viking history of the city of Dublin, and the medieval fear of, “replacing Christianity with the worship of Thor.” (14) This is a long violent history of battles won and lost amidst foreign invaders. This historical perspective is heightened by the implication of Mulligan being caught in this very storm with a “Williamite writer” (379) and earlier with Stephen Dedalus accusing Mulligan of “spurn[ing] me for a merchant of jalaps.” (375) Through Joyce’s literary history the Viking raiders have become Anglican, and the paganry meant to replace Catholicism has become protestant. Viking raids and British imperialism are given a commonality that is linked through time by language. This commonality is the thunder that foreshadows the doom of Mulligan’s arrival at the maternity ward.

The passage describes Stephen Dedalus fear, “and his heart shook within the cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that storm,” a curiosity about James Joyce is his very serious and intense fear of thunderstorms. The biographer Richard Ellman describes Joyce’s panic at being caught in a thunderstorm in a word as, “cosmic.” If a friend tried to make light of this fear Joyce was known to solemnly lecture that every house should be equipped with lightning protectors. Ellman goes on to say that “the subject roused him to eloquence.” (394) Mrs. ‘Dante’ Hearn Conway seems most responsible for instilling this fear in the young Joyce as his governess.

She talked a good deal about the end of the world, as if she expected it at any moment, and when there was a flash of lightning she taught [Joyce] to cross himself and say, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, from a sudden and unprovided death deliver us, O Lord.’ The Thunderstorm as a vehicle of divine power and wrath moved Joyce’s imagination so profoundly that to the end of his life he trembled at the sound. When a friend asked him why he was so affected, he replied, ‘You were not brought up Irish Catholic.’ (5)

The autobiographical significance of Stephen Dedalus fear of thunderstorms stems from a religious fear of the apocalypse. This is rooted in Catholic superstition, but it is best expressed by harnessing an extinct religion. Thor’s Ragnarök has come and gone, but the echoes of this catastrophe are heard in the thunder. Joyce described the literary parody at work in this scene as, “a choppy Latin-gossipy bit, style of Burton-Browne.” (475) The use of these authors for Joyce indicates a separation from the church. The reliance on religious imagery, though pagan, shows the impossibility of this separation. Thor must die for Christ to be resurrected as Christ must die for Joyce to be resurrected.

The larger theme of gestation creates a symbol of developing life within a womb that is both separate and apart of the mother. Stephen has been haunted by his own mother’s death throughout the novel. Through navigating this fear of thunder, death has become a form of rebirth in examining the natural world. Stephen’s guilt at refusing to kneel for his dying mother becomes manifest in this irrational fear. As Leopold Bloom attempts to comfort Stephen by explaining away “natural phenomenon” the reader is faced with how insufficient this idea is too someone with a creative intellect such as Stephen’s. As Terence Killen observes, “[Stephen] has neither the scientific rationalism of Bloom nor the (at least partial) piety of one of the other young men, Madden.” (160) This prompts a rebirth of style and a “Bunyanesque” passage to continue the parody while simultaneously beginning the second trimester of this literary pregnancy. “The storm that hist his heart” takes places when a heartbeat can first be detected inside the mother.

            Bloom’s “calming words to slumber [Stephen’s] great fear,” is meant to rationalize the violent weather outside. For Bloom rationalization means understanding concrete facts about the phenomenon to merit understanding. Bloom truly sees the storm as nothing more than “hubbub noise” and, “the discharge of fluid from the thunderhead.” This is not to say that Bloom’s more scientific reasoning is infallible. The use of the word discharge intimates an 18th century belief that lightning was somehow fluid. Sir Thomas Browne describes “[fluid] exhalations, set on fire in the clouds, [whose] noise is great and terrible.” Bloom offers comfort to Stephen with an air of scientific authority that is working with out-of-date hypotheses.  

Bloom has the maturity of experience that reduces the temptation to make such significance out of natural things like thunder. This contradiction sparks drama between the characters that is carried into their conflicting goals as characters. Bloom wants a son to replace Rudy. Stephen wants forgiveness for refusing to kneel. Bloom could pass for the exact opposite of Stephen’s father, Simon Dedalus. Stephen wants to escape from Ireland, and his dreaded Martello tower.

As to dramatic action the thunder serves as the inciting incident between Bloom and Stephen as this is their first full scene together. It establishes an opposing dynamic of Bloom the comforter, and Stephen refusing the comfort. This dynamic foreshadows Stephen’s eventual departure from Bloom, while Bloom’s rationalism foreshadows the tone in which that departure occurs in the form of question and answer in the “Ithaca” section.

On the other hand, Madden’s piety serves as the counter to this rationalism and distinguishes Stephen’s secular passion. Madden does not share Stephen’s fear of the thunder, though he shares his devout Irish Catholic roots, for Madden is “godly certain.” Madden’s simple solution is to, “[knock] him on his ribs upon that crack of doom,” that is to cross himself, and have the certainty he is under God’s protection. This is the strongest link to Thor and a Judeo-Christian God sharing the same archetype. This link is strengthened by the God of the Irish Catholics and of the Anglican Protestants being the same, but the faiths themselves different enough to cause a war. The separations within Jehovah are such that they justify correspondence to Thor’s thundering even as Viking faith and Christianity share a bloody clash.

 Stephen himself is largely dismissive of the thunder’s divinity in terms of what he says if not by how he behaves. While his “heart [shakes] within the cage of his breast,” he refers to the thundering god outside as “old Nobodaddy in his cups.” A Blakean device that refers to the “farting, belching Father of Jealousy” who hides himself in clouds and loves “hanging & drawing & quartering/ Every bit as well as war and slaughtering.” That a baby’s heartbeat can first be detected around this time of the pregnancy heightens the gestation metaphor. The thunder can either be a violent storming god who is “nobody’s daddy” or it can be the first detectable sign of life within a mother’s womb. This is the choice before Stephen as he encounters Bloom and Madden’s response to the thunder.

The association between the fluid lightning, “Nobodaddy in his cups,” and the drinking accomplished in “Horne’s hall” strengthens the argument of interconnected narratives traveling through history. The men at the hospital are storming with loud talk and drink, as the weather outside booms. Bloom’s understanding is more appropriate to the time being parodied than to current understandings of science, but it connects thematically to the drinks. The drinks and talk become linked to the storm as Jehovah and Thor are linked. All gods are merely thundering patriarchs with questionable authority, and if there is any divine authority at play it is this connection. Stephen thinks of this doubt as a tragic hesitation of Hamlet, a rise before the fall. Joyce’s intentionality of placing this at the stage of pregnancy where the heart first starts beating enlivens this gloom with a playful humor.

Stephen’s lament at his fear of the thunder involves a story of moral corruption from a whore named “One in the Hand.” Besides recounting the brothel scene in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, this is done in the form of moral allegory in the style of John Bunyan. The character’s names become literal interpretations of their inner ethics and vices, thus Stephen is named Boasthard. Stephen is reduced to a scared bitter little boy whose intellectual ability is merely boasting, and whose grand and glorious notions were merely the whims of lust. The thunder is given the name Bringforth, which echoes Gods words to Eve in the book of Genesis, “in sorrow shalt thou bringforth children.” This connects the device of Bunyan with the larger theme of gynecology, thundering patriarchs, and original sin.

Stephen uses this artist’s power of association to show that his passions must be retained even as religious hypocrisy has diminished his piety. The use of Bunyan’s moral allegory is ironic for Stephen is lamenting this fall from grace before a venture into the red-light district that very night. Stephen’s fear of death takes on as a humorous sexual metaphor, “And would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away? By no means would he and make more shows according as men do with their wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law.” The name of the whore’s virtue being signaled as “Bird in the Hand” shows that Stephen thinks in rational terms about his choice in beliefs, even as he is troubled. The satisfaction from worldly pleasure Stephen gets from “Carnal Concupiscence” is worth more than the promise of some eternal salvation. This reasoning does not prevent Stephen from trembling at the sound of thunder.

Joyce presents a solution to his own autobiographical fear in the form of Leopold Bloom. Bloom’s position is to calm Stephen’s fear with scientific reasoning. This creates a parental role between the two, as Bloom finds affection for the troubled young man. Bloom isn’t impressed with Stephen’s literary boasting, and just sees a troubled soul in need. Bloom needs to help Stephen to fill the hole of his grief that Rudy has created. That the novel has Bloom as the protagonist over Stephen demonstrates a higher wisdom. Bloom is not troubled by abstract cosmic notions. Even if Bloom is wrong about the details, he is more open to new information, and adjusting his opinion by maintaining a level of calm. Bloom has faced what Stephen has faced twice over in terms of tragedy, losing a father and a son, and yet Bloom has found intellectual strength without relying on a land of “Believe-on-Me, where the is no death and no birth.” Bloom is above such fear and superstitions. Yet, Bloom’s reason does not fulfill the longing he has for what is missing.

The synthesis of Stephen’s artistic passion and Bloom’s logic is the style of “Oxen of the Sun” which largely overshadows much of what the characters are doing and thinking. The style makes meticulous use of literary and linguistic history and an ingenious method of parody to accomplish this experiment. It is highbrow, intellectual, funny, and crude all at the same time. Through this style the thunder becomes a layered narrative device that accomplishes multiple dramatic beats. It is a metaphor for foreign invasion, and British imperialism. It foreshadows the arrival of Buck Mulligan, and Stephen’s departure. It gives spiritual weight to the emotional dread that Stephen is experiencing. It relegates any faith or piety to the level of mere paganry by attributing it to Thor. It establishes Bloom as the comforter of Stephen’s fears.

Thor’s thunder shows the power of the imagination even in the face of the most rational logic. Stephen is capable of writing Bloom’s logic and gives it mythic proportions inside a literary masterpiece, but Bloom is not capable of convincing Stephen to make a home in the city of Dublin, just as he cannot calm him from the storm. Stephen’s pen will become the lightning rod that gives Bloom his voice, but only if he gets there his own way. “Stephen’s way” being a natural stream through history and the development of life.

The themes of sky, and discharging fluid finds the sexual tension of the piece. The male desire being broadcast by Stephen and his friends strengthen this connection. As the section is a metaphor for pregnancy, the sexual elements become more appropriate. This begs the questions of fatherhood. Stephen’s friends joke about a “stout shield of oxengut, [which is named Killchild.]” (378) A bawdy commentary on the merits of condoms. Bloom stands as the most fatherly character in his calming of Stephen. Stephen’s fear of thunder establishes the protective bond Bloom has for Stephen. Through Bloom’s sexual vices seen throughout the novel, the reader has some insight into how he feels about Stephen’s experience in brothels. The explanation for a “hubbub of noise” and a “natural phenomenon” takes on a double sexual meaning. Bloom thinks Stephen has nothing to feel guilty about.

The corresponding Homeric episode for Oxen of the Sun features a crime committed against Helios, the god of the sun. Odysseus men steal cattle from the god and have a feast. In Ulysses this is “a crime committed against fertility by sterilizing the act of coition,” (169) as Joyce explained in a letter to Frank Budgen. From this we can infer that the babies of the hospital are the sun god’s oxen. The crime against fertility would appear to be the boasting of women, and the use of contraception to prevent life. If the crime is against fertility, then it would appear to be against Stephen himself as well. The larger gynecological metaphor was clarified by Joyce to Budgen as, “Bloom is the spermatozoon, the hospital the womb, the nurse the ovum, and Stephen the embryo.” The boys talk of preventing this life, and Hamlet’s hesitation is all Stephen will ever know as long as his life revolves around impressing the likes of them. Literature emerges as the shining bolt that dashes language to pieces from the thunderstorm taking place. Zeus becomes linked with Thor, and Jehovah through a prism lens that refracts Christian ideals of rebirth. This rebirth is characterized by the style of the parodies in recreating the history of the English language. A spectrum of thought is presented with no solid conclusion to draw from. Even the sexual liberation and health that condoms provide can be ascribed its own virtue, even as it plays the part of a crime against hospitality.

The crime against hospitality is clarified when considering that Bloom is the only father present amongst the group and is the only person there inquiring to the health of Mrs. Purefoy and her baby. The group’s jesting and laughter seem in especially bad taste when Nurse Quigley has to shush them. In the intricacies of Ulysses’ tangled web, the context of the crime takes precedence over the religious dogma that determines what is right. This solidifies Stephen’s rejection of piety and his embracing of secular art, even as it makes the case for abandoning the replacement of a ghostly father from literature.

The thunder signals a Big Bang for Stephen in his quest for creation into a whole new universe. Everything that was known now seems strange and unfamiliar, while all that is unknown seems new, exciting, and adventurous. The point about the youth of our species has never been made quite so dramatically. In a world of literature full of doomsdays, the context of babies in the womb make this determinism seem like night terrors. Humanity could be on the verge of a long healthy life in harmony with the world if our fears could only be calmed. What is remarkable is the lack of self righteousness from Joyce in making his own phobia of thunder the central theme to exploring this fear. Stephen is as afraid as anyone and calming him is no easy feat.

The moral fundamentalism of Bunyan informs this fear of death. A moral error can cause eternal damnation and should be feared. Even the pious Madden doesn’t take this morality too seriously as the novel refers to him as Mr. Sometimes Godly. Stephen is simply too intelligent for such a cheap trick even as he treats his fear of thunder with the utmost seriousness. Bunyan’s ethics are defined by the right thing not being the easy thing, a straight and narrow path over a wide valley. Stephen stands above those of his party in terms of intellect and emotional breadth because he is capable of experiencing this fear in such a public and embarrassing way. This shame is what allows Stephen to attain the heights of the high path, over the mocking low path of his comrades. That this is just part of the development for a growing embryo puts this reasoning into its proper context. There is so much we don’t know about the universe, and if we knew now what we knew then it would be a different story. Thus, parodies representing different stages in this embryonic development is an ambitious method to capture this lightning in a bottle. There is so much we don’t know, but at the same time there is nothing that we cannot know.

          This is an exploration of the thunderstorm in the fourteenth section of Ulysses. An analysis of the narrative functions, with its many lairs, as well as the contribution to the overall meaning. Thor’s thunder stands apart as one of the key events of the section and lends much dramatic weight to the story with incredible and appropriate style. The moral exploration of Stephen’s fear of this thunder adds an interesting sexual dynamic to Stephen that eschews prudishness. The parental role established by Bloom is carried throughout, as is Stephen’s refusal of it. This heralds the birth of the English language as an artistic force. Stephen’s words shall thunder the lightning of his pen from this encounter about the city of Dublin.

Works Cited

Browne, Thomas. “Chapter Two.” Pseudodoxia Epidemica, 1646.

Ellmann, Richard, et al. “Letter to Frank Budgen.” Letters of James Joyce, vol. 1, Viking Press, New York, 1967, pp. 138–139.

Ellmann, Richard. James Joyce: New and Revised Edition. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Gifford, Don, and Robert J. Seidman. “Oxen of the Sun.” Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses, Univ. of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2009.

Joyce, James. Ulysses: An Unabridged Republication of the Original Shakespeare and Company Edition, Published in Paris by Sylvia Beach, 1922. Dover Publications, 2009.

Killeen, Terence. “14. Oxen of the Sun.” Ulysses Unbound: A Reader's Companion to James Joyce's Ulysses, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, 2018.