Episode Eighteen
Since the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, it has been considered one of the most purchased but one of the most difficult and least read books. Joyce sets puzzles and enigmas throughout the text however, the final episode of the book, Episode Eighteen, is the most daunting piece of unstructured text. The text is a colossal total of 4,391 words from which the natural cues of literature, such as full stops and commas have been excluded with the intent to be read as continuous thought. This running text can be extremely difficult to engage with and hard to apprehend.
As a response to this challenge, the words of Molly Bloom are placed on a bed sheet. Molly Bloom is laying in her own bed during the final episode, and this visualization adds a personal element to the soliloquy. The text on this bed sheet is broken into fragments based on a reading by actor Siobhán McKenna. Every sigh, pause and rambling thought is treated in the execution of text which makes the message easy to manage for the reader. The reader is promoted to begin reading from the tag titled, ‘Episode Eighteen’ and indicators of navigation are presented by numbers throughout. By the end of the experience, the reader will be wrapped in the words and thoughts of Molly Bloom.
The words of Molly Bloom have been screen printed onto a white bed sheet, considering the furnishings of the time period of the book itself. This piece has been designed with the hope that by having more audiences engage with Molly’s words they are given the opportunity to admire her character. Molly Bloom’s ideas of being a woman are insightful not only to the period of time this book was written, but they also resonate with being a woman today.
Since the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses, it has been considered one of the most purchased but one of the most difficult and least read books. Joyce sets puzzles and enigmas throughout the text however, the final episode of the book, Episode Eighteen, is the most daunting piece of unstructured text. The text is a colossal total of 4,391 words from which the natural cues of literature, such as full stops and commas have been excluded with the intent to be read as continuous thought. This running text can be extremely difficult to engage with and hard to apprehend.
As a response to this challenge, the words of Molly Bloom are placed on a bed sheet. Molly Bloom is laying in her own bed during the final episode, and this visualization adds a personal element to the soliloquy. The text on this bed sheet is broken into fragments based on a reading by actor Siobhán McKenna. Every sigh, pause and rambling thought is treated in the execution of text which makes the message easy to manage for the reader. The reader is promoted to begin reading from the tag titled, ‘Episode Eighteen’ and indicators of navigation are presented by numbers throughout. By the end of the experience, the reader will be wrapped in the words and thoughts of Molly Bloom.
The words of Molly Bloom have been screen printed onto a white bed sheet, considering the furnishings of the time period of the book itself. This piece has been designed with the hope that by having more audiences engage with Molly’s words they are given the opportunity to admire her character. Molly Bloom’s ideas of being a woman are insightful not only to the period of time this book was written, but they also resonate with being a woman today.
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