A Word from the Artist

A word from the artist himself. Take it away, Mr. Berry:

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Okay, well, I get to pop in here on this one since this panel represents a difference of opinion between Mike and myself. I love when that happens.

Mike's referring to the noise heard here as a Mulligan's whistle bouncing off the nearby Wicklow hills, as if this is a staged joke he's made for us and Steven to witness. I think there's a joke being made here of course, but one that's a bit more elaborate, and I've used this whistle noise to indicate it.

it terms of staging and actions throughout the novel, Joyce makes great use of the "noises off" that effective the central events in his story. The roar of thunder in "Oxen of the Sun" unites the destinies of the two central characters. Stephen, upon hearing the boys in the "Nestor" chapter, refers God as "a shout in the street." These outside messages are a very important part of the mystical intrusions to the internal struggles and dialogues within the novel and there's always a kind of transformative moment surrounding them. We see it here for the first time in just the right framework; a joke of transubstantiation.

What I've tried to set up here in adapting the first chapter is barren landscape divided by sea and sky where we get a chance to understand Stephen in contrast to his foil, Mulligan. Stephen is a hugely introspective character and Mulligan, well, not so much. Mulligan is worldly, but glib by contrast. He hears the the noises of the world around him, but responds to them as if they're "all a mockery and beastly."

So the whistle noise we're seeing repeated here, the same one we saw opening the scene on page four of the adaptation and that we'll see again on page twenty-seven, isn't a sound that Mulligan made himself, but an intrusion from the outside world that he's chosen to make light of. It's the whistle from the "mailboat clearing the harbour mouth of Kingstown," the sound of a message coming in.