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epitome of incomprehensibility
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The purpose of Ulysses (the James Joyce novel) is to combat antisemitism. It doesn't seem to at first, representing a Jewish character with the stereotypical traits of being "stingy" and "obsessed with minutiae." But then it turns that around by showing that a character who's ethnically all Irish has the exact same traits...implying that EVERYBODY'S like this, so stereotyping one group for common human traits is irrational.
...At least, that's the essay introduction I think up while I'm following my dad up a staircase, a couple of escalators, and maybe an elevator. He's not really my dad - he's younger, has blond hair - but he's playing the role of my father, and I figure I'd better follow him since he knows the way to the movie theatre and I don't.
In order to think of a thesis about Ulysses, though, I have to embody a character from the novel. That's when I turn into a tall, stocky man with a brown beard. I am now a minor character in the novel, an Irish man who is stingy and obsessed with minutiae.
This is represented by the fact that I stoop every few seconds to pick up coins I see on the carpeted floor, then hurrying to follow my "father" down a hallway to the next thing that will lift us up. Only these coins are not coins, but tiny seed beads. I notice that one I pick up is slightly different than the two previous ones: a similar shade of blue, red or purple (my colour memory isn't the best), but with a matte, flat colour in the core and an iridescent finish, whereas the others were straight coloured glass with a silver core.
Obsessed with minutiae. Shades of my craft_show pastime.
And a blather_connection: my entry in plot_a_summary was about the novel Ulysses. Congratulations, dream mind, for guessing it - and also a offering a possible parody of what my on-and-off teacher Janet said (re the blathe "focus") about novels having goals. Except that her thing was about characters in novels having goals. What she wrote doesn't seem ALL right, but I think there's something to it. Same as this dreamed-up thesis. Not everybody's as obsessed with minutiae as me (or obsessed with repeating "obsessed with minutiae") but the rest of the idea...well, plausible side goal for Joyce to have?
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