Henkes and Bindervoet generally summarise the critical consensus when they argue that, between the thematically indicative opening and closing chapters, the book concerns «two big questions» which are never resolved: what is the nature of protagonist HCE’s secret sin, and what was the letter, written by his wife ALP, about? HCE’s unidentifiable sin has most generally been interpreted as representing man’s original sin as a result of the Fall of Man. Anthony Burgess sees HCE, through his dream, trying «to make the whole of history swallow up his guilt for him» and to this end «HCE has, so deep in his sleep, sunk to a level of dreaming in which he has become a collective being rehearsing the collective guilt of man.» Fargnoli and Gillespie argue that although undefined, «Earwicker’s alleged crime in the Park» appears to have been of a «voyeuristic, sexual, or scatological nature».
ALP’s letter appears a number of times throughout the book, in a number of different forms, and as its contents cannot be definitively delineated, it is usually believed to be both an exoneration of HCE, and an indictment of his sin. Herring argues that «the effect of ALP’s letter is precisely the opposite of her intent […] the more ALP defends her husband in her letter, the more scandal attaches to him.» Patrick A. McCarthy argues that «it is appropriate that the waters of the Liffey, representing Anna Livia, are washing away the evidence of Earwicker’s sins as [the washerwomen speak, in chapter I.8] for (they tell us) she takes on her husband’s guilt and redeems him; alternately she is tainted with his crimes and regarded as an accomplice».
Style
Language
Joyce invented a unique polyglot-language or idioglossia solely for the purpose of this work. This language is composed of composite words from some sixty to seventy world languages, combined to form puns, or portmanteau words and phrases intended to convey several layers of meaning at once. Senn has labelled Finnegans Wake’s language as «polysemetic», and Tindall as an «Arabesque». Norris describes it as a language which «like poetry, uses words and images which can mean several, often contradictory, things at once» The style has also been compared to rumour and gossip, especially in the way the writing subverts notions of political and scholarly authority.
An early review of the book argued that Joyce was attempting «to employ language as a new medium, breaking down all grammatical usages, all time space values, all ordinary conceptions of context […] the theme is the language and the language the theme, and a language where every association of sound and free association is exploited.» Seconding this analysis of the book’s emphasis on form over content, Paul Rosenfeld reviewed Finnegans Wake in 1939 with the suggestion that «the writing is not so much about something as it is that something itself [..] in Finnegans Wake the style, the essential qualities and movement of the words, their rhythmic and melodic sequences, and the emotional color of the page are the main representatives of the author’s thought and feeling. The accepted significations of the words are secondary.»
While commentators emphasize how this manner of writing can communicate multiple levels of meaning simultaneously, Hayman and Norris contend that its purpose is as much to obscure and disable meaning as to expand it. Hayman writes that access to the work’s «tenuous narratives» may be achieved only through «the dense weave of a language designed as much to shield as to reveal them.» Norris argues that Joyce’s language is «devious» and that it «conceals and reveals secrets.»
Allen B. Ruch has dubbed Joyce’s new language «dreamspeak,» and describes it as «a language that’s basically English, but extremely malleable and all-inclusive, a fusion of portmanteau words, stylistic parodies, and complex puns.» Although much has been made of the numerous world languages employed in the book’s composite language, most of the more obscure languages appear only seldom in small clusters, and most agree with Ruch that the latent sense of the language, however manifestly obscure, is «basically English». Burrell also finds that Joyce’s thousands of neologisms are «based on the same etymological principles as standard English.» The Wake’s language is not entirely unique in literature; for example critics have seen its use of portmanteaus and neologisms as an extension of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky.
Although Joyce died shortly after the publication of Finnegans Wake, during the work’s composition the author made a number of statements concerning his intentions in writing in such an original manner. In a letter to Max Eastman, for example, Joyce suggested that his decision to employ such a unique and complex language was a direct result from his attempts to represent the night:
In writing of the night I really could not, I felt I could not, use words in their ordinary connections. Used that way they do not express how things are in the night, in the different stages – the conscious, then semi-conscious, then unconscious. I found that it could not be done with words in their ordinary relations and connections. When morning comes of course everything will be clear again […] I’ll give them back their English language. I’m not destroying it for good.
Joyce is also reported as having told Arthur Power that «what is clear and concise can’t deal with reality, for to be real is to be surrounded by mystery.» On the subject of the vast number of puns employed in the work Joyce argued to Frank Budgen that «after all, the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church was built on a pun. It ought to be good enough for me», and to the objection of triviality he replied «Yes. Some of the means I use are trivial – and some are quadrivial.»
A great many of the book’s puns are etymological in nature. Sources tell us that Joyce relished delving into the history and the changing meanings of words, his primary source being An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language by the Rev. Walter W. Skeat (Oxford, at the Clarendon Press; 1879). For example, one of the first entries in Skeat is for the letter A, which begins: «…(1) adown; (2) afoot; (3) along; (4) arise; (5) achieve; (6) avert; (7) amend; (8) alas; (9) abyss…» Further in the entry, Skeat writes: «These prefixes are discussed at greater length under the headings Of, On, Along, Arise…Alas, Aware, Avast…» It seems likely that these strings of words prompted Joyce to finish the Wake with a sentence fragment that included the words: «…a way a lone a last a loved a long…»
Samuel Beckett collected words from foreign languages on cards for Joyce to use, and, as Joyce’s eyesight worsened, wrote down the text from his dictation. Beckett described and defended the writing style of Finnegans Wake thus: «This writing that you find so obscure is a quintessential extraction of language and painting and gesture, with all the inevitable clarity of the old inarticulation. Here is the savage economy of hieroglyphics».
Faced with the obstacles to be surmounted in «understanding» Joyce’s text, a handful of critics have suggested readers focus on the rhythm and sound of the language, rather than solely on «meaning.» As early as 1929, Eugène Jolas stressed the importance of the aural and musical dimensions of the work. In his contribution to Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, Jolas wrote:
Those who have heard Mr. Joyce read aloud from Work in Progress know the immense rhythmic beauty of his technique. It has a musical flow that flatters the ear, that has the organic structure of works of nature, that transmits painstakingly every vowel and consonant formed by his ear.
A reconstruction of nocturnal life
Throughout the book’s seventeen-year gestation, Joyce stated that with Finnegans Wake he was attempting to «reconstruct the nocturnal life», and that the book was his «experiment in interpreting ‘the dark night of the soul’.» According to Ellmann, Joyce stated to Edmond Jaloux that Finnegans Wake would be written «to suit the esthetic of the dream, where the forms prolong and multiply themselves», and once informed a friend that «he conceived of his book as the dream of old Finn, lying in death beside the river Liffey and watching the history of Ireland and the world – past and future – flow through his mind like flotsam on the river of life.» While pondering the generally negative reactions to the book Joyce said:
I can’t understand some of my critics, like Pound or Miss Weaver, for instance. They say it’s obscure. They compare it, of course, with Ulysses. But the action of Ulysses was chiefly during the daytime, and the action of my new work takes place chiefly at night. It’s natural things should not be so clear at night, isn’t it now?
Joyce’s claims to be representing the night and dreams have been accepted and questioned with greater and lesser credulity. Supporters of the claim have pointed to Part IV as providing its strongest evidence, as when the narrator asks «You mean to see we have been hadding