“Proteus” codifies and introduces many of the themes and ideas that dominate Stephen’s character, providing a unique interior view of themes that Stephen will expand upon later in Ulysses, but which are then available to us only by dint of their external expression. In that sense, the Protean metaphor comes to inform and to support much of the stream-of-consciousness technique in use throughout the novel. These rabbit holes are often entered by way of the perception of simple, natural phenomena. The idea that we are “here to read” only the “signatures” of all things lends an inherent mutability to Stephen’s readings, inviting the endless metonymic spirals of thought in which Stephen indulges (3.2). Stephen is obsessed with the changing face of reality and the limitations of his own apprehension of the world through visual and aural modes. Yet it also pervades language and thought throughout Ulysses. This theme of change and transformation is obviously linked to the Homeric character of Proteus, as discussed in a later section. Instead, words transform and are often reiterated in different languages, achieving definition only through a plurality of meanings and subtle translations. Even his language reaches towards the eternal in its dissatisfaction with fixed interpretation. At the beginning of “Proteus,” Stephen asks, “Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?” (3.18-19), and indeed, his thoughts frequently gravitate toward the eternal, both in space (the idea of walking into eternity) and in time (the sense of a linear genealogy linking Stephen all the way back to Eden). “Proteus” is the first fully stream-of-consciousness episode of Ulysses, and, while the style itself is perhaps not particularly experimental in relation to the rest of the novel, it nevertheless features some of Joyce’s densest writing, largely due to the complexity and esotericism of Stephen’s thoughts. “Proteus” is the third episode of James Joyce‘s modernist epic, Ulysses.
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