Wandering Rocks

"Wandering Rocks" is thrillingly systematic, and its method/logic is both large and small, ranging on a scale from trash in the street to the cosmos. Intpreteting this chapter requires the reader to identify how the smaller and greater mechanics of Ulyssess' universe are at play. Most important I think is to identify agency and influence in the interacting systems that controls this chapter.

There are a number of symbols for this in the chapter.

One is Tom Rochford's invention, a device (I think) for horse races to show what race is on. Its "rising columns of disks" control the disks that are inserted: "He slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove, woobled a little, ceased, ogling them: six." The vignettes work the same way, including the "woobling", which corresponds to the insertion of lines from later vignettes in the earlier ones. The invention then is a symbol for Joyce's narrative method in 'Wandering Rocks', which is numerical, juxtapositional, all the qualities of the machine.

Another symbol, which has narrative and thematic overtones, is Parnell's brother's game of chess he is playing against an unnamed and unseen "foe"; we are tempted to think it is a symbolic Englishman, though he could be playing against himself. (The scene is in the D.B.C.) He "translates a white bishop": This is clearly an analogue for Conmee, whose movements open the chapter. When Joyce zooms in on that bishop, Conmee seems to retroactively lose all agency. "An instant after, under its screen, his eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and fell once more upon a working corner". Working corner has a double meaning, of course, on street corner and a corner of the board; with Conmee as a shield, he continues with the workmanlike aspect of the game.

The chess game has complex analogues throughout the chapter. The viceregal entourage can easily be spotted as his "foe's" rook. The tower Ned Lambert shows to the Rev. Love is most likely the white castle. The whitehatted H.E.L.Y.'S men are pawns, whose inane movements mask the true action (though in a sense, the pawn's actions are the true action, and the game can be followed by divining how their movements disguise the more important pieces'; this is another degree of the great and small dynamics that riddle the chapter). The black team is less well defined, though it would include Stephen and Bloom and Dignam's son, all in black for mourning.

The tmost complex system is the geography of the streets and the character's movements along them.

Amanda in her entry mentions the constant referall to the character's names, which makes us aware of the narrator. I agree; I think ultimately, Joyve wants us to question whether he has agency over the sprawling cast, or whether he is part of a larger system.