What is the first sentence of Finnegans Wake?
‘riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.” These are the famous opening lines of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. As Wake passages go, they are pretty clear; it is after them that the trouble begins.
What do the initials HCE and ALP stand for in Finnegans Wake?
Mr. Porter is Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE), Mrs. Porter is Anna Livia Plurabelle (ALP), and the boys are Shem the Penman and Shaun the Postman, while Issy remains Issy. HCE plays the archetypal father role and is referred to by a number of variations of the acronym HCE throughout the book.
Is it possible to understand Finnegans Wake?
James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake doesn’t work like other novels. It has lines like, “What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods!” In some ways, this makes the book almost impossible to read. As Samuel Beckett wrote, of Joyce and the Wake, “His writing is not about something.
What is the last sentence of Finnegans Wake?
ALP is given the final word, as the book closes on a version of her Letter and her final long monologue, in which she tries to wake her sleeping husband, declaring “Rise up, man of the hooths, you have slept so long!”, and remembers a walk they once took, and hopes for its re-occurrence.
What is the first line of Ulysses?
But two of my favorites are the first sentence of James Joyce’s Ulysses: Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
Why did James Joyce write Finnegans Wake?
This was due to a number of factors including the death of his father John Stanislaus Joyce in 1931; concern over the mental health of his daughter Lucia; and his own health problems, chiefly his failing eyesight. Finnegans Wake was published in book form, after seventeen years of composition, on 4 May 1939.
What is the first sentence in Treasure Island?
Squire Trelawney, Dr Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure, not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of …
What is the most famous first line of a book?
15 of the best first lines in fiction
- ‘Call me Ishmael’
- ‘I am an invisible man’
- ‘The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created.
- ‘Mother died today.
- ‘It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York’