Conversation #2: Tales Told of Shem and Shaun

JF: I don't know where to start this conversation. I guess with a question: Do you see HCE's sons in FW? Tindall does, all over the place, and I definitely don't.

We can leave Isabel for another time. She hasn't been in the book much, from what I gather, except as she's reflected in the two young girls (mostly age-wise?) from the park.

OM: I've seen bits and pieces, but only because I've read enough essays and general criticism to know the basics. Shem and Shaun are HCE's twin sons. Shem the Penman is the writer, the artist, the creator. Shaun the Postman is the worker, the carrier, the man of industry. I get the two sides of the two characters, and so I've seen them appear in flickers so far.

Having said that, Tindall writes in a way that sometimes makes it feel like you're missing the obvious. And I don't really agree with him all the time. I'm sure Shem and Shaun pop up a lot, but they way he presents it makes seem that their appearances are more obvious than they are.

Here's a typical passage from Tindall:

"Pegger as Shaun is the witness against Earwicker, and the Wet Pinter is the attorney for the defense. (A West Pointer is a cadet or a Cad from the New World, and a Wet Pinter is a drunk--or Shem.) But Shaun, giving a 'hilariohoot,' has changed places with Hilary-Shem; and Shem's 'tristitone' shows that he has become Tristopher-Shaun."

I don't know what the heck he's talking about, and it makes the passage to which he's referring more difficult, not less. I'm more comfortable carrying my broad views of the duality of Shem/Shaun with me into the text, and making what I can whenever I encounter them.

I've also read that the twins begin to play a much more prominent role in the text very soon.

JF: I've probably read many of the same essays as you, and I rarely, if ever, see the twins.

HCE is pretty easy to spot, obviously. Even without JJ's letter-clues, it's a safe bet that most of time when there's an important male character, it's him to some degree. ALP is harder to spot, if only because she's less incarnate than HCE and more likely to be represented by, say, water.

The Cad is one of the twins, right? Break down their characteristics a bit more, please. I glossed on that a few blog posts back, but I'd like your take.

(Agreed on Tindall, btw. I'm getting increasingly less out of the guide each week. I wouldn't say it's useless, but its use is maybe above my understanding? And often, I don't find what I'm looking for there. Which guide did you use for GR? The one I used was very thorough in detailing even passing cultural allusions. Tindall seems to have more of his own agenda than his readers' in mind. And what's up with his list of shit at the end of every chapter? Not helpful at all.)

OM: Shem is the introverted artist who creates the message. Shaun is the postman who delivers that message to the world. Shaun is also economically successful and is something of a politician. Shem is Irish for James, and is more closely related with what we think of the writer James Joyce. Although, of course, Shem/Shaun are also two halves of one personality, so it's also about the two sides of a man's personality.

I'm sure there's a lot more to it, but that's how I think about them broadly.

So basically, my approach is to look for those personality aspects in the text, and when I see them, I project Shem or Shaun onto whatever is going on at that point. By doing that, I don't worry as about all the different names you get for Shem and Shaun: Kevin and Mutt and whoknowswhoelse.

Re: the Cad, I have forgotten about him, since that cad with a pipe episode.

JF: The Cad was on the periphery of Chapter III in some gossip. And he's in Chapter IV, too. I didn't see either, fwiw.

Your description of the twins jives with what Bishop says: Shem is "an extrasocial rebel and artist," and Shaun is "the model son and heir."

OM: Are the twins just HCE projections? I know that they're supposed to act as stand-ins for the two sides of HCE, in some senses, but we're still supposed to understand them as distinct characters, even if they are warped by the sleeping mind of their father, right? Like, HCE, when he's awake, has two sons.

For me, this is where things get really difficult, even more so than struggling through the "nat language" of Finnegans Wake on a word-by-word basis. Every character is represented by every other character, and also by that character's opposite (and ten more from history and myth). That gets awfully frustrating. Every word means so much that it eventually doesn't mean anything at all.

We all recognize that experience of a dream where identities merge or overlap. "In my dream last night, I was in my high school cafeteria with Bill Clinton, who was actually my dad, but still Bill Clinton." But even the weirdest dreams hold some kind of sense while you're dreaming them, right? It's usually when you wake up and try to remember the dream that everything looks a mess.

And now I'm getting to the point where I want to ask: "Is Finnegans Wake really a dream?" But that might be a month's worth of posts all to itself.

JF: And who's the dreamer? I think I alluded to that in my Week 0 post. Bishop seems to think it's HCE, but others seem to think it's a nameless person and that HCE is that person's dream projection.

Or maybe the dreamer is JJ?

That's a great point about dream identity overlap - one person as two people, but still a/the main one planted in your subconscious. And I agree with you on the difficulty and frustration of everybody (HCE = Here Comes Everybody) being everybody else within the (can we even call it a loose?) narrative, but also countless figures throughout world history. It's overwhelming, which is why I tend to look for HCE as HCE the Dublin bar owner and leave the other stuff for Tindall, if he chooses to cover it.

I think the Shem and Shaun stuff will become more apparent as we move into Book II, but we're still a ways off that. I'm a few days behind on reading - need to start Chapter V (ALP) - and posting.

OM: I am going to continue to work under the assumption that HCE is the dreamer. Perhaps he has another name in his waking life, but since the book doesn't seem concerned with that side of things, I'm not going to worry too much. If we continue to assume that FW really is a dream, then I'll stick with my main man, HCE.

Tindall says somewhere that Chapter V shifts focus onto ALP, and Chapters VI and VII began to bring the twins to the fore. Apparently Chapter VII is all about Shaun making fun of Shem. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.