00.1 - What Is Finnegans Wake—And Why Attempt It?

After the life-altering journey that is Ulysses, could another story by James Joyce transform one’s perspective—or am I simply a glutton for punishment? Perhaps a little of both.

Finnegans Wake is another mysterious and groundbreaking work from Mr. Joyce, a puzzle wrapped in a dreamscape that many readers hesitate to approach. But why does it remain so daunting and yet so magnetic?

I’m no Wake-cean, but let me try to offer a glimpse of what this enigmatic text is all about. We often think of books as straightforward, linear stories. With Ulysses, Joyce shattered that notion, weaving the stream of consciousness into his narrative to capture the complexities of living. Life isn’t a neat, linear timeline; it’s a cacophony of thoughts, emotions, and impulses that rarely make it to the page. In Finnegans Wake, Joyce takes this concept even further. Was he trying to outdo himself—or was he attempting to unravel the very essence of human experience in words?

On this blog, we aren’t going to go as far in depth as we did with Ulysses, because that could take 100 lifetimes to untangle. But what we will do—similar to our exploration of Ulysses—is delve into what serves us, what tickles our fancy.

Let’s get right into it. What is Finnegans Wake? The Wake is everything—life itself. It has been described as the book of the night, contrasting Ulysses, the book of the day. The words on its pages are so creative they seem nonsensical when read silently, but when spoken aloud in a rhythmic flow, they begin to make sense. Is Joyce teaching us a hidden language? Or is he, once again, so profoundly attuned to the experience of living that he developed a new writing style to capture it?

A person approaching this writing style for the first time may feel confused and lost, unsure of what they’re reading. But to truly experience Finnegans Wake, you must take it for what it is—dive in and play with it.

The story itself is rooted in the dream state. What does your brain process and understand while you’re asleep? Once again, Joyce explores what it means to be alive. If you’re like me, your dreams often make no logical sense, yet they create a profound sense of feeling and experience—sometimes wildly so. To me, that is the purpose of Finnegans Wake: to capture the chaos, absurdity, and beauty of the dream world, and by extension, the human experience itself.