Comparison between Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's UlyssesThis essay will analyze the style, genre and plots of the Hades episodes present in Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses. Before delving into this little treatise, it is important to understand the etymology of the word Hades, as it is the setting of both Joyce and Homer (obviously in Homer's case he was referring to literal aids and Joyce was referring to the cemetery, where Bloom participates at Paddy Dignam's funeral and "broods over the death of his only son"). Homer's use of the word Hades must have referred to the abode of the dead or the invisible lower world; where we find Ulysses looking for Tiresias, to find out how to return safely to Ithaca. Homeric Hades is not the modern vision of Hell, mentioned in the Old and New Testaments. Indeed, CS says: "In true pagan belief, Hades was not worth talking about; a world of shadows, of decay. Homer...represents the ghosts [in Hades] as stupid. They babble senselessly until a living man He does not offer them a sacrifice." blood to drink." Comparing Style: Objective vs. Existential Eight months before the first publication of Ulysses, Joyce wrote: "If you want to read Ulysses you had better first get or borrow from a library a prose translation of the Odyssey by Homer "Joyce's recommendation is a must to grasp the full meaning of his work. A good commentary would also be useful in exegesis. Most people, "...opening Ulysses at random are easily frightened by the first shock of [its] strange mixture of vulgar slang and metaphysical obscurity." I must admit that my first reading of Ulysses was terrifying. I am a lover of Western class......middle of paper......oehrich , Rolf. The Secret of Ulysses. (Folcroft, PA: Folcroft Press, 1969) Schutte, William, “An Index of Recurrent Elements in Ulysses: “Hades.” James Joyce Quarterly. Spring 1977: (Vol. XIV, No. 3) Skeat, Walter. Concise Dictionary of English Etymology. (Great Britain: Wordsword, 1993) Smith, William.worth Classical Dictionary (London: Worth Editions, 1996) Smith, Paul. A Key to the Ulysses by James Joyce (New York: Covici Friede, 1934) Thornton, Weldon Allusions in Ulysses (North Carolina: UNC Press, 1968) The student may wish to begin the paper with the following quotation: "I consider this book [Ulysses ] the most important expression that the present age has found; it is a book to which we are all indebted and from which none of us can escape. "TS Elliot