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[ Aetat. 27 ] J O Y C E 299episode, as Joyce said later,* Stephen is again the embryo. But, in aparody of the method of A Portrait, Stephen emerges not to life but toBurke's pub. The theme of Ulysses, Joyce intimates, is reconciliationwith the father. Of course, the father whom Joyce depicts in Bloom is inalmost every way the opposite of his own father, and is much closer tohimself.t Insofar as the movement of the book is to bring Stephen, theyoung Joyce, into rapport with Bloom, the mature Joyce, the authorbecomes, it may be said, his own father. Stephen is aware enough of thepotential ironies of this process to ponder all the paradoxes of the fatheras his own son in the Trinity, and of Shakespeare as both King Hamletand Prince Hamlet. Yet the book is not without its strong woman; Bloomis appropriately under the influence of his wife, whom he dissatisfies (tosome extent intentionally), and wishes to bring Stephen under her influencetoo.In both these books Joyce seems to reconstitute his family relationships,to disengage himself from the contradictions of his view of himselfas a child and so to exploit them, to overcome his mother's conventionalityand his father's rancor, to mother and father himself, to become, bythe superhuman effort of the creative process, no one but James Joyce.4See his letter to Frank Budgen, p. 489, and the discussion of Finnegans Wake, pp.716-17.tPp- 373-4-